Accurate Human Rendering in Game [2017]

[Clukos]

Nevertheless pictures of other characters would be interesting.

I agree, I'll have to get some

 

[chris1515]

How do other characters look in comparison at the same distance. From my point of view it is not enough to have a handful of characters who look very good to say that a game has very good characters. There should already be at least 20. Better would be over 50 characters with such a quality in a game or best all characters have about a similar quality. Even random NPCs.

A random NPC into the wood

 

[chris1515]

A random NPC into a side quest in Meridian. You need to talk to her only one time in a side quest

 

[Jupiter]

For example I find the characters in Watch Dogs 2 poor during gameplay. This would hardly be noticed by a player because most never see the characters from a close distance. During cutscenes they look very different compared to gameplay. Horizon is several levels above those Watch Dogs 2 characters in gameplay.

Perhaps I upload some pictures from Watch Dogs 2 and Wildlands.

 

[chris1515]

Another random NPC

 

[chris1515]

The biggest difference between main character and random NPC or character from side quest is facial animation quality and lip sync.

Some side quest character lip sync and facial animation are very bad...

 

[chris1515]

It is creepy like this and it is worse when you see the animation

 

[Karamazov]

NPCs look better during dialogue cutscenes than during gameplay, but they are still fine

http://i.imgur.com/w5FoCRj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/8LwWKoS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/bCQRkNu.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/jtUJTzs.jpg

 

[Clukos]

For example I find the characters in Watch Dogs 2 poor during gameplay. This would hardly be noticed by a player because most never see the characters from a close distance. During cutscenes they look very different compared to gameplay. Horizon is several levels above those Watch Dogs 2 characters in gameplay.

Alright, I think this is the definitive guide for Horizon NPCs and we don't need to spam this thread

In general I think only Aloy is allowed the awesome self-shadowing on small facial features during gameplay: https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170l8jhd.jpg

Some random npcs (you never talk to them)
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170uhksl.jpg
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170aikfv.jpg
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170vvkir.jpg
^ Here you can see Aloy having self-shadowing and the npc does not (on facial features) so they rely heavily on AO to look decent but they still have a nice amount of detail

This is a quest giving npc (that you talk to)
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170jyjy0.jpg
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_201701mkzo.jpg
Aloy: https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170mtkwc.jpg

And this is him in a camera controlled cutscene (when you talk to him basically):

I think the biggest difference is when you get to talk to them, all npcs have self shadowing like Aloy but during gameplay only Aloy retains that (which is perfectly fine).

 

[Dictator]

DOUBLE POST

WOOPS!

 

[Dictator]

The difference in shadowing almost makes one yearn for a PC version. The same thing happens in TW3 on PC even, but there are mods which enable the highest character LOD and per-object shadowing even outside of dialogue scenes. It goes a long way to getting rid of that horribly glassy eyed look you see in the screens above. ^^

BTW, how are the idle character animations for NPCs and Aloy (Aloi?) outside of dialogue scenes? Does she blink, move her mouth, face etc. when just standing still? Same with other NPCs? Or do they take on bethesda death stares?

 

[Silencerx98]

The difference in shadowing almost makes one yearn for a PC version. The same thing happens in TW3 on PC even, but there are mods which enable the highest character LOD and per-object shadowing even outside of dialogue scenes. It goes a long way to getting rid of that horribly glassy eyed look you see in the screens above. ^^

Well, that's somewhat nitpicking considering the gameplay camera is far from these NPC's typically. The only time you would notice this flaw is Photomode, really. But I get your point, self shadowing definitely adds to the visual consistency. Next gen, hopefully!

P.S. Hey, man

 

[Clukos]

BTW, how are the idle character animations for NPCs and Aloy (Aloi?) outside of dialogue scenes? Does she blink, move her mouth, face etc. when just standing still? Same with other NPCs? Or do they take on bethesda death stares?

I think every npc moves their eyes, head and lips, and most look at you when you are close to them. Some "waiting for you to talk to me" npcs tend to stare a bit though

Aloy also has context sensitive idle animations (if shes hurt, if its raining, if there's a sandstorm and so on).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/vfx/cg-actors-logan-never-knew-149013.html
I feel that the next generation could get very close

Main differences / advantages for the Logan head:
- All the surface detail is probably geometry, achieved with tessellation and displacement. This would be even more evident in close-ups, where a game character would have very smooth facial features and the high frequency details (skin pores, wrinkles etc) are recreated with normal maps only.
-Hair and fur are actual individual strands in geometry, instead of alpha mapped planes and such.
- Everything is raytraced: lighting, shadow, shading - so everything will look more realistic. One very obvious example is how the ingame eyes lack the refraction of the cornea and thus they look very different from a real eye:

The pupil is actually deeper inside behind the lens, but the strong refraction makes it look like it's closer to the surface.

So, basically, the CGI head is rendered with methods that closely simulate the real world physics, whereas the ingame renders are using more or less rough approximations, like screen space shading, cube map reflections, normal maps, shadow buffers etc. The difference between the computational requirements is several orders of magnitude.

This means that I don't really expect the next console generation's hardware to close the gap and make the move to doing things "right". There is indeed a lot of room for more advanced approximations that could get even closer to the CGI results, but I don't really expect to see real hair strands for the hair, fur, eyebrows, eyelashes; or proper raytraced refractions and SSS.

 

[Clukos]

A small update on Aloy, I think she might be the most detailed and well balanced mc model I've seen during gameplay. Nate is nice and all but he usually lacks this nice soft self-shadowing that is at all times present for Aloy(except maybe in edge cases that I might have not witnessed yet). At first i thought self-shadowing might have a very aggressive lod to it but it seems like that's not the case, I haven't been able to completely remove it no matter how far away i pull the camera, one example:

Closeup

As far away as I can drag the camera in this instance

Some gameplay captures

https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170o0ju9.jpg
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170lnjuo.jpg

Closest I can get with photomode to her nose/eyes

Her hands

You can notice the slight vascularity in her arms

https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170ulka7.jpg

3D belly button... with self shadowing

Skin detail closeup

misc: Her shadow is always extremely detailed but slightly soft, Aloy is different than the rest (except when in cutscenes)
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170p4kwu.jpg

I have a theory but it's better to wait for Guerrilla to detail what they are doing with shadows. Overall, that's a pretty damn good effort I'd say, especially so on a limited resource system that is a console. I'd like for her pupil to dilate during gameplay and cutscenes, that'd be a nice detail, don't know if that's an easy task.

 

[Benetanegia]

- Everything is raytraced: lighting, shadow, shading - so everything will look more realistic. One very obvious example is how the ingame eyes lack the refraction of the cornea and thus they look very different from a real eye:

The pupil is actually deeper inside behind the lens, but the strong refraction makes it look like it's closer to the surface.

In Paragon they are already tackling that problem with eye reflection. They also do amazing things with the hair IMO, so I don't think we're so far out as you mention, even if the "problems" are solved with tricks instead of actual 100% physically accurate methods.

 

[ProspectorPete]

....

Her belly button looks kind of low poly and a bit out of place compared to the rest; most other parts of the character look great in closeup and could be mistaken for (artistic) photorealism. The character model is still among the best, but the abdomen could be better.

 

[ultragpu]

A small update on Aloy, I think she might be the most detailed and well balanced mc model I've seen during gameplay. Nate is nice and all but he usually lacks this nice soft self-shadowing that is at all times present for Aloy(except maybe in edge cases that I might have not witnessed yet). At first i thought self-shadowing might have a very aggressive lod to it but it seems like that's not the case, I haven't been able to completely remove it no matter how far away i pull the camera, one example:

Decima probably has more selfshadow casting light sources specific to Aloy than UC4, it's puzzling how they managed to do that over a non open world game . Also not sure if Area light is present here, one would think something like that used for a linear game such as Shadowfall would be absent here.

 

[chris1515]

A small update on Aloy, I think she might be the most detailed and well balanced mc model I've seen during gameplay. Nate is nice and all but he usually lacks this nice soft self-shadowing that is at all times present for Aloy(except maybe in edge cases that I might have not witnessed yet). At first i thought self-shadowing might have a very aggressive lod to it but it seems like that's not the case, I haven't been able to completely remove it no matter how far away i pull the camera, one example:

Closeup

As far away as I can drag the camera in this instance

Some gameplay captures

https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170o0ju9.jpg
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170lnjuo.jpg

Closest I can get with photomode to her nose/eyes

Her hands

You can notice the slight vascularity in her arms

https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170ulka7.jpg

3D belly button... with self shadowing

Skin detail closeup

misc: Her shadow is always extremely detailed but slightly soft, Aloy is different than the rest (except when in cutscenes)
https://abload.de/img/horizonzerodawn_20170p4kwu.jpg

I have a theory but it's better to wait for Guerrilla to detail what they are doing with shadows. Overall, that's a pretty damn good effort I'd say, especially so on a limited resource system that is a console. I'd like for her iris to dilate during gameplay and cutscenes, that'd be a nice detail, don't know if that's an easy task.

Nathan Drake pupil
http://gifyu.com/images/DrakeEyes.gif

I think it is possible

 

[Dictator]

Yeah I think one of the first games with pupil dilation was Crysis 3? Or TLOU maybe?
Looks great when it does show up. Also eye / corne refraction and parllaxing has been around for a good while IIRC.