I work a LOT
also have domestic stuff going on, both good and bad.
Short stuff about this Aki vs Aloi image:
- Aki is subdivs tesselated to subpixel polygons (subdivision surface, not NURBS), Aloi is fixed poly model
- Aki uses displacement, Aloi is just normal map
- Aki has geo eyebrows and eyelashes, Aloi has texture eyebrow and alpha mapped poly strip for eyelashes
- Aki and Aloi are both fake reflections, but Aki is per shot, Aloi is generic for the environment
- Aki uses geo hair, Aloi uses alpha mapped poly strips
- Aki uses simple shaders, Aloi uses realtime translucency approximation
See, there was no SSS shader in 2001, FFTSW used a pretty aged version of Pixar's Renderman compared to what's possible today. No GI or raytraced shadows / anything either, so lots of hand tweaked spotlights and shadow maps.
But PRMan was able to push a LOT of geometry and use really high res textures. The team also had some of the most talented character artists of the time, and those were quite a few compared to nowadays.
Today, an offline rendered human face can utilize a breath of techniques that are pretty much impossible for a realtime game. However both geo and texture detail can be reasonably high in games, and that allows for the artistry to come through.
The comparison is also quite impressive, with enough render times, the PS4 engine could produce visuals at the level of that 2001 movie.
BTW feel free to PM me, I have little time to just browse around
