Apparently SEGA is using a free to download 3D program to aid in the development of Virtua Tennis 4 in Japan. SEGA Of Japan technical artist Katsuhiko Omori said this in an email to the creators of Blender:
Hello
My name is Katsuhiko Omori and I work as technical artist at SEGA Japan.
One of my main responsibilities is to research new technology and evaluating them for a possible application for SEGA’s game titles.In 2010, I designed a shader rendering pipeline for Virtua Tennis 4 (SEGA) with the help of Blender 2.4. I utilized the material node-editor to generate and compose different surface materials and fine tune the finale results. In this aspect, the node-system was an extremely helpful tool in exploring the possibilities of this artist oriented experiment.
VT4 adopted the ueber shader and thus was it possible to re-implement my designed materials and user parameters on the game console. The attached image illustrates the face-skin material – the most complicated shader. As you can see it is a rather complex combination.
It’s all Greek to me, but maybe some of our more computer inclined readers can make sense of it.
In other news, the World Tour Virtua Tennis 4 demo is now live on PSN. Go check it out now if you are a PSN+ member. If you aren’t you can check it out this time next week.
[Source: Videogamewriters.com]
[Source: SEGA]
I tried to use blender before, I suck at it more than commercial products.
He's showing the shader network, which includes various maps for color, specularity (kind of like shininess), ambient color, the way the light will diffuse and cast shadows… looks like there's a rim lighting map in there… basically a whole lot of different materials that are interconnected through various channels to come up with the finished face-skin material. For example, the specularity map might be used to create the illusion of perspiration, because sweaty skin appears more shiny than dry skin. So the specular map is a black-and-white image that is more like white where you want it to be shiny, and closer to black where you don't want it to be. Many different maps like this combine for the nearly photorealistic result. I don't know if that clarifies it any more though! It's great that there is a free 3D package this powerful.
I 1/2 understood the article, and I completely understood Centrale. Thanks!