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What is Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver?

Soul Reaver was originally the second game in the cult series Legacy of Kain released in 1999 on PC and Playstation developed by Crystal Dynamics.

This project is our re-imagining of a portion of that game. It has been produced in 7 weeks total by a team of 14 of various trades.

My share of the work:

My tasks for this project were varied, but mostly consisted of:

  • Basic player mechanics and world interactions.

  • Specific camera behaviors.

  • A shader system that support specific alterations on the world switch and per-world-state vertex painting palettes for effects.

  • Modifications to the 3ds Max standard biped for additional limbs and physics support in engine.

  • General Technical support for both the level art team and animation team.

While as someone usually focused on Rigging/Animation, our needs for this project were simple enough that we saw no need for fully featured custom bipeds in our pipeline, but rather small cosmetic alterations on the 3ds Max biped such as facial features support, extra limbs and NVIDIA Apex cloth setups. This way we ensured the animators would have as much time as possible to polish for such a time-restricted project. I coordinated with the character modelers for our needs and proceeded to skin the final meshes and did the entire integration process as well as physical asset setup.

Featured
Raziel: Integrated Model

This is the final version of Raziel integrated in the engine. Complete with cloth simulations and the wings are physically simulated bones.

Raziel: Skeleton

Raziel was built off a 3ds Max Biped, with aditional bones for rigid bodies and simulation. some basic eye control was added to at least give him some expressions.

Raziel: Cloth Simulation

The use of NVIDIA Apex cloth was put on the essential parts of the model.

Raziel: Simulated Wings

The wings were boned in a way that the torn part would always be simulated and weighted in a way that they would be rigid enough when gliding, but otherwise as flappy as the original title on Playstation.

Raziel: Under the Hood.

Raziel was built entirely in Unreal Blueprints to drive everything from basic controls and abilities to the handling of post process effects.

Shader Example

The shaders were straight forward, this is a sample in-engine towhat was possible. The artist would decide if he needed the material to have custom "spiritual" effects, and could override the default maps with any that would suit the material better. The handling of the spiritual switch was done in a Material Parameter Collection and tied directly in the gameplay blueprints for a global gradual swap.

Post process switch.

When the player toggles world, the post process effects of the camera will smoothly switch between states, modify it's FOV in the same way to give the spiritual world an eerie feel. The shaders on the environment are also toggled. The blue glow is vertex painted by the artist as needed.
 

 

The Team:

Gabrielle Marcheterre
Valérie Grenon-Fréchet
Joëlle Landry
Vanessa Roy
Anne-Sophie Labelle
Renaud Leclerc
Louis-Michel Lebeau
Alex Rodrigue

François Grégoire
Weidi Kang
Miguel Hernandez
Leo Ferland-Dallaire
Joel Caron
Minh-Mily Nguyen
Raphaëlle Deslandes
Nicolas-John Poulin