Nah, watching the video again i think its just the green hue IMO.
Metal Gear Solid 4 gameplay trailer @ TGS
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Nah, watching the video again i think its just the green hue IMO.
Probably. The videos both seem around the same quality I must admit. But even there there are some occasions where lighting seems lacking compaed to the previous trailer
I really prefer the lighting in the new trailer, it think it looks more natural. Beside's we have all gotten used to seeing MGS4 with that hue and now its gone it just looks weird, oh well i guess we'll get used to it.
Yeah, IMHO Snake's face has a lot of painted shadows in the color texture, taking the looks back to previous gen. It allows them to use a single point light, with shadows, and a generic ambient light that effects everything at a constant value. It's a performance tradeoff, but it'll look a bit flat if your object is completely shadowed from your only light source as you'll loose your normal mapping without a point light and it will also weaken the contrast of the image.
At least that's my idea, now, look at the banding on the armor on his shoulders and arms in this shot:
http://images.playsyde.com/gallery/public/4361/899_0001.jpg
Either their shaders are running at a terribly low precision, or the banding is a result of compressed textures - which means there's shading detail painted into it.
It's also quite sure that Snake no longer has 60.000 polygons in his hair or mustache, not even in his entire body.
I'm not saying that it's a bad looking game, but it really looks like they're scaling it back a little.
come on, Laa-Yosh, it's a daytime outdoors scene, how many light sources do you expect to see there? as re the ambient light, they may just as well have ambient occlusion maps in there - one can't tell that from that single shot.
dunno about the banding (i find it rather unlikely that they may have pre-baked any shading in there - it may be some lower precision intermediate step somewhere) but one thing i really find strange in there is the realtive texture area distrubition over the model: though the upper body/torso seems to use the same diffuse map, the hands and forearms seem to have much higher mapping ratio (texel-to-pixel) than the shoulders area - i find that rather strange for a non-FPS POV camera.
gotta give him props for not being bald at his age, though : )
btw, when is it due?
more the result of the cubemap lookup
my nth cubemap response here over the last few days (i must have a fetish)
Lighting shouldn't be done to be realistic, it should be done to look good. There's a big difference.
No occlusion maps for anything that moves, like characters.
That low? It's painted by hand. Into the texture. And not just on Snake but on every other character, Gear, and weapon.
Or, if you disagree, provide a reasonable counter-argument, other than 'I find it unlikely'
Yep. Think of all those movies that turn on great big lamps or unfold reflectors for daylight shooting. To add interest, there ought to be artistically placed local lights around the level, even if just to add some fake GI scenery light.
Didn't Kojima demonstrate the MGS4 engine at some time after E3 2005?
In that demo he changed the lighting real time, they specifically said they could change the lighting realtime for each scene (I guess he was talking about the "movie" scenes), and also they were able to change the rendering style from a more realistic shading to a style that looked almost like a painting.
There is a lenghty thread about that, from a year ago.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23601
I think the MGS4 engine is flexible enough so they can change the look of the game quite dramatically just by how it lights, colours and shades things. At the moment, they seem to prefer a quite bloomy, monochromatic look, but it could easily change before launch. Hell, it could even be user-changeable in the final game!
In that demo he changed the lighting real time, they specifically said they could change the lighting realtime for each scene (I guess he was talking about the "movie" scenes), and also they were able to change the rendering style from a more realistic shading to a style that looked almost like a painting.
There is a lenghty thread about that, from a year ago.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23601
I think the MGS4 engine is flexible enough so they can change the look of the game quite dramatically just by how it lights, colours and shades things. At the moment, they seem to prefer a quite bloomy, monochromatic look, but it could easily change before launch. Hell, it could even be user-changeable in the final game!
Hehe nice to read that thread. Somehow brings to mind the discussion right now. "Look, that blurry vid doesn't tell the truth, it looks nothing special at all in those direct feed screen captures which represent the game as it really is and dont hide the flaws like the blurry vid does". :smile:
though i'd generally agree with you, trying to make something 'subjectively' good is prone to falling pray to its own subjectivity. for example, i, for one, like the lighting they have in this shot - it's a broad daylight outdoors scene with normal light distribution and a tinge of comics-illustation-style sauce in the tone mapping. correctness-wise, though, i don't have any complaints about it.
and still i never saw this stopping somebody from using occlusion maps on chars. there're plenty of localities over the surface of a humanoid where you can statistically assume occlusion. no, i'm not speculating. for your personal delight, here's a link to one particulalry well-looking ambinet occlusion culling character demo - enjoy : )
well, yes, that low. aside from the fact that it may be a sought-after effect (high chromatic-aberation reflective materials, etc), i think you're getting ahead of yourself a bit here - unless you're sitting with a debugger over this particular light technique in their pipeline, you're just guessing - don't forget it.
hand-painted specularities on everything? links, please.
Or, if you disagree, provide a reasonable counter-argument, other than 'I find it unlikely'
right. how about common sense? those conspicuous specularities would look mighty stupid in situations they should not be there - it does not make much sense for any studio out there to go the lenghts of implemeting such a decent lighting model as demonstrated by MGS4 and then ask their artists to slap on specularities on what is only the major object in the whole game and which sits only 99% of the time before the eyes of the player.
The screen I posted was a day time scene and there are more at IGN to find taken from the first trailer
Not to mention the bright blue rim lights used in 'nighttime' shots. Think any James Cameron movie
Which is basically the same as painting shading detail into a texture, right?
I know the technique, used it some three-four years ago...
Not speculars, shading. Diffuse shading, look at all the shots there and you'll find plenty of examples.
Again, not the speculars but the shading itself.
And common sense already dictated that they won't have 60.000 polygons in the ingame character's hair back in 2005, all we're seeing now is Konami/Kojima realizing that.
TGS 2005. At E3 they had some teaser using MGS3 assets that didn't really give us any idea what MGS4 would look like.
mckmas8808
Legend
Well at E3 2006 they did have a new video to show. Remember that was the first time we saw Snake ready to merc himself?
I was talking about E3 2005.
Which is basically the same as painting shading detail into a texture, right?
I know the technique, used it some three-four years ago...
of course it's 'painting into a map' - it's a goddam ambient occlusion _map_, for crying out loud!
and no, it's not the same as your diffuse map, not in the phong reflection model used widely today (and i expect you to know that). speaking of maps, btw, are you implying you don't have _any_ intensity variations in your diffuse maps?
right. there seems to be another angle shot of the scene from which your original shot of reference is - on both shots the levels of shading intensity in the shoulder armor areas are following the contours of the specular spots (like they should) hence to claim diffuse is prebaked but specular is not, you'd need to show an example where diffuse and specular are in controversy. so feel free to point out such locations.
that's why you won't find a single post of mine quoting such vertex figures.
picking on MGS4 on the basis of shading, though, is a rather poor choice on your part.
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scooby_dooby
Legend
Why would you accuse him of 'picking' on it? Laa Yosh is not some scholyard bully, you need to seperate your emotions from a simple discussion about GFX.
becasue i have not seen a singe proof of what he says he sees on those shots he refers to?
