 | "The Last of Us" is possibly the best game I have ever played and features extraordinary lighting (no doubt a big part of why I love it). It's a remarkable achievement considering the Playstation 3 is something like eight years old - this game really squeezes the utmost out of the hardware. Naughty Dog use a proprietary render engine which features HDR, God Rays, depth of field, lens flares, and dynamic light sources. They also use a global illumination approach that is a hybrid of realtime computation and pre-baked lightmaps. |
Available online is a pdf of a talk that engine programmer Michal Iwanicki gave at SIGGRAPH 2013 entitled Lighting Technology of "The Last of Us" which is a technical talk concentrating on lightmapping techniques. An easier read for most is the Eurogamer article Tech Analysis: The Last of Us by David Blerton.
Technology aside, there was clearly a very strong creative team driving the visuals. The art direction is superb, and the lighting artists approached the work with great sensitivity. Many of the environments are lit only by ambient bounce lighting, requiring subtlety and skill to effectively light. The interactive lighting, such as the convincing bounceback of coloured light from surfaces struck by the characters' flashlights, helps make the game immersive.
Technology aside, there was clearly a very strong creative team driving the visuals. The art direction is superb, and the lighting artists approached the work with great sensitivity. Many of the environments are lit only by ambient bounce lighting, requiring subtlety and skill to effectively light. The interactive lighting, such as the convincing bounceback of coloured light from surfaces struck by the characters' flashlights, helps make the game immersive.
Concept Artwork for "The Last of Us"
I found on youtube this very insightful and informative feature-length documentary called Grounded: The Making of The Last of Us. It's a wide-ranging and fascinating look at many aspects of the creative and technical processes that went into the creation of the game. Lighting is covered starting around the 57:30 mark.
Fans of the Shatner light will find it in use for the nicely shot interviews, especially that of Creative Director Neil Druckman (see from 8:00).
There's lots of great exposition of the motion capture process and cinematographic choices as well.
There's lots of great exposition of the motion capture process and cinematographic choices as well.
Screengrabs from the game
Worth noting is the impending July 29th release of The Last of Us Remastered for PS4. PlayStation.blog got their hands on a prerelease version and their experience is documented here.
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