AA on the cpu is MLAA Morphological Antialising. We saved 5-6 miliseconds by moving it on to the cpu's. Many props to our coder Cedric for making this happen and it looks way better!
For GoW3 we are not using screen space ambient occlusion. We are using a couple other versions of AO including baked for environments, AO texture maps and a pixel calculation that creates better shading on normal maps in indirect lit areas.
Number of dynamic lights - ALOT! that is one of the big features of our engine. We built it around being able to use up to 20 dynamic lights per game object. The light can be big or small, it doesn't matter. In the end, i believe we support up to 50 dynamic lights per game object. We are not using a differed lighting scheme. Our lead programmer Vassily came up with this amazing system during pre-production, us artists love it!!! We can place lights in Maya and have them update in realtime in the game on the PS3, its like being able to paint with lights. Lighting is fast and a very enjoyable artistic process.
Off the top of my head i don't remember exactly poly count numbers for the character. We use as many polys as it takes. My guess for Zues, Kratos and Hades is 25-30,000k triangles. Again, off the top of my head, texture sizes for these character is quite big. I think we are using 2048's for the lower, upper body and head. Each character gets a normal, diffuse, specular, gloss(power map), AO, and skin shader map. We also use layer ed textures to create more tiling, and use environment maps were needed, etc.
Yes we will be using Hollywood actors. I believe on another forum thread it includes the names.
Yes we will be referencing GoW1 and GoW2 in the game - i won't give away what it is, just hope you guys dig 
SantaMonicaKen wrote:Hey guys, answers to a couple art related questions i've seen posted.
Most difficult part - I think most of the guys would say Titans because we've never tried to create a level on a moving character. Personally, creating an engine while trying to create content was the toughest part. Dealing with maya, the engine and computers crashing while trying to finish content for deadlines is really tough. The previous 2 games, the engine was complete. For this game we were feature incomplete, and didn't have final specs till very late in the production.
Gaia is also cool name for the engine
Art Direction question from RyOtoha - I'm going to try and answer more on this tomorrow. For now i'll say that GoW3 is what we envisioned from the start. There was no way to do this level of scale on the PS2 - just not enough memory. Most games are centered around a room to hallway design because engines do that really well. Its really easy to put tons of detail in small rooms but its a whole different challenge to create a massive spectacle and thats the challenge we undertook.
A couple questions centered around getting started in Game Dev - Going to school for art or game design is always the best option. Put together a great portfolio You guys know what the competition is. Make sure your stuff is on par and get involved in the mod communities. If you go to a game/art school, make sure its project based and they have classes that allow you to use/learn UnrealEd and have semesters were the class actually builds a game. I know the Art Institute in Santa Monica has a program called Game Wizards, we've hired a number of students from that class.
On another note - on neogaf there is a thread "GoW3 has gone gold" page28 has an amazing screenshot of a boss character from the 1st level (won't give away the name, not sure if spoilers are cool). Seeing how rich this screenshot looks, I wanted to let you know the game looks even better then the videos out there. Compression seems to be washing out the image, removing color and contrast. Also on the same page are standalone picts of Zues and Kratos. Both are old content and not final in-game models/textures. Both character went through significant improvements the last couple months. That should be obvious with new screenshots of Kratos were you can't seen his ash, and poors. Zues will be equally detailed
Thanks for responding! It's really cool of you guys to come here and chat with us. Ya'll should stop by more often.
Doing that would make the rest of us buying it kinda wastin that extra $40 we're spendin though, don't you think?
Kchow23 wrote:
Would you guys consider putting up the content of the Ultimate Edition such as the documentary and music on PSN? My local stores aren't selling the Ultimate Edition and they are often sold out
No, it wouldn't you get PANDORA'S BOX and all that is included, while some of us who don't have a retailer which is selling that edition or it's sold out or you just can't afford the extra $40 will be able to get the content that they want like the documentary, songs or skins and I'm not saying put it up in PSN for free of course it's for a price... not everyone lives in the U.S
GLHS wrote:Doing that would make the rest of us buying it kinda wastin that extra $40 we're spendin though, don't you think?
Kchow23 wrote:
Would you guys consider putting up the content of the Ultimate Edition such as the documentary and music on PSN? My local stores aren't selling the Ultimate Edition and they are often sold out
