ATI Mojo Day report
- Thread starter DemoCoder
- Start date
Humus said:
Yes, I guess the wrong lighting is what I really reject to.
On a sidenote it's almost as everybody just loves those quick n' dirty per-pixel lightning hacks where every damn pixel is overly shiny. Look at Doom III instead: Here the lightning is much more refined and lose to reality. My point remain that the artwork is still crucial for it to work.
JF_Aidan_Pryde
Regular
This basically goes against everything Derek Smart has been saying. I wonder if he got a free card. 
LeStoffer,
Technically it sucks. I was just talking about it looking good. As in I saw something and I liked what I saw. The reaons people go for the overly shiney pixels is because they some how corellate that with good graphics. That's fine, that's their take. I guess most people are crows when it comes to graphics.
Technically it sucks. I was just talking about it looking good. As in I saw something and I liked what I saw. The reaons people go for the overly shiney pixels is because they some how corellate that with good graphics. That's fine, that's their take. I guess most people are crows when it comes to graphics.
/me acts like a stick in the mud
I hate shiny graphics. I hate specular highlights....
-Colourless
I hate shiny graphics. I hate specular highlights....
-Colourless
Overdone?!
I can't name even ONE game that has specular highlights in it.
I'd say that's the stupidest thing I ever heard but then you'll just come slapping me with a list that's as long as your arm so that would be ungood.
So let's hear it. Name all those overdone titles, please...
*G*
I can't name even ONE game that has specular highlights in it.
I'd say that's the stupidest thing I ever heard but then you'll just come slapping me with a list that's as long as your arm so that would be ungood.
So let's hear it. Name all those overdone titles, please...
*G*
Shiny graphics is nice when applied properly. Specular highlights on a characters skin usually doesn't look very good, it often gives a plastic look. If the character is maybe some kind of water creature some specular highlights can add a "wet" look on it if done properly.
Speculars are an interesting matter...
Theoretically they're just a hack and blurred / bumped HDRI reflections should be used instead.
Practically, they work pretty well but need to be carefully adjusted with parameters like size, strength and color. Also, most of these parameters should change depending on the surface's angle to the camera.
You definitely need speculars for most surfaces. Only totally diffuse surfaces don't need them, but from human skin through plastic to wood you really have to use speculars. Totally reflective materials would require them as well if the reflection maps aren't HDRI and constantly updated.
The problems with most of today's speculars in games are:
- speculars are too strong
- speculars are too large
- speculars are always white
These could be corrected with today's tools, it only requires a bit of finetuning from the artists. The problems might be that game artists aren't used to creating photorealistic shaders (they're stuck with one color map) or that they aren't given tools to adjust the content and speculars are hard-coded by the programmers.
However the camera/surface angle-based changes would surely require a little bit more complex shaders - and the speculars themselves could look a bit nicer, I guess the current algorythms aren't on par with Renderman
Theoretically they're just a hack and blurred / bumped HDRI reflections should be used instead.
Practically, they work pretty well but need to be carefully adjusted with parameters like size, strength and color. Also, most of these parameters should change depending on the surface's angle to the camera.
You definitely need speculars for most surfaces. Only totally diffuse surfaces don't need them, but from human skin through plastic to wood you really have to use speculars. Totally reflective materials would require them as well if the reflection maps aren't HDRI and constantly updated.
The problems with most of today's speculars in games are:
- speculars are too strong
- speculars are too large
- speculars are always white
These could be corrected with today's tools, it only requires a bit of finetuning from the artists. The problems might be that game artists aren't used to creating photorealistic shaders (they're stuck with one color map) or that they aren't given tools to adjust the content and speculars are hard-coded by the programmers.
However the camera/surface angle-based changes would surely require a little bit more complex shaders - and the speculars themselves could look a bit nicer, I guess the current algorythms aren't on par with Renderman
Laa-Yosh said:However the camera/surface angle-based changes would surely require a little bit more complex shaders - and the speculars themselves could look a bit nicer, I guess the current algorythms aren't on par with Renderman
Just as a quick note, in nVidia's Cg demos are a couple that include fresnel-based reflection. They run in hardware on a GeForce4.
Actually, here's the code that is used for the fresnel reflection:
Code:
// compute a per-vertex fresnel term F:
// f ~= fzero + (1-fzero) (1-(EdotN))^5
float edotn = abs(dot(-eyeVec, normal));
OUT.Color.w = FresnelConstants.x + (1.0-FresnelConstants.x) * pow(1.0-edotn, 5);
// compute per-vertex specular contribution
OUT.Specular.xyz = FresnelConstants.z * pow(dot(reflection, lightVec), FresnelConstants.y) * LightColor.xyz;It's obviously not completely accurate (It uses two terms in a power series expansion for the fresnel effect..), though I'm sure the NV30 will be able to do the real thing...
/me points to tenebrae.
The stencil shadows = Cool
The over use of specular highlights = Uncool
Anyway, I pretty much agree with everything that Laa-Yosh has said. Too large, too strong, too white.
The 'overuse' of Specular highlights/reflections sort of started with EMBM, and now with DOT3 things haven't changed much.
However things will improve. It is very much like the Quake2 Colourled Light syndrome. Initially it was overused, and eventually the dev's worked out that things really do look best with subtle use of colourled lights. Same thing will occur with Specular Highlights too.
-Colourless
The stencil shadows = Cool
The over use of specular highlights = Uncool
Anyway, I pretty much agree with everything that Laa-Yosh has said. Too large, too strong, too white.
The 'overuse' of Specular highlights/reflections sort of started with EMBM, and now with DOT3 things haven't changed much.
However things will improve. It is very much like the Quake2 Colourled Light syndrome. Initially it was overused, and eventually the dev's worked out that things really do look best with subtle use of colourled lights. Same thing will occur with Specular Highlights too.
-Colourless
Laa-Yosh, you're the man!
I think that anybody who have tried to make a material in 3d Studio Max (or any other 3d program) know how crucial the tweeking for specular highlights is to get the right feeling for a given material (glass, metal, rubber, wood, stone, plastic, skin etc.).
I guess something like RenderMonkey would be perfect to make a library for a large number of shaders needed to render the different materials known from real life. I can't wait the play around with it! 8)
I think that anybody who have tried to make a material in 3d Studio Max (or any other 3d program) know how crucial the tweeking for specular highlights is to get the right feeling for a given material (glass, metal, rubber, wood, stone, plastic, skin etc.).
I guess something like RenderMonkey would be perfect to make a library for a large number of shaders needed to render the different materials known from real life. I can't wait the play around with it! 8)
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