What is most needed for graphical realism?

[babcat]

What is most needed for graphical realism when it comes to gaming?

I'm going to give an example. Lets say you have a scene of a few human beings standing around in a simple room that consists of nothing but white walls and white floors. What do you need the most of to make those few human beings look as realistic as possible? Also, I'm not talking about having them move like a real person, but just look like a real person when they are standing still.

Is polycount the most important thing?
What about pixel shading?
Or could it be vertex shading?
Perhaps it's just shading all together?
Could it be the need for appropriate lighting?
Would ray-tracing due the trick?
Where do high resolution textures fit into this?

Now, once we have determined the most important thing or things needed for graphical realism how can we go about achieving it with modern console hardware?

 

[ninzel]

Well I would think it would all begin with lighting. Without it vision doesn't exist so no matter what you make,if it aint lit properly it won't look real.
Edit: I would think if you were actually going to try this,you should start thinking in terms of something simple. I'm guessing most people would immediately start thinking of characters and other things and how to make them look real. I would start thinking in terms of a box or a ball and work up from there.

 

[GwymWeepa]

Lighting. Get perfect lighting going and even something that is relatively simple in complexity looks like it just exists.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Lightning is the most important factor.

Now, once we have determined the most important thing or things needed for graphical realism how can we go about achieving it with modern console hardware?

We wait until 2011 when the next, next gen console is launched.

Or, visit Polyphony Digital, and figure out what they are doing

 

[Dersaidin]

I don't think you can just say "lighting." and leave it at that.

If you got the lightning perfect, but had shit models, then you'd be able to clearly see large flat faces that make up the people...

Same with the textures.

 

[deathkiller]

I think that there are two essencial factors in photorealism:
1 Using a lighting sistem that more or less emulate the way that light interact with the scene.
2 Using a toolchain for extracting the graphical data directly from photos.

The second point is the most important since hand-made graphical data will never look realistic.

 

[Sousuke]

I don't think you can just say "lighting." and leave it at that.

If you got the lightning perfect, but had shit models, then you'd be able to clearly see large flat faces that make up the people...

I think you're confusing there something. In your case people would not look like humans but with the right lighting it would look real. Like real artificial people

 

[davepermen]

As you said for gaming, you forgot about one of the most important things.

Animation.

 

[Bohdy]

I second animation.

For instance, Gears of War looked pretty darn good, but the animation of NPC's in the cutscenes was simply atrocious! Completely removed any realism.

 

[RobertR1]

I second animation.

For instance, Gears of War looked pretty darn good, but the animation of NPC's in the cutscenes was simply atrocious! Completely removed any realism.

I found the motion of the characters during gameplay to be much better, thankfully, than the NPC's in the cut scenes, as you stated.

On topic....
I'd think a balanced combination of everything is necessary. If not, any weaknesses will be quickly exposed. You can't just have tunnel vision and narrow your focus to a couple of points such as lighting or animation. The moment you do that, others will slip. Balance is always the key.

 

[London Geezer]

Absolutely. To get photorealism, you have to get EVERYTHING right at the same time. You can have amazingly good models and lighting, but if the animation isn't good, it will still look like crap as soon as things start moving. Our brains are much more susceptible to movement than lots of people think. Even the tiniest unrealistic or "awkward" movement - especially facial movements! - and our brains picks it up and sends an alarm.

At the same time, you can have the most amazing motion captured animation, but if the models, environments and lighting just aren't detailed enough, it won't look photorealistic.

 

[flick556]

Texture resolution is still way too low.

 

[Arwin]

I think graphical realism is first and foremost a matter of understanding the limitations of the stuff you are working with. If, for instance, you know for sure that your shadows are going to look very fake, then don't use any. If you know your textures are going to look terrible and there is nothing you can do about it, then don't use any and go for cell-shading instead.

Personally I don't think graphical realism is necessary, but this approach should help you create graphics that are convincing enough to last a long time before they start to look truly appalling. I think a good example is the difference in styles of the last few Zelda games.

You have to weigh for each situation what you need most. Sometimes it is animation - for instance, one of the least consciously noticed illusion breakers in Forza for the original Xbox for me was the fact that the cars don't animate their weight distribution on their springs. If a car in GT brakes hard, then its front will tilt downward, and if it takes a turn and has relatively soft springs, it will lean over to the side. All that stuff wasn't visible in Forza, and it made a big difference.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think graphical realism is first and foremost a matter of understanding the limitations of the stuff you are working with. If, for instance, you know for sure that your shadows are going to look very fake, then don't use any. If you know your textures are going to look terrible and there is nothing you can do about it, then don't use any and go for cell-shading instead.

Though I agree with your sentiments, using art to overcome technical shortfallings, I'm not sure it's as simple as your examples. eg. GT4 suffers from dodgy looking backgrounds and repeating textures. Yet these are better than going with cell shading or stylized backgrounds. At the end of the day, most aren't going to look truly realistic and the best bet is to compromise assets towards that end goal.

As many have here already said, first and foremost in creating a convincing scene is lighting, including GI secondary lighting. Next comes texturing and shading. Finally comes modelling. This is the order that makes things look as though they are real, are made of a real material, and finally look like a real thing you might find. Bad modelling with great lighting will look like a dodgy model, whereas great modelling with poor lighting will look like a computer rendering. However, you won't throw your entire graphics pipeline into lighting and forgo the rest. Otherwise everything will look like flat coloured AO renderings (which is a style someone should try!) with no textures and lousy models. We mostly want compromises.

 

[bcloward]

I think that artist talent is the most important factor.

I completely disagree with deathkiller on that point and I actually question whether it's realism that we're after. If I want realism, I can just take my camcorder out into my back yard and shoot some footage. That's about as real as it gets - but that doesn't mean people are going to ooh and aah at it. What we want in a game in not realism - we want something that's better than real. Hyper-realism.

To create the "realism" seen in movies, you have huge crews of people all working behind the scenes to set up complex lighting rigs, apply make-up, control the weather, create and composite in special effects and even color grade the final footage. Sure there's some technology involved, but I believe the most important factor is the artistic talent.

I believe that the same applies to games. The artist is the one in control of the tools. Bad art will always yield bad results regardless of how nice the technology is.

 

[N3xtG3nGam3r]

IMHO, i think that the most important part of realism in a game is lighting. Probably real time shadows from dynamic light sources, as well as self shadowing on the character models. Aside from lighting though, you need to have very nice 3d sculptures, in order to get the nice self shadowing effects. Like grooves in the muscles, or in the clothes. As for the skin texture, i suppose a highly detailed texture, with the non glossy/greasy normal map effect would look nice. In rockstars table tennis, they achieve extremely realistic looking people. The texturing on their skin is perfect, as well their overall appearance. Even more realistic than FNR3 IMO. Table Tennis running at 60fps looks really god damn sweet. Rockstar would be working miracles if they are able to deliver those type of graphics for GTA: IV.

 

[Idiot_stupid_head]

In realworld there is no such thing as 2D drawed texture, I mean, glass isn't a texture, but a solid translucent material that refracts and reflects lights in some ammount deffined by how much clear, dirty, pure, density, thickness, the glass is. The same for water, pure water is "invisible", what you see are impurities reflecting / refracting / absorbing light.

 

[rounin]

In realworld there is no such thing as 2D drawed texture, I mean, glass isn't a texture, but a solid translucent material that refracts and reflects lights in some ammount deffined by how much clear, dirty, pure, density, thickness, the glass is. The same for water, pure water is "invisible", what you see are impurities reflecting / refracting / absorbing light.

I'm not sure, but this sort of glass seems to be present in Resistance for PS3

 

[cloudscapes]

lighting is the big one, definatelly. this may include:

-ambient occlusion. this makes a BIG difference if properly applied. I've always been annoyed with the inside of character's mouthes and teeth being all lit up the same intensity as the skin. same goes for other nooks in the body
-area shadows will help. can be done in shaders or brute-force.
-indirect lighting. doesn't have to be costy radiosity, but at the very least precomputed radiance transfer
-subsurface-scattering. this can easily be faked with shaders without being "physically acurate".
-subtle self-shadowing. can be included with area shadows

I think a bit of animation would also help. the character can be standing perfectly still, but occasionally dart eyes elsewhere, subtle weighty "hanging" motion of the limbs, fingers occasionally curling, etc.

On the art side:

-high res texture
-well-made specular masks. subtle normalmap.
-good stubble, maybe using an alpha-test extrusion technique. they used that in SofC and many other games.
-artist-placed hair. procedural strands of hair don't look very good at the moment IMO. at the hands of a good and patient artist, placing "shells" of alpha hair can look REALLY good!

 

[Toaddio]

I'll go with animation.