article on wsj on nalu and ruby

Probably, the mods haven't come in and told any of us off yet.

 

Yeah this is true, but I think I'd rather have something more realistic... I liked the pirate ship demo the most, although I wish they had a battle with two.

 

the cartoonish demo, with the HDR stuff and FP16 textures was pretty nice
too..

But chicks in demos is nothing strange, i mean people put chicks on everything to sell it..
Cars on display does sometime have some sort of female parked on the
hood, sometimes lightly dressed and with a nice smile saying "i would like you
more if you owned this car"

they have females in all sorts of crazy outfits on game conventions and whatnot...

even things targeted at women have hot chicks on it, magazines comercials and whatnot...

I think there might be some sort of underlying mental process that is going
"if i buy this card, that mermaid might sleep with me"
or for women:
"If i buy this product, i might look like that"
Women also want to look good, not just cause of the attraction value, their
just brought up with the impression that they are supposed to look good.

has to be some reason it sells, if it didnt they would put other things on
stuff to sell them, like cheese, or soda..

 

Well that + the relevant GDC presentation are pretty big clues as to what we can expect from one of the other X800 demos. Nice.

They should try and create a demo featuring a photorealistic reproduction of deranged astronomer Patrick Moore, what with his crazy white hair, displacement map-tastic wrinkles and grubby old monocle. Far more impressive than underwater bimbos.

MuFu.

 

P.S. He could be playing the xylophone. That's it - Humus get to work!

 

So, that means there's girls wrestling in that mud, right?

 

LOL well yea sure why not, ATi and nVidia chicks mudd wrestling. Now that is a worthwhile project.

Yes this thread can sink lower.

 

I don't think so, not quite.

Humans are, by far, the hardest thing to simulate. Very subtle effects can destroy the illusion totally. So, once the capacity to render a good-looking human is there, the choice to make it female is obvious: in our culture, the female form is deemed more pleasing to look at.

 

Chalnoth do you have any sense of humor at all? Have you tried simulating a sense of humor?

 

well that goes for living things in general, like animals and stuff..

the reason this doesnt apply for the Jurassic park dinosaurs is cause our
brains doesnt have their "motion pattern" stored, we havent seen them move
so it cant look wrong..

Even if you create a totally convincing human in 3d, what will give it away is
the motion, the brain will spot that, and it will just feel odd and unreal..
unless that is somehow overcome with really advanced motion captures
and stuff like that..

The main issue is the movements i think, with CGI you can prolly make stills
of a human that can fool people.. dunno...

EDIT
Carmack mentioned this too about doom3, since they can render pretty realistic humans, and the more it starts to look like the real deal the brain
acctually starts to recognize it, the wierder the movements will seem..
That is one of the reasons to why there will be so few humans in the game.
zombies, monsters and whathave you doesnt, like dinosaurs, have a "proper movement pattern" that we can react on..

 

It's another reason to make Nalu a mermaid. It means that the effects arn't going to be ruined by any unrealistic human movement, because she's not walking or moving like we expect people to anyway (being a mermaid). Also the water gives the opportunity to showcase the hair, which is really the big wow factor of the demo.

 

There's only one I know of way to do convincing human motion.
Motion capture.

 

the alternative is to play games for such a large amount of time that the game animations become your brains reference movement pattern..

 

Well, I guess I'll have to update my humor simulation algorithm. This one doesn't appear to be working.

 

It depends. When you are talking about movies or animation, sometimes you have to use some artistic licence to create a movement that convinces the audience, even if it's not completely correct. That's what animators do when (for instance) a character moves backwards for a moment before they launch themselves forwards. It's one of the reasons many game developers dallied with motion capture in the 90's and then abandoned it in favour of using traditional animation skills, or used those skills to touch up the motion capture.

For instance look at what Bruce Lee did in his early films. When they tried to film real martial arts moves, they found it looked too quick and indistinct on film. They had to slow all the moves down in order to convince the audience they were seeing real combat. The movements on film were more convincing, but not what happens in the real world.

 

I like to swim frequently, so I would imagine I would have a similar aversion to inaccurate swimming motion (at least in the arms). I haven't seen enough of the Nalu demo to pass judgement on the swimming.

But facial expressions are a constant, and errors in facial expressions are much more noticeable than errors in movement (we, as humans, really concentrate on other peoples' faces).

Anyway, I look forward to finding out exactly what sorts of shaders went into the demo. Knowledge on shader lengths for each portion would really give a better idea of how the Nalu demo could translate into a real game.

 

Side comment on this: I think I run a hell of a lot faster (when sprinting) than most any movie actor I've seen. And I'm pretty out of shape.

 

im curious if the hair is moved in realtime, that would be with VS if it is wouldnt it?
Or if the entire thing is a preanimation just playing back..

would be neat if you could move her around in the demo and the hair would
follow that motion..

 

I agree... My point is that it's really hard to make a convincing human motion from scratch. Usually it requires lots of observation, so much that it's almost a kind of "humanly done motion capture"...

IMHO, when it comes to convincing human motion, the role of the animator is more the one of a motion specialist... It's not to downplay their role, it's obviously extremely important, it's just that when the setup is well done, it's a lot easier to just play - and eventually fix - than to create a movement from scratch... Of course there are exceptions, but they're like flying fishes: they're not the majority of the kind...

 

I place my bets on Ruby... She should easily be able to kick Dawn or Nalu's ass. Sorry for sinking the thread a little more but I couldn't resist.