Creating the many Faces of Horizon Forbidden West

Session Description

People have an intrinsic ability to identify the attributes of the human face and remember details. This does not different with the faces of a video game character. We remember their names, attributes, and expressions. That is why building quality characters is the foundation of the soul of a video game, and their faces are one of the most important graphical benchmarks.

That's why the Guerrilla Games team wants to share with their peers how to achieve the final quality of their characters' faces in Horizon Forbidden West, as well as the extra fidelity achieved thanks to the power of the PS5. Furthermore, and most importantly, how to do all this to scale so that all the heads in the open world have the same quality.  

Attendee Takeaway

The attendees will gain insight into the many facets of the production pipeline of the faces of Horizon Forbidden West, and learn tricks and approaches to increase the realism in the heads of their own projects. For example, how you can use your photogrammetry pictures as a look-dev tool.

Intended Audience

The target audience would be peers of the industry who are interested stepping up their game when it comes to realistic faces. Due to abundance of pictures, more beginning artist will also have plenty of takeaways. No prerequisites required.  

BIO

Arno Schmitz is the Lead Character Artist at Guerrilla.

He graduated in Game Architecture and Design at the Breda University of Applied Sciences and later studied at the Florence Academy of Arts where he did the Intensive Drawing Program.

His credits at Guerrilla include Killzone Shadow Fall, Horizon Zero Dawn and the Frozen Wilds, and most recently Horizon Forbidden West.