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The Hedgehog Engine logo, as seen in Sonic Unleashed.
The Hedgehog Engine (ヘッジホッグエンジン Hejjihogguenjin?) is a proprietary game engine developed by Sonic Team that is primarily used in games in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. The engine was first used in the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 version of Sonic Unleashed.[1]
Overview[]
Hedgehog Engine[]
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Development of the Hedgehog Engine began in 2005, approximately a year before Sonic Unleashed entered production.[2][3] Yoshihisa Hashimoto, the director of Sonic Unleashed, wanted to achieve in-game graphical fidelity on par with pre-rendered computer-generated imagery (CGI), particularly the work of Pixar.[4][2] From the observation of several computer-generated images and films, Hashimoto and artists at Sonic Team concluded that high-end game graphics at the time were missing a key element, global illumination (GI), where light bounces off every object in the scene. The team would then work for two months to develop an experimental global illumination rendering algorithm.[2]
Inexperienced with traditional rendering techniques such as ray tracing, radiosity, and photon mapping, Sonic Team devised other methods of calculating global illumination for terrain. The first of these was a "light model", where light sources emit "particles" that travel instantaneously in straight lines from every direction. Upon hitting an object's surface, a light particle is temporarily absorbed by it. Some of the particle's energy is absorbed by the material of the object, while the rest is split into more particles and re-emitted, and the process repeats. Anticipating that this method would generate an infinite number of lighting calculations impossible for the hardware to process, the team dropped the idea.[2]
The second global illumination calculation method devised by the team was the "light network." With this method, each object in the game world is given a texture embedded with global illumination data and subdivided into microfacets based on textels. A set number of rays are then radially cast from each microfacet, and data is stored for the first microfacet intersected by each ray. Ray calculations are done on all microfacets, creating a network. Diffuse texture textels that overlap the centers of microfacets have their material colors sampled to determine their reflectivity. Three different light source models, "directional," "point," and "sky," are used to determine the behavior of the rays cast from the microfacets, with the rays that do not intersect objects being considered "direct light." Finally, the strength of the direct light is precomputed, linking the ray network with each light source type and completing the light network.[2]
To handle the considerable amount of computing time and data required by global illumination, Sonic Team created a system of over a hundred computers to evenly distribute the rendering workload.[2]
The scripting language used by the engine is Lua.
Hedgehog Engine 2[]
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Development of the Hedgehog Engine 2 began concurrently with the development of Sonic Forces in 2013.[5][6] As explained by Ooyama Takateru, the main features of the Hedgehog Engine 2 are improved global illumination and shadows, and the introduction of physically based rendering (PBR), which allows the creation of images that look natural in any environment.[7]
Sonic games using the Hedgehog Engine[]
- Sonic Unleashed (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3) (2008)
- Sonic Colors (Wii) (2010)
- Sonic Generations (console/PC) (2011)
- Sonic Lost World (Wii U) (2013)
- Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games (2013)
- Sonic Lost World (PC) (2015)
- Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (Wii U) (2016)
- Sonic Forces (2017)
- Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (2019)
- Sonic Colors: Ultimate (2021)
- Sonic Origins (2022) (menus)
- Sonic Origins Plus (2023) (menus)
- Sonic Frontiers (2022)
- Sonic Superstars (2023) (Digital Artbook & Mini Original Soundtrack)
- Sonic X Shadow Generations (2024)
Other games using the Hedgehog Engine[]
- Sakura Wars (2019)[8]
- Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (2020)
- Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - The Official Video Game (2021)
References[]
- ↑ Sarkar, Samit (3 April 2008). Sega confirms Sonic Unleashed: I'm trying really hard not to use a pun here. Destructoid. Retrieved on 24 November 2022. "Sega: Along with seamless 3D to classic 2D camera transitions, the game is built on a powerful, new proprietary "Hedgehog Engine," which introduces impressive lighting abilities and new technology tailor made for Sonic's new speed capabilities."
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Hashimoto, Yoshihisa (27 March 2009). Global Illumination in Sonic Unleashed. GDC Vault. Informa. Retrieved on 8 December 2020.
- ↑ Riley, Patrick (16 October 2008). A New Direction. IGN. Archived from the original on 19 October 2008. Retrieved on 24 November 2022.
- ↑ Yoshihisa, Hashimoto (23 October 2008). Progress. IGN. Archived from the original on 23 December 2010. Retrieved on 24 November 2022.
- ↑ (in Japanese)CGWORLD 233 (January 2018): 82-87. 9 December 2017.
- ↑ Rei, Maha (11 November 2017). 『ソニックフォース』完成記念インタビュー 中村Pらに聞く“王道ハイスピードアクション”を求めての道のり (Japanese). Famitsu. Retrieved on 7 July 2024. "Shun Nakamura: 開発をスタートしたのは4年前なんですけど、新たに“Hedgehog Engine2”エンジンに切り替えることでの研究が必要でした。"
- ↑ Takateru, Ooyama (6 December 2017). グラフィックスプログラムリーダー 大山貴輝 (Japanese). Sonic Channel. Retrieved on 3 August 2024.
- ↑ Yashiro, Atsushi (3 May 2019). 『新サクラ大戦』開発者に徹底的に訊く！ 「シリーズのキャラは？」「主人公の神山はどんな男？」 など疑問に答えまくるロングインタビュー！(2/2) (Japanese). Famitsu. Retrieved on 27 July 2023. "Tetsu Katano: 技術的には『ソニック』シリーズの“ヘッジホッグエンジン”を使っていたり、イベントシーンでは『龍が如く』シリーズのノウハウを使わせてもらうなど、社内の総力を結集しました。"