Jak & Daxter 2 - high quality screens

Yeah. The cool thing about LOD in J&D as well as in R&C is not the LOD per se, but how it works. Procedurally. It's quite impressive to see 3D objects gently expand and gain more detail while you get closer.
 
It's quite impressive to see 3D objects gently expand and gain more detail while you get closer.
And it's even more impressive that if you don't look for it, you'll probably never notice it. J&D had the best LOD implementation I've ever seen.
 
Folken, what's wrong with the LOD in R&C? Upon playing both games, I didn't really notice much different, other then that they both deliver an insane drawdistance, with no pop-ups what so ever...? :?
 
It's a whole lot easier to LOD more or less generic landscape/terrain as opposed to a say - skyscraper filled city. (actually I don't think there has been anything even resembling a general approach invented for the latter as of yet).

At any rate, J&D's lod system is remarkably simple - much more so then I thought, and seems to me like it needs a lot of artists hand-input to get good looking results.
Using the engine alone wouldn't necesserily mean LOD system is even being used (or used well).
 
zidane1strife said:
Amazing 60fps progressive with models up to 10-15K polys... People don't see the fact that many platformers even in other platforms run at half that speed, and don't look significantly better... If they ran at 30fps they could get 20-30K models and twice the texture detail...

Anyways if such polycounts improvements apply for the rest of the game it would seem they're getting about 2.5X the performance of their last game... I'll go read the interview now...

10-15 k models are for the RT cutscenes
and for phil no bump mapping in jak2
 
Tiberius said:
zidane1strife said:
Amazing 60fps progressive with models up to 10-15K polys... People don't see the fact that many platformers even in other platforms run at half that speed, and don't look significantly better... If they ran at 30fps they could get 20-30K models and twice the texture detail...

Anyways if such polycounts improvements apply for the rest of the game it would seem they're getting about 2.5X the performance of their last game... I'll go read the interview now...

10-15 k models are for the RT cutscenes
and for phil no bump mapping in jak2


and you are..........

anyway :LOL: ... as long as they keep progressive scan i'll be happy... at the end of the day at the size the characters are most of the time, those 15000 polygons (or less, whatever) will not really be seen so..... at least with pro-scan u get to see more of it, it's more like a shortcut to make the game look really good... :LOL:
 
10-15 k models are for the RT cutscenes
and for phil no bump mapping in jak2

Is this confirmed in any way? Playing part 1, I would think that the characters in cutscenes are no different than the ones being used in-game...
Anyway, it should be interesting to compare these figures to the ones being used in the first part. :)
 
10-15 k models are for the RT cutscenes
I think this is correct. You can tell from those screens that the characters ingame are less detailed than those in the cut scenes. However, ingame characters are a lot smaller too, because they rarely get close to the camera.
 
Phil said:
10-15 k models are for the RT cutscenes
and for phil no bump mapping in jak2

Is this confirmed in any way? Playing part 1, I would think that the characters in cutscenes are no different than the ones being used in-game...
Anyway, it should be interesting to compare these figures to the ones being used in the first part. :)

no bump confirmed on a french forum (by Didier Malenfant ,coder at ND )
and character are 10-15k in cutscene only.(Bump maybe in their next game)
 
Have Didier said what exactly have they improved in their engine? They mentioned a better lighting, what is improved in that regard?
 
Weren't the last games ingame models 6k polys? or something like that.

If so I'd say the 10K figure must be for high detail ingame(since it looks better than the previous one.), and the 15K must be for cutscenes... or maybe not...
 
Marc :

nothing technical from this forum (yet).

OT :

a job proposal a ND seams to hint that maybe they are preparing something relative to a NextGen demo (?) :

Character Modeler/Rigger:

Naughty Dog, Inc. is looking for a fulltime character modeler/rigger with an EXTENSIVE professional history with Maya. This individual will be required to: model 50,000 to 100,000 polygon characters from character designs ranging from iconic cartoon styles to realistic human characters, rig a wide range complicated kinematics structures using lattices, deformers and morph targets, come up with innovative texture solutions and shaders based on an understanding of how high-end 3D graphics cards work. The position also requires a thorough understanding of human anatomy, specifically facial and anatomical muscle and bone structures. Candidates should expect to take a test in Maya. Submitted reels and portfolios should include examples of professional work as well as turntables of high poly models. Please include an exact breakdown of your specific contribution to the material submitted along with resume featuring references.
 
Holy crap, just looking at that job request makes you realize how difficult development for future consoles can be. They need a highly artistic person that undestands the inner workings of 3D hardware, something that artistic persons usually don't even want to think about.
 
They need a highly artistic person that undestands the inner workings of 3D hardware, something that artistic persons usually don't even want to think about.

Actually I know quite a few who'd fit that role (yours truly included)... They're alot more common than you realize. However the due to the rather hectic schedule of production these days and the rapidly increasing demandso on art assets newer games are placing on studios, many can often be a bit lax on their hiring requirements in order to get people in, filling positions, and cranking out content.

Those requirements by the way, aren't really that stringent when you consider that students coming out of a decent CG program at an art institute or university pretty much fill most of those requirements (with the possible exception of the experience part)...
 
more like ps2...

I dont think that's next gen... Modelling 50-100k faces in Maya before reducing to 10-15k for real time via some fixed subdivision surface scheme seems pretty achievable - especially for cutting edge tech from ND programmers..

I was looking at the NV Dawn demos the other day - especially the wireframe versions, and it struck me that it would be possible to implement them on the PS2, by relying on the fact that due to the incredibly fine mesh, vertex shaded simple polys would probally suffice for all apart from the real close facial zooms...
( Before everyone jumps in about picture quality - this is just an observation about how things seem to be approaching renderman styles, with individual polys almost at the single pixel sizes already... )
 
I dont think that's next gen... Modelling 50-100k faces in Maya before reducing to 10-15k for real time via some fixed subdivision surface scheme seems pretty achievable - especially for cutting edge tech from ND programmers...
But that's going exact opposite way of how it's Normally done...???
From what I know about modelling with various subdivision tools, the artists work on lower poly model version majority of the time, only checking the results in full subdivision/high poly (Not unlike modelling with various high order surfaces actually).
I don't exactly recall even highend CG production artists to hand-model on that level of detail, let alone games of current gen.
 
old fashioned way...

If you look at the normal mapping methods, then the hi-poly modelling followed by geometry reduction is also a valid method. ( and, as a programmer I tend to sometimes have a baseline expectation in terms of artists and polycounts.... )
The use of subdiv surfaces in modelling packages is sometimes done in your manner more to allow realtime edit & preview on slow workstations rather than due to any underlying drive for efficiency. Also I'd guess that any implementation of basic HOS on PS2 would be unlikely to map exactly to the Maya/3DSmax methods in use..
 
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