The Father and Son Cinematic Trailer for God of Warfare Ragnarök

Lately, sport trailers have generated virtually the identical degree of pleasure because the video games they promote. They’re usually thought of artistic endeavors in themselves, with their very own distinctive storylines and artistic approaches. 

With such a brief run time, cinematic sport trailers should captivate and immerse audiences within the sport’s universe shortly with high-end visuals and music. 

At Goodbye Kansas Studios, we’ve created profitable cinematic trailers for notable video games equivalent to CD Mission Purple’s Cyberpunk 2077, Murderer’s Creed: Valhalla, and Ubisoft’s Cranium and Bones. 

Extra lately, we had been approached by AKQA to create the cinematic trailer for Sony and Santa Monica Studios’ newly launched action-adventure sport, God of Warfare Ragnarök.

This was an thrilling alternative for us, and we had been eager to discover the epic journey for the sport’s viewers, telling the story of its protagonist, Kratos, and his son, Atreus, as they embark on a journey to satisfy Atreus’ mom’s final want. 

We created breathtaking environments, from snow-covered mountains to intense motion scenes. All of those contribute to the compelling narrative informed in a brief, twenty-three-second sequence comprising simply six photographs. 

It was a possibility to display the total potential of our newly developed pipeline based mostly on Common Scene Description (USD), using a mixture of cutting-edge applied sciences, together with developments in 3D, facial animation, and movement seize, to deliver cinematic life to the God of Warfare universe.

Written by:

Alexis Andersson, CG Supervisor
Henrik Eklundh, VFX Supervisor

 


Concepting

All of it begins with an thought. We had been approached by AKQA with an idea for the trailer and requested to assist deliver it to life. Beginning off with the preliminary idea, the Goodbye Kansas workforce, led by director Fredrik Löfberg, created a storyboard to behave as our information – one thing to point out key photographs that might be replicated within the trailer together with moments and tone to satisfy. 

We turned that right into a 3D previz to offer higher readability of what the ultimate narrative would seem like. In the meantime, our Artwork Division, guided by Artwork Director Gustaf Holmsten, labored to create stylistic ideas which can be visually like-for-like to what you’d anticipate to see within the remaining image. These preliminary model frames had been signed off by the consumer and have become a helpful basis for the workforce to reference all through the mission.

Movement seize 

With the previz signed-off, our subsequent step was to plan and execute a movement seize shoot. Mocap expertise offers a unbelievable methodology for producing character actions quickly – actually capturing the efficiency of an actor quite than hand animating a sequence body by body. We had been ready to make use of particular person strikes, sections, or set items inside our animation software program. 

We shot this part throughout the pandemic, which posed an apparent problem. Normally, the shoot would happen in Stockholm on our in-house movement seize stage. However, as a consequence of difficulties flying the actors over, half the workforce headed to Sony’s Santa Monica Studio stage whereas the remaining dialed in remotely. It meant we might go the place the actors had been and make sure the security of our solid and crew, all of the whereas realizing that Sony was arrange for high-fidelity movement seize that might work in our animation course of. 

Regardless of the challenges, the shoot went easily, with useful enter from Santa Monica’s animation director, Bruno Velazquez, who gave steerage on how Kratos ought to swing his axe and transfer in battle.  This allowed us to work intently with abilities to breathe life into the characters. 

For this shoot, we had been lucky to have the ability to work with Tremendous Alloy, the identical workforce that additionally did lots of mocap for the sport itself. This decreased the time wanted to grasp the characters, and we might concentrate on what we wanted for the trailer particularly.

Following the session, the mocap information was reviewed, and a spherical of picks was chosen. The administrators picked what motion they needed to be included, which was then inputted into movement enhancing and animation software program in order that there was a cohesive timeline to begin with.

Character, atmosphere, and asset constructing

One of many largest challenges of the mission was making certain that Kratos and Atreus matched the likeness to the sport characters. We had the unique sport property and sculpts from Santa Monica Studios, which we transformed and used as a base from which the workforce might create refined cinematic variations. 

 

Our facial rigs are of the very best normal, and we hold pushing their improvement to make sure we keep forward of the competitors for digital people. 

To make sure the characters resembled those from the sport however with greater high quality, we had been meticulous concerning the particulars. We underwent a number of rounds of suggestions to make sure that they seemed precisely like the sport characters and that they matched and remained true to the sport. 

We needed to make sure that followers of the sport had been happy with the end result, and we went to nice lengths to make it possible for the Santa Monica Studios was proud of the ultimate end result.

Utilizing Maya, Blender, and ZBrush, the workforce constructed our 3D fashions. These had been then rigged utilizing Maya and our proprietary facial animation toolset. The characters’ our bodies had been animated in MotionBuilder, with the movement seize information being pulled in. 

Facial animation on a mission like that is essential. It must be plausible as an individual whereas sustaining the sense of the world they’re in. Our facial animation workforce labored meticulously to match Kratos’ distinctive look in all elements of animation by finding out the movement actor’s efficiency, tweaking and perfecting in Maya, and utilizing Substance Painter to use textures.

That is additionally the place the flexibility of the USD pipeline comes into play. We had been capable of iterate faster within the workforce, and everybody might comply with the progress in a brand new approach, which empowered possession and strengthened artistic output and velocity. 

As soon as finalized, the property had been printed as a USD file and opened in and opened in Solaris, which is the context inside Houdini for constructing, format, lighting, and rendering based mostly on the USD framework. It’s right here {that a} look improvement artist took the printed characters and utilized groom and textures. 

We additionally used V-Ray shader for the look dev of the sequences, which had been then layered on high of the characters. These parts, mixed with the rig and a simulation FX mesh, had been layered on high of one another to create a personality package deal. 

Digicam data and animation had been additionally printed into USD as an animation cache. And, due to USD, we’re capable of edit any side of this stack with out having to transform subsequent sections.

FX, lighting, and compositing 

Lighting is what units the temper of the shot, whereas FX provides a fantastical component to the scene. Compositing takes the 3D output and makes positive a scene seems to be as reasonable and exquisite as it may be. Our lighting artists had been supplied with a template, referred to as a ‘node tree’ in Solaris, and labored on completely different parts that had been cut up out into render passes. 

These passes had been then despatched to the farm to create a collection of 2D pictures. Earlier than lighting, simulations for character and creature results had been carried out on the animation cache, and all of the ensuing results had been layered over the animation to create a remaining output. 

USD basically treats every edit or element as a layer with overrides – one on high of one other till you could have your remaining end result.

The trailer’s opening shot proved to be one of many extra technically difficult elements, with a number of transferring elements. From Norse creatures (draugrs) coated in lava to smoke and snow, it was vital to seize all elements of the scene to convey what was occurring. 

As an example, the workforce paid consideration to element in displaying footprints within the snow. Although most viewers could not discover this, it was important to make sure that all parts labored collectively. It’s the artwork of together with delicate particulars that actually promote a shot – you won’t discover that footprints are there, however you undoubtedly would if it wasn’t. Explosions, fireplace, smoke, snow within the air, and embers from the draugrs, had been all created in Houdini with the identical consideration to element. 

Lighting is the final step earlier than 3D will get reworked and rendered right into a 2D picture. The work from all departments will get mixed right into a single usd file which the lighting division then splits up into completely different renders. Then they get despatched to the farm or cloudfarm the place 3D pictures get reworked right into a 2D exr picture for the compositing workforce to choose up.

God of Warfare has some heavy photographs to work with, together with characters, snow, smoke, and fireplace, multi functional place, which might have been intense to render. We would have liked to make sure that these completely different parts had been cut up up into separate outputs and layered like items of a puzzle. 

The compositing workforce did an incredible job of making certain that every one rendered elements labored collectively seamlessly, particularly in tweaking the completely different elements to attain the heavy snowstorm impact.

Rendering and grading move

Solaris in Houdini is our chosen instrument to create property and scenes, and we render these out from Solaris utilizing V-Ray. 

In the beginning of a mission, we all the time focus on the constancy goal and goal of the trailer. As a part of this, real-time rendering or not is without doubt one of the massive selections. We’re specialised in each paths and perceive the challenges and completely different workflows that have to be utilized for every, but in addition to have the ability to talk concerning the ultimate constancy bar. 

We would have liked each body to be good, which is why we use offline rendering – on this case, Chaos’ V-Ray. 

Lastly, our colourists do a grading move in DaVinci Resolve to attain the specified really feel for the ultimate sequence. As soon as the grading move is full, the footage is exported to be used and delivered to the consumer for the world to see.

In realizing the cinematic trailer for God of Warfare Ragnarök, the Goodbye Kansas workforce used a spread of various applied sciences, together with 3D, facial animation, and movement seize, to create breathtaking environments and a compelling narrative sequence.

Whereas we’ve created quite a few sport trailers up to now, it was a difficult process to inform a compelling story and embrace all of the important parts in a brief timeframe. 

Nevertheless, from a technical standpoint, the method was simple. Using superior software program instruments in our newly-developed USD pipeline, together with Houdini’s Solaris and V-Ray, enabled the workforce to create beautiful 3D scenes and render them effectively. The compositing work utilizing Nuke then seamlessly built-in completely different parts to attain a cohesive and dramatic visible expertise. 

General, the trailer is a testomony to what’s attainable with a well-thought-out pipeline alongside our workforce’s experience and artistic path. We’re proud to have delivered a visually beautiful and emotionally participating trailer that captivates the viewers.

 


Behind the Scenes 


About Goodbye Kansas Studios

Goodbye Kansas Studios provides award-winning and uniquely built-in companies for characteristic movies, TV collection, commercials, video games and sport trailers. Experience contains VFX, FX, CG productions, 3D face & physique scanning, digital people, creature & character design, efficiency seize, animation and real-time methods. The corporate, with a workers of 250+ is a part of Goodbye Kansas Group AB (publ), listed on the Nasdaq First North Development Market and with studios and places of work in Stockholm, London, Helsinki, Vilnius, Belgrade, Beijing, and Los Angeles.