PS3: Phil Harrison addresses the real-time vs CGI issue

[Phil]

Now Phil Harrison just told Morgan Webb that the KZ footage was "all game engine or done to spec" and that "it's just scratching the surface."

Webb: "So I'll be playing that in my living room?"

Harrison: "Absolutely."

A friend of mine did some research on the topic and made some interesting observations on some of the released pictures of Killzone. After going back and forward, apart from the very high polygon look (almost no edges at all) and the imense detail and action going on, perhaps it is very well what we could be seeing at some point later in PS3's life?

The above observations (see link) show that a lot of it when looked at closer is infact quite simply done and not nearly as complex as one could believe by simply watching the trailer.

Note, I'm not saying the trailer was real time or anything of the sort - I'm not even arguing that. I just wanted to share the observations and think that perhaps with good art (and Guerilla Games have the talent to pull this off from an artistic point of view), we might just see something strickingly similar somewhere down the road (and it surely isn't exclusive to PS3 either, I'm sure Xb360 should be able aswell, given the same effort is put into it).

 

[Acert93]

No, the whole thing is rendered.

It looks prerendered but with in game assets. I just watched it again and I see no reason why most of it cannot be done in game. What I am curious about is if CELL will be able to aid in making rediculous amounts of particles (which would be awesome) and the mud/rocks. If they can capture that feel then I could care less if it is not quite as clean in the shadows and lighting. The DIRTY feel makes it awesome to me.

 

[Geeforcer]

Aww come on, have you ever tried to mix CG and realtime images together? Shading, lighting, antialiasing, texture filtering are so different in the hw and sw algorithms that the two would never look the same. And if you could render parts of it on hardware, then you could render the rest, you'd just need more time to put the frames out to some media so that you can stitch them together in an editing app.

No, the whole thing is rendered.

Would be really hard to record some gaming footage and mix it with recorded CG footage? I can do that right now on my computer.

 

[mckmas8808]

jvd, Laa-Yosh, and Goragoth you all are just mad or just had to TV on mute. Both guys said that the game was real. What else in life could they have said to convince you that it was real? Phil told Morgan that when she plays Killzone the game will look and play exactly like the demo.

 

[Acert93]

The above observations (see link) show that a lot of it when looked at closer is infact quite simply done and not nearly as complex as one could believe by simply watching the trailer..

I think the Art + Cinematics are just as big part of what has people shocked. The Art and Cinematics (in cut scenes) are not going anywhere.

And your friend is right about art. When Rare mentioned characters had 5k polys and 180-300k polys or a level it looks nothing like it should. Art direction, art skill, and engine features are really important.

Matching the right technologys with your art and system capabilities is really key to maximizing the look. So good points Phil.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Would be really hard to record some gaming footage and mix it with recorded CG footage? I can do that right now on my computer.

Why can't you understand what I write? Of course you could do it, but the two kinds of footage would look so drastically different that it'd be very evident what's hardware and what's offline rendered.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

jvd, Laa-Yosh, and Goragoth you all are just mad or just had to TV on mute. Both guys said that the game was real. What else in life could they have said to convince you that it was real? Phil told Morgan that when she plays Killzone the game will look and play exactly like the demo.

Understand the difference between "it will" and "it does"...

 

[Geeforcer]

Would be really hard to record some gaming footage and mix it with recorded CG footage? I can do that right now on my computer.

Why can't you understand what I write? Of course you could do it, but the two kinds of footage would look so drastically different that it'd be very evident what's hardware and what's offline rendered.

No need to get testy. To me, the footage in the timeframe I specified DID look quite different then the rest of the video, hence my remarks.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

A friend of mine did some research on the topic and made some interesting observations on some of the released pictures of Killzone. After going back and forward, apart from the very high polygon look (almost no edges at all) and the imense detail and action going on, perhaps it is very well what we could be seeing at some point later in PS3's life?

The above observations (see link) show that a lot of it when looked at closer is infact quite simply done and not nearly as complex as one could believe by simply watching the trailer.

1. Gelato is not a realtime renderer, it's a hardware assisted offline renderer for CGI production. It hasn't taken up yet.

2. I've already wrote about it, but let's repeat: not every offline renderer provides flawless antialiasing and motion blur, actually even PRMan can be brought to its knees.

3. Bump maps on the ground aren't that low res...

 

[Xenus]

Haven't you learned? This is some what like the politics forum people will believe what they want to believe regardless of what the facts tell them. :?

 

[jvd]

jvd, Laa-Yosh, and Goragoth you all are just mad or just had to TV on mute. Both guys said that the game was real. What else in life could they have said to convince you that it was real? Phil told Morgan that when she plays Killzone the game will look and play exactly like the demo.

Err he said everything that i posted. I was watching it and typing it with 3 other people watching too and we heard the smae thing .

We'll know at launch and then you can tell us your sorry

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The particles are one of the totally impossible things to do with such quality in realtime. Heck, some of the things like mud and thick smoke in there are pretty complicated to do with offline tools like fluid simulation and volumetric particles as well. Vegetation is far more impressive than anything else we've seen in realtime so far, including speedtree. Not simple transparency mapped planes for the grass but individual grass strands and leafs on the bushes. And the helicopter flying above the cars shot is frankly very hard to get proper shadowing...

Check the part where the jeep crushes that bush at 01:02 for example. Volumetric smoke, insane amount of geometry particles for the mud and rock, completely 3D vegetation, insane polygon count for the jeep itself... Damn, even most CGI studios would have a hard time doing all that.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Haven't you learned? This is some what like the politics forum people will believe what they want to believe regardless of what the facts tell them. :?

Yeah, you're right that it's hopeless. I'm saving the screenshots for the time we get to see those games... then I'll have my revenge

 

[Phil]

Cool down Laa-Yosh, as I already said and will repeat again; the observations aren't to prove anything about if that trailer was real time or not - it's there to share some ideas on what could be feasable during the consoles life and what not.

Xenus: If this is all you have to contribute to the thread, then I can safely say your "contribution" isn't wanted.

 

[Acert93]

The one part that makes me think there are game assets are at 0:33 (Gametrailers vid) the buggie looks like an ingame vehicle. I could believe that.

But you are right, the most impressive parts to me are the particles. At 0:46 there is the INSANE black/thick smoke and fire. At the very end when the yellow car goes from new looking to all dented, scratched, and explodes into pieces and they all are well lighted and shadowed.

Oh, and the AA. Still wondering how NV will do high levels of AA at 1080p.

Laa-Yosh, would not the CELL be a big aid in generating all the particles? I know fluid dynamic simulations are extremely intense, but could say 100GFLOPs of power being dedicated to particles be able to turn that kind of partles out? Or how much reduced would that much power produce?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

To be more specific, 29-34 and 53-58 seconds parts of the trailer looks like it might be in-game, surrounded by pre-rendenderd stuff.

There's far too much geometry in there to be realtime.
Just look at the shilouettes of the bike rider here:

It's very complex, so it's all geometry, probably displacement mapped. Current gen consoles can only do normal mapping, but it's clearly far more than that. And this is just the biker, then there's his bike, the ground, the 3D grass and vegetation... And then there's the lighting, how many light sources are there? GOW has maybe 3 or 4 at the most, but this lighting is very soft.

Or here's this shot:

A few frames later every mud particle collides with the jeep... and gets stuck on it...

 

[Xenus]

First of all it was not really meant to affend anyone. At least you are trying to back up or point with info. It just gets really annoying when the conversation goes no where laike a dog chasing its tale. I have seen many of these threads go nowhere and in the end do nothing but become a flamefest.

At least you and Laa-Yosh have research on your side other than just saying this can or cannot be realtime based on abstract judgement.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Haven't you learned? This is some what like the politics forum people will believe what they want to believe regardless of what the facts tell them. :?

Yeah, you're right that it's hopeless. I'm saving the screenshots for the time we get to see those games... then I'll have my revenge

Laa-Yosh
I just wanted to say that in these dark times when the evil "that's in real time" monsters attack from all sides and when finally all hope is lost, I'm standing with you against these unholy creatures....

And by the way here is little something for all the dreamers, and to those that think Sony could never exaggerate about the capabilities of their machine, especially Sony Europe.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/jadelor/random/fuck you, sony.jpg
Put the mouse cursor over the images and enlarge them.

I Still think that Sonys next machine is going to provide excellent visuals, but Motor Storm and Killzone are out reach.

 

[mckmas8808]

Hey Xenus how about this research. The developers that are making the game KZ next gen have a boss. Well their boss said on Live National TV in front of millions of people that will probably be saved and viewed on IGN's website that the demo was real

 

[Geeforcer]

To be more specific, 29-34 and 53-58 seconds parts of the trailer looks like it might be in-game, surrounded by pre-rendenderd stuff.

There's far too much geometry in there to be realtime.
Just look at the shilouettes of the bike rider here:

It's very complex, so it's all geometry, probably displacement mapped. Current gen consoles can only do normal mapping, but it's clearly far more than that. And this is just the biker, then there's his bike, the ground, the 3D grass and vegetation... And then there's the lighting, how many light sources are there? GOW has maybe 3 or 4 at the most, but this lighting is very soft.

Or here's this shot:

A few frames later every mud particle collides with the jeep... and gets stuck on it...

We must have the different trailers, because this is defiantly not the parts I was talking about.