Shame that the only hair they seem to be doing are the super straight ones, forget curly not even slightly wavy hair. Although, it might be more expensive.
Accurate human rendering in game [2014-2016]
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God, I just had to log in to like this comment!It's Lara damnit !!
Why is it always an American who misspells that name ?
On topic, yes, hair is important to me. 10 years ago I wouldn't have thought that we would still be dealing with "cardboard hair" and other unrealistic solutions. Just a bit off-topic: I'm so tired of polygons... Everything looks unrealistically blocky to me, every time I see polygon edges. It ruins the experience, to me. It's like, no matter what, everything looks fake. I'm ok with current technology with regards to lighting, effects, textures and shaders (although it can and will improve, of course), but ugh, those edges... That's why I feel quite disappointed when people are talking about technical masterpieces like The Witcher 3 (not that a lot of people said that, but I think you know what I mean), I watch the game running on a very high specs computer and I see that horrible hair in NPCs, like plain textured polygons swinging in a weird way and clipping through other polygons... So, I would like to see a more "organic" approach to character representation (some sort of point cloud data, maybe?), better animations, and please, better collisions/interactions/friction for every single surface in characters, objects and environments. Also, please, realistic hands, not mannequin-like hands.
/rant off
I also hate polygon edges but unfortunately that what we'll get for a little while longer. Having said that, there's a few games already where I can't recall seeing polygonal edges where they shouldn't be. Or where they were so imperceptible, it really didn't matter enough for me to keep a memory in my brain that I saw them, if that makes sense.
For example, I can't remember seeing hard polygonal edges on curved surfaces in Until Dawn. Whereas I have a feeling I saw some on some of the characters in The Order.
But I do, very much, remember the stupid spikey lines in characters' models in MGSV. Or many, many other games.
For example, I can't remember seeing hard polygonal edges on curved surfaces in Until Dawn. Whereas I have a feeling I saw some on some of the characters in The Order.
But I do, very much, remember the stupid spikey lines in characters' models in MGSV. Or many, many other games.
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FF XV [an open world RPG!] is dedicating probably too much of rendering resources on hair.
Square have always been like that. give too much focus on the head area (face, hair)
in FF13 it was very jarring. the difference between head and body quality.
in FF15, theres even a whole method of making the hair looks rigid but not too rigid. Because real hair doesnt flip flop everywhere all the time.
@Clukos
UC4 seems to be the only game, among the ones you show, that delivers single "3D" facial hairs rather than "2D" ones.
A beard like in the Withcer 3 is not uncommon, we had that on last gen too.
For the sake of "accurate human rendering" then it surely matters but, understandably, putting much detail into facial hairs alone is not a priority for every developer.
Disclaimer:
Today my mid is elsewhere so my english might be off and I doubt I would notice it
UC4 seems to be the only game, among the ones you show, that delivers single "3D" facial hairs rather than "2D" ones.
A beard like in the Withcer 3 is not uncommon, we had that on last gen too.
For the sake of "accurate human rendering" then it surely matters but, understandably, putting much detail into facial hairs alone is not a priority for every developer.
Disclaimer:
Today my mid is elsewhere so my english might be off and I doubt I would notice it
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shredenvain
Regular
It's Lara damnit !!
Why is it always an American who misspells that name ?
Excuse me sir.
What the hell does my country of origin have to do with anything?
Why do British people pronounce the letter H as "Haich"?
Excuse me sir.
What the hell does my country of origin have to do with anything?
Why do British people pronounce the letter H as "Haich"?
You're welcome!
I'd rather not call it accurate, especially because ND doesn't seem to aim for it at all.
I still prefer the term 'hyper-real' for this style, where certain aspects of reality are more or less over exaggerated, while others are pushed back.
For example, asymmetry is almost completely lacking in the UC4 characters, whereas in real life every human face has a lot of it. In fact, when you mirror the face vertically, most people have a "fat" and a "slim" side.
What's even more curious is that in general, we tend to find people with really symmetrical faces to be more attractive. Yet, there are a lot of celebrities with quite obvious asymmetries - and yet they are considered to be extremely handsome. Like, Tom Cruise has teeth that is shifted to one side, but his smile is one of the best, responsible for some huge box office incomes. Or another example is Adam Driver, who's entire face is really mismatched and yet a lot of female viewers of TFA have found him to be extremely nice.
So, the human characters in UC4 are an interesting mix of real life features and idealized representations of humans.They have realistic skin textures, hair, body proportions and build; but the skin shaders are stylized, the faces are very symmetrical and also somewhat idealized; their clothing is very realistic, they have dirt and grime and wear and tear and sweat and blood, but everything is slightly over the top at the same time.
All of this is a result of very conscious art direction, of course.
It's a common thing nowadays to compare UC4 to Quantum Break - but let's not get into a flame war here - which is a bit strange to me, as Remedy is obviously aiming for a very different result. They're using a lot of scanning and other types of data acquisition to create their characters, and both the lighting and the post-processing are tuned to mimic the look of TV shows. Which makes a lot of sense, considering the tie-in series. So that title should be more appropriate for this thread, as they are aiming for accurate human rendering - whereas ND is going for their own look, building upon the traditions of the Uncharted series.
I still prefer the term 'hyper-real' for this style, where certain aspects of reality are more or less over exaggerated, while others are pushed back.
For example, asymmetry is almost completely lacking in the UC4 characters, whereas in real life every human face has a lot of it. In fact, when you mirror the face vertically, most people have a "fat" and a "slim" side.
What's even more curious is that in general, we tend to find people with really symmetrical faces to be more attractive. Yet, there are a lot of celebrities with quite obvious asymmetries - and yet they are considered to be extremely handsome. Like, Tom Cruise has teeth that is shifted to one side, but his smile is one of the best, responsible for some huge box office incomes. Or another example is Adam Driver, who's entire face is really mismatched and yet a lot of female viewers of TFA have found him to be extremely nice.
So, the human characters in UC4 are an interesting mix of real life features and idealized representations of humans.They have realistic skin textures, hair, body proportions and build; but the skin shaders are stylized, the faces are very symmetrical and also somewhat idealized; their clothing is very realistic, they have dirt and grime and wear and tear and sweat and blood, but everything is slightly over the top at the same time.
All of this is a result of very conscious art direction, of course.
It's a common thing nowadays to compare UC4 to Quantum Break - but let's not get into a flame war here
- which is a bit strange to me, as Remedy is obviously aiming for a very different result. They're using a lot of scanning and other types of data acquisition to create their characters, and both the lighting and the post-processing are tuned to mimic the look of TV shows. Which makes a lot of sense, considering the tie-in series. So that title should be more appropriate for this thread, as they are aiming for accurate human rendering - whereas ND is going for their own look, building upon the traditions of the Uncharted series.
Looks like ND is taking console graphics to...Uncharted territories.
steveOrino
Regular
It has been a fear of mine that most if not all studios would give up on making stylized human characters in favor of scans. Some of the most memorable characters (for me) in games have been hand modeled because the freedom it allows to make truly unique looking faces that wouldn't exist in real life. IMO one of the biggest issues with scans is that if the rendering and rigging isn't good enough (so pretty much all real time graphics at this stage) the result is almost always off-putting, especially if the actor is well known outside of the game (Kevin Spacey in advanced warfare for instance).
So as budgets keep reaching towards a never ending horizon, its inevitable that actors outside of games will become more and more common. However, I hope that talented artists will still keep creating beautiful unique characters that wouldn't exist outside their minds because not everything needs to be a scan.
D
Deleted member 11852
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Really? Mostly I fear killer bees.
There are two sides to this, and both have a lot of pro and con stuff to weigh when a studio makes this decision.
I guess it's quite obvious that you'll have a lot more freedom when you only hire the talent for the performances. You get access to a wider pool of actors as you don't have to match the looks with the ingame character. Also, and I really don't mean to offend with this, there are a lot of talented actors who are not as good looking as movie and TV productions would need them to be, but would probably be more than capable for the part. And, since they have less opportunities in those industries, they aren't as demanded and probably cheaper to hire. It's easier to book people and match schedules for capture sessions, and there's also a good chance that the talent will already be familiar with the process. Again, just stating the facts, no judgments.
Another obvious advantage is the complete artistic control over the look of the character. Handsomeness, age, build and so on are of no importance, you can go as far as having two actors play twins, whatever. You can also go the other way and make someone look uglier, deformed, handicapped, or an alien or anything else; and you don't have to rule out scanning either. The best known example would probably be Halo 4 and 5, where Jen Taylor can do the voice for Cortana who's captured from another actress and scanned from at least two other people; but she can also do capture and voice for Halsey who's a hand crafted character.
Also, you can allow character customization for the player, which is a big deal for RPG type games. This is actually becoming harder to do these days and I wouldn't be surprised to see the new Mass Effect game ditching this option - but at least it's still a possibility with this approach.
However, creating a character from scratch at today's standards is pretty demanding, takes a LOT of time and effort and lots of really talented artists. You have to iterate many many times to get the looks right, you have to hand craft all the facial expressions as well, and there's little room for automation in the workflow. It's just not feasible to build a large ensemble cast this way; you'll notice that Uncharted 4 for example has shown less than 10 main characters so far and it's probably not going to get much higher with the final game. This has also been the case with the previous games as well, it's always just a few characters and lots of noname guys.
On the other hand, going with celebrity talent will offer a few advantages from the start and somewhat fewer drawbacks, at least from a production point of view.
Obviously you'll get good acting skills, likable looks, and a good voice. There are a lot of proven actors around Hollywood, in the TV industry as well, and AA productions can afford to make good use of it. You can nail the character from the start with good casting, and you can get really good performances; even rely on the talent to add to the project using skills and experience. Good directors are not yet that common in the game industry, so this can mean a lot. Also, getting a big name on board will generate a lot of publicity and I'm quite sure that it can transfer into sales as well.
So I still think that hiring Kevin Spacey was a good move, regardless of how well the ingame (or CG
) character worked in the end. I'd also like to point out that his involvement has sort of made video games "cool" for movie and TV talent, and thus we've seen a rise of interest in the past two years. The results may be mixed, but still, a lot highly talented people are now easier to get into video games.Relying on scan data also allows for a lot of proceduralism: you can write code to process it and generate geometry and textures, increasing your efficiency and accuracy. Once you have a good pipeline in place, asset creation can get really fast; as I've mentioned elsewhere, 343i was able to get a fully rigged and textured face into the game within something like 2 days. I've seen some games with a huge cast of characters at this point, and that wouldn't be possible without relying on scanning. Also, scanning means that you don't have to make any guesses about the facial expressions, you will always have perfect reference for every aspect of the character. Extreme facial expressions can be really hard to get right without a guideline, but you get that with scans.
I'd also say that real life people can actually be far more varied in their looks than hand crafted characters. As I've mentioned, handsomeness is a really tricky thing - there are a lot of people with facial features that would be unpleasant on paper, but somehow we still find them to be attractive. Nailing this stuff is just incredibly hard, it'd take a lot of time and it's really hard to test the results; but if you go with real actors, you'll get the results instantly.
The obvious downside is that getting the likeness perfect can be really hard - well-known talent is always shot to make them look their best, they have professional make-up and hair artists, and so on. So you're not even aiming at the data acquired, but something a lot harder to grasp, basically a highly idealized mental image of the person. You're gonna need a really good art director to supervise this. It's also the same case with the performance, you have to study reference material really hard to catch those tiny ticks and gestures. However, I'm quite convinced that the technology is there now, and it's mostly up to the developers to make the most out of it.
So, all in all, I personally believe that there are a lot of merits with both approaches. Budgets and schedules are a very strong driving force, so scanning may become more common; but the various disadvantages will always be there, so we're probably going to see hand crafted characters as well, but less of them because of production constraints.
Holy crap we've come a long way. The ears on the UC models are actually convincing to me, at least the most convincing I've seen this far. Why is it that ears often still have those polygonal edges in the character models? Is it due to a lack of geometry power or are ears more an afterthought?
Uncharted 4 looks absolutely gorgeous. ND are extremely talented devs.
Quantic Dream is absolutely gorgeous as well.
Both games look so delicious with some of the best models I've seen in game.
Uncharted 4 looks absolutely gorgeous. ND are extremely talented devs.
Quantic Dream is absolutely gorgeous as well.
Both games look so delicious with some of the best models I've seen in game.
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