Santa Monica Studio Showed How Interactive Wind and Vegetation Were Made for God of War

Santa Monica Studio's Senior Staff Technical Artist Sean Feeley talked about interactive wind and vegetation in God of War, explaining how the team developed the system to support the players’ feeling of controlling a powerful character. 

The presentation covers the system's goals, wind fluid simulation, wind motors, wind receivers, mesh data and compute details, authoring and best practices, LODs, and character collisions.

Feeley says there were three goals in mind while creating the wind: the player should be able to see if their actions affect the wind, they should also see the way the wind is blowing and the spatial variation of speed and direction.

The studio aimed to improve the simplistic "if wind, then wiggle" approach and make both isolated models look good and objects in groups look cohesive and together. The creators focused on believable behavior rather than realistic.

If you enjoy God of War and want to know more about its creation, you should definitely watch the whole presentation from GDC here. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.