Doom 3 observations
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Kick me if you want, but from a distance the Doom3 models look better.
20.000 polygons are only enough to get some smooth, curved siluettes, but you cannot really put in the fine details like wrinkles, muscles, tendons, and such. Also vertex lighting will only get you some ugly speculars and shading because of the triangle-based interpolation. Even DOA3 suffers a lot from this, too.
I believe that the GC could do Dot3 bump mapping on those characters - so theoratically it's possible to create character models with normal maps from high polygon detailed surfaces... that would look awesome.
20.000 polygons are only enough to get some smooth, curved siluettes, but you cannot really put in the fine details like wrinkles, muscles, tendons, and such. Also vertex lighting will only get you some ugly speculars and shading because of the triangle-based interpolation. Even DOA3 suffers a lot from this, too.
I believe that the GC could do Dot3 bump mapping on those characters - so theoratically it's possible to create character models with normal maps from high polygon detailed surfaces... that would look awesome.
Hey, anyone else notice, if you shot the zombie from behind, they still fall backward (violently as well), face up, instead of fall forward and face down on the floor. Do you think they will add that animation in ? All those per polygon detection will be useless if the fall animation is always the same.
Also it seems the monster don't blow up into pieces this time around, it would be cool if you can shot them with an anchor of some sort and drag them around
Also I hope, they give slightly differing textures for each of the same monster. Things looking like twin is weird.
I still do hope they add an option for soft shadow. Regardless of how hard it is to implement. I still think Carmack should have an option for shadow map as well. Everything is per pixel, why not the shadow ?
Also it seems the monster don't blow up into pieces this time around, it would be cool if you can shot them with an anchor of some sort and drag them around
Also I hope, they give slightly differing textures for each of the same monster. Things looking like twin is weird.
I still do hope they add an option for soft shadow. Regardless of how hard it is to implement. I still think Carmack should have an option for shadow map as well. Everything is per pixel, why not the shadow ?
"it would be cool if you can shot them with an anchor of some sort and drag them around "
from the alpha, it seems as though they only implemented model physics to specific things... the only zombie that seemed to react in such a way were the ones designed to fall down stairs when they're killed.. from there you can drag him around and such, kick him and have him roll over, bump into boxes, etc... heh..
hopefully they do implement actual physics when they all die, rather than just a cookie cutter death animation.. kinda pointless to bother with any sort of advanced physics engine, if it's only used in specific scripted/pre-planned spots..
from the alpha, it seems as though they only implemented model physics to specific things... the only zombie that seemed to react in such a way were the ones designed to fall down stairs when they're killed.. from there you can drag him around and such, kick him and have him roll over, bump into boxes, etc... heh..
hopefully they do implement actual physics when they all die, rather than just a cookie cutter death animation.. kinda pointless to bother with any sort of advanced physics engine, if it's only used in specific scripted/pre-planned spots..
Laa-Yosh:
> Kick me if you want, but from a distance the Doom3 models look better.
I think it depends on the models. There are certainly models in either game that look better than other. Other than that Doom 3 benifits from an arguably superior and undeniably more vivid lighting model. The same goes for shadows. The moving lights and shadows really makes everything more dramatic, as does the large contrast between darkness and light. In RE the lighting is less accenuated which removes some of the wow factor. I know you're an artist and as such is less likely to fall for cheap tricks but you're also human The consistent lighting and shadowing in the entire Doom gameworld due to the entirely realtime gfx also plays in Dooms favor. The liberal use of specular highlights is generally also a crowd pleaser.
The relatively high complexity of the RE models mean that they look good both from afar and up close. While they, to some extent, lose the advantage of smooth edges when you get at a certain distance they still maintain a high degree of polygonal detail while a lot of the Doom 3 models shown so far are a little plain. Up close you can see pores, wrinkles, veins etc. on the Doom 3 characters but they also get visibly blocky. Not so in RE.
Mostly I think it's a matter of art direction. Which you like more. The characters in RE are a bit more stylized and while the animation is slightly stiffer than in Doom 3 it's also more over-the-top.
> Also vertex lighting will only get you some ugly speculars and shading
> because of the triangle-based interpolation.
I haven't actually played RE Remake but from pictures and video the lighting looks per-pixel to me.
It would be nice to have some framebuffer grabs to compare with. The video captures from RE make it hard to compare finer details. The tearing from field rendering doesn't help either.
V3:
> Do you think they will add that animation in ?
No idea but you have to consider that the E3 build isn't much of a game yet. I mean you can walk straight up to some characters and they will just stand there doing nothing. If you shoot them from a certain distance they won't react either. OTOH if you go down certain specific paths it seems like you will have every monster in that level on your back.
> Kick me if you want, but from a distance the Doom3 models look better.
I think it depends on the models. There are certainly models in either game that look better than other. Other than that Doom 3 benifits from an arguably superior and undeniably more vivid lighting model. The same goes for shadows. The moving lights and shadows really makes everything more dramatic, as does the large contrast between darkness and light. In RE the lighting is less accenuated which removes some of the wow factor. I know you're an artist and as such is less likely to fall for cheap tricks but you're also human
The consistent lighting and shadowing in the entire Doom gameworld due to the entirely realtime gfx also plays in Dooms favor. The liberal use of specular highlights is generally also a crowd pleaser.The relatively high complexity of the RE models mean that they look good both from afar and up close. While they, to some extent, lose the advantage of smooth edges when you get at a certain distance they still maintain a high degree of polygonal detail while a lot of the Doom 3 models shown so far are a little plain. Up close you can see pores, wrinkles, veins etc. on the Doom 3 characters but they also get visibly blocky. Not so in RE.
Mostly I think it's a matter of art direction. Which you like more. The characters in RE are a bit more stylized and while the animation is slightly stiffer than in Doom 3 it's also more over-the-top.
> Also vertex lighting will only get you some ugly speculars and shading
> because of the triangle-based interpolation.
I haven't actually played RE Remake but from pictures and video the lighting looks per-pixel to me.
It would be nice to have some framebuffer grabs to compare with. The video captures from RE make it hard to compare finer details. The tearing from field rendering doesn't help either.
V3:
> Do you think they will add that animation in ?
No idea but you have to consider that the E3 build isn't much of a game yet. I mean you can walk straight up to some characters and they will just stand there doing nothing. If you shoot them from a certain distance they won't react either. OTOH if you go down certain specific paths it seems like you will have every monster in that level on your back.
G
Guest
Guest
Is Silent Hill 3 using/can PS2 do pixel lighting?
G
Guest
Guest
So SH3 and future PS2 games are limited to vertex lighting?
I think the most impressive thing about DOOM3 is the unified lighting model. It doesn't seem like such a big thing when you hear about it, but it is; it really increases the level of immersion in the game.
Interestingly, whenever I focus on one little detail of DOOM3, like how the low poly shadows are ugly on top of the awesome bumpmapping, or how the low polycount becomes apparent in cutscenes, or the crappiness of having totally hard shadows, then it seems rather unimpressive. But, focusing on the overall impression that the game gave me, it becomes REALLY impressive. The difference is immersion.
With unified lighting, there is no difference in the lighting of the backgrounds and characters. You feel like everything is a part of the same game world. Going back to play Halo, DoA3, or UT2003, they all look like cartoons superimposed on a game board. In any non-DOOM3 game, it is easy to tell that the backgrounds have higher quality prebaked lighting, while characters and monsters have much lower quality lighting. Even in UT2003 where some of the lights cast fancy patterns on your characters, terrain casts shadows on you but you don't cast shadows on terrain. You don't really feel like part of a gameworld, you're more like a game piece moving on a game board. (With that in mind, Resident Evil's approach can be appreciated; since most games make it obvious that the characters are different from the background, why not prerender the backgrounds, giving yourself a massive advantage in image quality?)
In DOOM3, the unified lighting makes you and your enemies part of the gameworld. Assuming that the full version will have much better physics, the physics will also lend greatly to immersion. Unified lighting is not at all impressive in screenshots, but it really gave me a great impression ingame. As great as games like Silent Hill 3, Resident Evil, or even Unreal 2 can look, they don't have unified lighting, so they will lack that feeling of immersion that I got from DOOM3.
Doom3 and other unified lighting games cannot be evaluated in pieces (low polycount, ugly shadowing artifacts, ugly hard shadows); they have to be taken as a whole for their amazing immersive effect to show through.
Interestingly, whenever I focus on one little detail of DOOM3, like how the low poly shadows are ugly on top of the awesome bumpmapping, or how the low polycount becomes apparent in cutscenes, or the crappiness of having totally hard shadows, then it seems rather unimpressive. But, focusing on the overall impression that the game gave me, it becomes REALLY impressive. The difference is immersion.
With unified lighting, there is no difference in the lighting of the backgrounds and characters. You feel like everything is a part of the same game world. Going back to play Halo, DoA3, or UT2003, they all look like cartoons superimposed on a game board. In any non-DOOM3 game, it is easy to tell that the backgrounds have higher quality prebaked lighting, while characters and monsters have much lower quality lighting. Even in UT2003 where some of the lights cast fancy patterns on your characters, terrain casts shadows on you but you don't cast shadows on terrain. You don't really feel like part of a gameworld, you're more like a game piece moving on a game board. (With that in mind, Resident Evil's approach can be appreciated; since most games make it obvious that the characters are different from the background, why not prerender the backgrounds, giving yourself a massive advantage in image quality?)
In DOOM3, the unified lighting makes you and your enemies part of the gameworld. Assuming that the full version will have much better physics, the physics will also lend greatly to immersion. Unified lighting is not at all impressive in screenshots, but it really gave me a great impression ingame. As great as games like Silent Hill 3, Resident Evil, or even Unreal 2 can look, they don't have unified lighting, so they will lack that feeling of immersion that I got from DOOM3.
Doom3 and other unified lighting games cannot be evaluated in pieces (low polycount, ugly shadowing artifacts, ugly hard shadows); they have to be taken as a whole for their amazing immersive effect to show through.
marconelly!
Veteran
DOT3 is one of the pixel operations that PS2 does not support natively. However, there are others that it can easily do. It would be perfectly possible to have per pixel lighting on PS2 in the sense of blending the light texture over the base texture, like Silent Hill games do. Or so I've been told by people who make games for PS2.
Does the SH3 use pixel lighting - I don't know, but the light circle from the flashlight looks hell of a lot smoother this time around than it was in SH2, from the videos I'm looking at.
Actually, from what I've seen, lighting in SH3 is unified in the sense that all the shadows work as a part of one scene. Every object in the scene casts dynamic shadow on everything else.
randycat99
Veteran
Seems like the rabid Xbox fan (not all Xbox users, just the rabid ones ) revel at taking the latest buzzword and trumpeting it as the "can't live without" feature when they know the other consoles don't have an exact analogy. Basically, you got DOT3, per-pixel lighting, pixel shading, unified lighting... Look how chap suddenly has an incredible hard-on over pixel lighting now that someone has told them that another console can only do vertex lighting. Seriously, can people be any more immature? Aren't Xbox users supposed to be statistically older on average than the PS2 user? Where's the maturity? [steps off soapbox]
) revel at taking the latest buzzword and trumpeting it as the "can't live without" feature when they know the other consoles don't have an exact analogy. Basically, you got DOT3, per-pixel lighting, pixel shading, unified lighting... Look how chap suddenly has an incredible hard-on over pixel lighting now that someone has told them that another console can only do vertex lighting. Seriously, can people be any more immature? Aren't Xbox users supposed to be statistically older on average than the PS2 user? Where's the maturity? [steps off soapbox]Logan Leonhart
Newcomer
per-pixel lightning or not, SH3 sports some incredible visuals and high poligon character, not to mention the great lightning, textures and image quality.
randycat99
Veteran
...and really, that's what should matter in the end- the end result.
...but then the rabid Xbox fan will counter that those effects are faked- not real. As if it is only real if it is done as it is on the Xbox...
...then when that isn't good enough, they say PS2 is "holding up" the industry and is evil for "killing" the DC... Everything bad that happens comes from the PS2, evidently. As easy and lickety split GC/Xbox is to program, you'd think it would be a cinch to reverse engineer any PS2 game by its features, slap it together in easy Xbox code, click a few video features "on", and make consistently great ports to Xbox...and when that doesn't happen, it's the PS2's fault, of course.
It never ends... You'd think there must truly be nothing to savor games-wise on the other consoles to keep their minds off of what PS2 is doing wrong now. The PS2 people are either too busy playing a ton of games or defending the neverending onslaught of reasons PS2 suxors on the Internet.
...but then the rabid Xbox fan will counter that those effects are faked- not real. As if it is only real if it is done as it is on the Xbox...
...then when that isn't good enough, they say PS2 is "holding up" the industry and is evil for "killing" the DC... Everything bad that happens comes from the PS2, evidently. As easy and lickety split GC/Xbox is to program, you'd think it would be a cinch to reverse engineer any PS2 game by its features, slap it together in easy Xbox code, click a few video features "on", and make consistently great ports to Xbox...and when that doesn't happen, it's the PS2's fault, of course.
It never ends... You'd think there must truly be nothing to savor games-wise on the other consoles to keep their minds off of what PS2 is doing wrong now. The PS2 people are either too busy playing a ton of games or defending the neverending onslaught of reasons PS2 suxors on the Internet.
