G
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Lazy8 1000 words post strikes again! 
Even the Xbox had troubles improving the greatness of Shenmue graphics!
Even the Xbox had troubles improving the greatness of Shenmue graphics!
Silent hill 3 WTF!!!
- Thread starter zidane1strife
- Start date
zidane1strife
Banned
Actually we should forget cutscenes(shenmue), and go into a head demo fight...
FFSW v.s. Shenmue faces... winner is... u know...
As for impressive engines, look at my sig... and the main char. is double textured(fake reflections...)
FFSW v.s. Shenmue faces... winner is... u know...
As for impressive engines, look at my sig... and the main char. is double textured(fake reflections...)
From the Xbox version:
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/shenmue/shenmue2/screens/sim-shenmue2-0007.jpg
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/shenmue/shenmue2/screens/sim-shenmue2-0005.jpg
Please, explain to me again how that's meant to look so amazing. I'm yet to see this "50 NPCs", let alone with that much detail anywhere. Post some pics rather than these goddamn face pics.
God damned heathen!! How dare you talk of our mutual God, Shenmue, in that demeaning tone? As if you didn’t just cream in your pants looking at that exquisite visual stimulation that is more pleasureful than any mere mortal can provide. If only I could transcend time and space and become part of the gleeful community known as Shenmue; a place where people like and accept me for who I am! Ahh, Utopia at last….
<head hits desk>Ahh… um.. as for you, “You shall be banished to reading my excerpts, each a minimum of 2,000 words, from the good book of Shenmue. For, only in the good book (and the inevitable self-inflicted electro-shock therapy that you shall commence, by way of tongue-in-socket, to escape the horror) will the truth be revealed to you.
<head hits desk>Ahh… um.. as for you, “You shall be banished to reading my excerpts, each a minimum of 2,000 words, from the good book of Shenmue. For, only in the good book (and the inevitable self-inflicted electro-shock therapy that you shall commence, by way of tongue-in-socket, to escape the horror) will the truth be revealed to you.
Logan Leonhart
Newcomer
Lazy8s, despite how contradicting with your username you are, but I´m not going to read the whole 2000 words from an excerpt of the Shenmue bible. The screenshots, specially the DC ones speak for themselves.
Look at the blurry textures, look at the aliasing, look at the low poligon low polygon count, look at the mediocre lightning. the only thing that looks moderately great is Ryo, and Ryo only.
That´s what I´m referring to when talking about the real game.
Look at the blurry textures, look at the aliasing, look at the low poligon low polygon count, look at the mediocre lightning. the only thing that looks moderately great is Ryo, and Ryo only.
That´s what I´m referring to when talking about the real game.
These shenmue discussions always suprise me again. Upon looking at the above posted screens, it really does refresh my memory of when I once played the game and I really can not see where this game is so amazing graphically speaking. Taking everything into account, I really do find the Getaway to be more impressive, that is when including everything from character detail into objects and texturing and the framerate. Of course, someone could post screens again, but I honestly think that they would not do the game justice.
As for Jak & Daxter, very nicely put Marconelly. I actually wanted to bring it up myself, as I still find it one of the prettiest PS2 games out. Lazy8s, have you even seen D&J in action or are you basing your arguement of screens? Because having withnessed both Shenmue and J&D, I must say that the latter absolutely slams the first when you take again framerate and on going effects into consideration. As Marconelly already pointed out, J&D might have those cartoonish graphics, but if you look at them closely, the amount of varied textures in most sceneries is quite amazing. If you really can't find anything about the texturing, I strongly suggest you play the game from start til scratch...
And you'll be hard put to find graphical errors in this one - I've played it through multiple times and have yet got to see frame drops or any sort of pop-ups.
BTW; what's your arguement anyway? That if Silent Hill 3 were placed in a city scenery with as many characters as seen in Shenmue, it wouldn't look better or what? Somehow I missed the point of this discussion and I would greatly appreciate it if you could lay me in on what you're exactly arguing. Thanks...
As for Jak & Daxter, very nicely put Marconelly. I actually wanted to bring it up myself, as I still find it one of the prettiest PS2 games out. Lazy8s, have you even seen D&J in action or are you basing your arguement of screens? Because having withnessed both Shenmue and J&D, I must say that the latter absolutely slams the first when you take again framerate and on going effects into consideration. As Marconelly already pointed out, J&D might have those cartoonish graphics, but if you look at them closely, the amount of varied textures in most sceneries is quite amazing. If you really can't find anything about the texturing, I strongly suggest you play the game from start til scratch...
And you'll be hard put to find graphical errors in this one - I've played it through multiple times and have yet got to see frame drops or any sort of pop-ups.
BTW; what's your arguement anyway? That if Silent Hill 3 were placed in a city scenery with as many characters as seen in Shenmue, it wouldn't look better or what? Somehow I missed the point of this discussion and I would greatly appreciate it if you could lay me in on what you're exactly arguing. Thanks...
Regarding human skin...
The first and most important feature of realistic skin is not texture; rather the shader itself. Real human skin is affected by the underlying tissue, which is built up from living cells - tiny sacks full of liquid. You see, about 60% of the human body is water. So human skin is highly translucent, and because of the lack of homogenity, the light rays are refracted many, many times. The color of the light is also highly affected; because our tissues are full of blood (most of the time) the light will get a red tint before leaving the body. So you could say that if you illuminate one side of the body, the other will get illuminated as well, from the inside; and that light will get scattered a lot, too. You can also see this effect easily if you place your hand in front of a light source - you can even see that your bones will block the light, but there's no hard outline of them because of the scattering effect.
This is a relatively new invention in the 3D industry, from the past 3-4 years and it is called sub surface scattering (SSS). Note that there are many other materials with similar qualities; fruits (grape, orange without its , vax and most fluids come into mind (like a glass of milk or orange juice).
There are two main approaches to create a shader with subsurface scattering - you can write a precise algorythm or you can fake it.
Gollum in the LOTR movie used a very sophisticated custom-written subsurface scattering shader. The result was immmense render times and thus Weta had to expand their renderfarm to some 700 machines AFAIK.
3D artists without the resources of a movie studio have developed tricky shading networks to fake the usual effects of SSS. These can look almost as convincing, except for detailed areas like ears, and render a lot faster most of the time. Steve Stahlberg, whose work you may already know (pretty looking rendered chicks most of the time) has written a cool article on this topic, you can read it here:
http://www.optidigit.com/stevens/shadetut.html
I will use two of his images to illustrate the differences that even a fake SSS shader can make.
Before:
After:
Then you also have to add specular highlights; it is a misconception that skin does not have specularity. Note that human skin's specularity changes highly depending on the surface normal's angle relative to the viewpoint (which is also common for many materials).
(I'd much rather use images of my own, but I unfortunately can't release them yet...)
Note that this scattering effect is prominent even if you desaturate the image, or just suck out reds from it. You can also detect it from greater distances, when you can't see the little pores and speckles in the skin. That's why human skin in movies like Se7en will still look like human skin, even if it's not reddish - and that's why most realtime games can't present realistic looking humans yet. Neither SH3 nor Shenmue has such complexity in the characters' shaders (even is SH3's lighting is more complex) so the characters in both look artificial.
Nvidia's fairy demo on the GeForce FX, however, used a fake subsurface scattering shader - the difference can be spotted. The Xbox might be able to produce such effects but I doubt that it'd have the GPU power to do it. PS3 and Xbox2 should both be able to use such shaders, though. There is room for improvement in the next gen
Texture detail is the second most important quality of human skin, IMHO. SH3 fares better in this, with more realistic subtleties which obviously required a lot more man months from the art department. FFTSW also had really nices textures, which were quite similar to SH3. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some ex-Square texture artist would turn out to be working on this game... Their influence is certainly there
Both games lack specular and bump textures, though. Outcast 2 looked like it could be even better than SH3 in the human skin area, as it used both detailed textures and specular maps - too bad the project seems to be dead now.
So once again I'd sum it up: more complex shaders are the next step for realistic materials, both human skin and anything else - metals, cloth, wood etc. More textures will be needed for each surface as well; in the end, producing assets will cost more and more money, and time.
The first and most important feature of realistic skin is not texture; rather the shader itself. Real human skin is affected by the underlying tissue, which is built up from living cells - tiny sacks full of liquid. You see, about 60% of the human body is water. So human skin is highly translucent, and because of the lack of homogenity, the light rays are refracted many, many times. The color of the light is also highly affected; because our tissues are full of blood (most of the time) the light will get a red tint before leaving the body. So you could say that if you illuminate one side of the body, the other will get illuminated as well, from the inside; and that light will get scattered a lot, too. You can also see this effect easily if you place your hand in front of a light source - you can even see that your bones will block the light, but there's no hard outline of them because of the scattering effect.
This is a relatively new invention in the 3D industry, from the past 3-4 years and it is called sub surface scattering (SSS). Note that there are many other materials with similar qualities; fruits (grape, orange without its , vax and most fluids come into mind (like a glass of milk or orange juice).
There are two main approaches to create a shader with subsurface scattering - you can write a precise algorythm or you can fake it.
Gollum in the LOTR movie used a very sophisticated custom-written subsurface scattering shader. The result was immmense render times and thus Weta had to expand their renderfarm to some 700 machines AFAIK.
3D artists without the resources of a movie studio have developed tricky shading networks to fake the usual effects of SSS. These can look almost as convincing, except for detailed areas like ears, and render a lot faster most of the time. Steve Stahlberg, whose work you may already know (pretty looking rendered chicks most of the time) has written a cool article on this topic, you can read it here:
http://www.optidigit.com/stevens/shadetut.html
I will use two of his images to illustrate the differences that even a fake SSS shader can make.
Before:
After:
Then you also have to add specular highlights; it is a misconception that skin does not have specularity. Note that human skin's specularity changes highly depending on the surface normal's angle relative to the viewpoint (which is also common for many materials).
(I'd much rather use images of my own, but I unfortunately can't release them yet...)
Note that this scattering effect is prominent even if you desaturate the image, or just suck out reds from it. You can also detect it from greater distances, when you can't see the little pores and speckles in the skin. That's why human skin in movies like Se7en will still look like human skin, even if it's not reddish - and that's why most realtime games can't present realistic looking humans yet. Neither SH3 nor Shenmue has such complexity in the characters' shaders (even is SH3's lighting is more complex) so the characters in both look artificial.
Nvidia's fairy demo on the GeForce FX, however, used a fake subsurface scattering shader - the difference can be spotted. The Xbox might be able to produce such effects but I doubt that it'd have the GPU power to do it. PS3 and Xbox2 should both be able to use such shaders, though. There is room for improvement in the next gen
Texture detail is the second most important quality of human skin, IMHO. SH3 fares better in this, with more realistic subtleties which obviously required a lot more man months from the art department. FFTSW also had really nices textures, which were quite similar to SH3. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some ex-Square texture artist would turn out to be working on this game... Their influence is certainly there
Both games lack specular and bump textures, though. Outcast 2 looked like it could be even better than SH3 in the human skin area, as it used both detailed textures and specular maps - too bad the project seems to be dead now.
So once again I'd sum it up: more complex shaders are the next step for realistic materials, both human skin and anything else - metals, cloth, wood etc. More textures will be needed for each surface as well; in the end, producing assets will cost more and more money, and time.
It's typical artifact for doing the cheaper 'darken the volume' version of stencil shadows (when you allow self shadowing that is). Weird thing is that I couldn't spot it in all pics that might show it, so either they are just good at choosing screens to hide it, or they are throwign multiple methods around again like they did in SH2.cybamerc said:
archie,
that's no laughing matter, we must act immediately, such textures cannot be tolerated 8)
As for 'Goal tending', I think they took it a bit Far
but all the more worthy of admiration they stuck with it yeah.
G
Guest
Guest
Shaddup you fools! Shenmue would have pissed all over SH3 and then changed to a new set of panties easily.
marconelly!
Veteran
Laa yosh, on that page you linked to, the guy explains that the shader used to simulate sub skin refractions was something much simpler - a toon shader as far as I can see?
Specular highlites when applied to a skin, can look both good and unnatural. For a skin to look like that, it would have to be quite sweaty or greasy, and even then it would require quite a strong directional light. If you look youself in the mirror (or look at the people around you in the room) you will see that they don't look anything like that. There are no highlites that you can compare to those on that picture.
Cybamerc - on that picture, I think lighting comes from above, so that would be a shadow of her head on the rest of her body? In the videos you can see simillar scenes with very intensive self shadowing, and in motion it looks much more 'normal'
Specular highlites when applied to a skin, can look both good and unnatural. For a skin to look like that, it would have to be quite sweaty or greasy, and even then it would require quite a strong directional light. If you look youself in the mirror (or look at the people around you in the room) you will see that they don't look anything like that. There are no highlites that you can compare to those on that picture.
Cybamerc - on that picture, I think lighting comes from above, so that would be a shadow of her head on the rest of her body? In the videos you can see simillar scenes with very intensive self shadowing, and in motion it looks much more 'normal'
Great post Laa-Yosh.
PC-Engine - What point? I read his post. It doesn't change the fact that SH3 has better textures, more geometry and just plain looks better. Or that many games have accomplished better looking engines than Shenmue that work in multiple situations. Or that Shenmue's engine chugged like hell.
PC-Engine - What point? I read his post. It doesn't change the fact that SH3 has better textures, more geometry and just plain looks better. Or that many games have accomplished better looking engines than Shenmue that work in multiple situations. Or that Shenmue's engine chugged like hell.
mech:
The Shenhua face pic is used simply because it's one of the few representations of the game where its scale was optimized to be at least slightly more conservative and screenshot friendly than normal. Just like with any game that takes place in large, open spaces, screenshots which focus in on small sections will look unflattering when not optimized to just that specific region. Wouldn't be too hard to make Grand Theft Auto 3 look a lot like a PSone game in screenshots showing only zoomed in views and isolated parts of the city blocks. However, anyone that's played GTA3 knows that the impressiveness comes partly from the scale of it all - the crowds of people all reacting to the chaos, the larger views of the city, etc.
I was confused at how anyone would not find Shenmue at least somewhat impressive, but I've begun to realize that some of you probably haven't played through the game and visited those locations from the way you've been referring to them. For instance, in that very unflattering Shenmue shot above with the Jamaican guy kicking in the air, all you're probably judging it on is the blocky-looking proportions and the laughable texturing on the shoe's sole. When I see that screen, though, I'm reminded that he's that one guy operating that little hot dog truck on the opposite end of the massive Harbor area at which you can turn around to see a large cruise ship docked at the other end, several warehouse districts to all sides, and a gigantic steel rig overlooking a picturesque view of the ocean (complete with seagulls flying above and pigeons scattering about). Those are the details you'll see when you're moving the character around, but the game obviously lowers the camera angle and zooms in on isolated parts of the environment when you're conversing with someone, like in that pic.
Unfortunately, almost all the screenshots I've ever seen taken of the game do a poor job representing its scale. The shots usually either show him talking to someone (the camera gets pulled in to an isolated view of the surrounding area) or fail to show what the engine really allows.
AM2 improved the engine for the sequel to allow up to 50 NPCs on screen at the same time; they wanted to better convey the busy and crowded culture in Hong Kong. While you won't usually see anywhere near that many people all together, the possibility does exist that they could all bunch up like that since they roam about with autonomy from one another. In the Thousand White Qr. near the Acrobat fighter, in gambling establishments, in street fights, at the dojos, and in some of the busy cafe districts, you'll often see upwards of thirty or more characters at the same time. If you really wanted, you could plug up a main pathway, pull up the item menu, and just sit back and watch for about twenty minutes as passerbys start to fill up behind you on their way to their destinations. I once caused this by accident and saw around 40 characters together.
To do justice to games of this scale, fly-bys and panaromic shots do best to show what's truly going on, and the Shenmue series has tons of these. In fact, in one particular scene, I was absolutely floored when Ryo was practicing a Tai Chi routine outside a cave in Guilin during the breaking of dawn. He was standing near the edge of a cliff, and the game's sweeping camera pulled out to reveal this immense valley formed from steep mountain ridges on all sides and a beautiful waterfall just out in the distance. You could see all the incredibly detailed terrain and long views all together, and it reaffirms to the player that those are the kinds of scenes that best convey the visual intent of the engine.
And there are so many views like that which you get throughout the game while walking around or entering a new area. They convincingly deliver the crowded and bustling feeling of the Hong Kong streets, the majestic feeling of the mountain regions in China, and the towering scale of the walled city - Kowloon. Even the indoor locations are surprisingly well-lit and moody. These screenshots you've been looking at show primarily limited views of Ryo conversing or shots of specific characters.... I'd really suggest you play through some of the areas in each game if you truly care to understand why some people find it impressive and even consider it a benchmark in some respects.
Phil:
http://www.playscope.com/fichiers/photos/1571/sh3_041.jpg[/quote]
I did bring in an example from Shenmue which I felt showed improvement in the specific characteristic I was talking about. The discussion inevitably turned into people discrediting Shenmue's overall graphics, though. So, in the midst of talking about some other games with great graphics (Silent Hill 3, Jak and Daxter), all I've been trying to do is point out the things that still makes Shenmue look great when you see it running.
Changing topics now, thanks for the explanation about the appearance of skin, Laa-Yosh. Yes, that natural translucency was the appearance I was nitpicking on, and something I felt the texture work on the Shenhua face gave a better illusion of (even though neither game was performing SSS or even employing a separate effect to fake its appearance). Those models you posted show how the true effect combined with a host of other elements (lighting, highlighting) can allow skin to start looking more natural.
I don't have access to any collection of screenshots. I'm just using the pictures that people have already dug out in another thread.
The Shenhua face pic is used simply because it's one of the few representations of the game where its scale was optimized to be at least slightly more conservative and screenshot friendly than normal. Just like with any game that takes place in large, open spaces, screenshots which focus in on small sections will look unflattering when not optimized to just that specific region. Wouldn't be too hard to make Grand Theft Auto 3 look a lot like a PSone game in screenshots showing only zoomed in views and isolated parts of the city blocks. However, anyone that's played GTA3 knows that the impressiveness comes partly from the scale of it all - the crowds of people all reacting to the chaos, the larger views of the city, etc.
I was confused at how anyone would not find Shenmue at least somewhat impressive, but I've begun to realize that some of you probably haven't played through the game and visited those locations from the way you've been referring to them. For instance, in that very unflattering Shenmue shot above with the Jamaican guy kicking in the air, all you're probably judging it on is the blocky-looking proportions and the laughable texturing on the shoe's sole. When I see that screen, though, I'm reminded that he's that one guy operating that little hot dog truck on the opposite end of the massive Harbor area at which you can turn around to see a large cruise ship docked at the other end, several warehouse districts to all sides, and a gigantic steel rig overlooking a picturesque view of the ocean (complete with seagulls flying above and pigeons scattering about). Those are the details you'll see when you're moving the character around, but the game obviously lowers the camera angle and zooms in on isolated parts of the environment when you're conversing with someone, like in that pic.
Unfortunately, almost all the screenshots I've ever seen taken of the game do a poor job representing its scale. The shots usually either show him talking to someone (the camera gets pulled in to an isolated view of the surrounding area) or fail to show what the engine really allows.
AM2 improved the engine for the sequel to allow up to 50 NPCs on screen at the same time; they wanted to better convey the busy and crowded culture in Hong Kong. While you won't usually see anywhere near that many people all together, the possibility does exist that they could all bunch up like that since they roam about with autonomy from one another. In the Thousand White Qr. near the Acrobat fighter, in gambling establishments, in street fights, at the dojos, and in some of the busy cafe districts, you'll often see upwards of thirty or more characters at the same time. If you really wanted, you could plug up a main pathway, pull up the item menu, and just sit back and watch for about twenty minutes as passerbys start to fill up behind you on their way to their destinations. I once caused this by accident and saw around 40 characters together.
To do justice to games of this scale, fly-bys and panaromic shots do best to show what's truly going on, and the Shenmue series has tons of these. In fact, in one particular scene, I was absolutely floored when Ryo was practicing a Tai Chi routine outside a cave in Guilin during the breaking of dawn. He was standing near the edge of a cliff, and the game's sweeping camera pulled out to reveal this immense valley formed from steep mountain ridges on all sides and a beautiful waterfall just out in the distance. You could see all the incredibly detailed terrain and long views all together, and it reaffirms to the player that those are the kinds of scenes that best convey the visual intent of the engine.
And there are so many views like that which you get throughout the game while walking around or entering a new area. They convincingly deliver the crowded and bustling feeling of the Hong Kong streets, the majestic feeling of the mountain regions in China, and the towering scale of the walled city - Kowloon. Even the indoor locations are surprisingly well-lit and moody. These screenshots you've been looking at show primarily limited views of Ryo conversing or shots of specific characters.... I'd really suggest you play through some of the areas in each game if you truly care to understand why some people find it impressive and even consider it a benchmark in some respects.
Phil:
No, I've seen it some. I definitely agree with you that Jak and Daxter is most impressive in many ways, especially when you get a view where you can look out across a big stretch of the level (like when you can look out over the village in the beginning like Marconelly mentioned).
I'm not sure how anyone can deny that the game is very sparsely textured. The textures that are there are quite nice, but the overall look has a distinctly flat-shaded, cartoonish style to it.
In the beginning, I was mentioning how I felt the Silent Hill 3 characters looked very well modeled, but could stand to use a more realistic dispersion of skin flushing. Example:
http://www.playscope.com/fichiers/photos/1571/sh3_041.jpg[/quote]
I did bring in an example from Shenmue which I felt showed improvement in the specific characteristic I was talking about. The discussion inevitably turned into people discrediting Shenmue's overall graphics, though. So, in the midst of talking about some other games with great graphics (Silent Hill 3, Jak and Daxter), all I've been trying to do is point out the things that still makes Shenmue look great when you see it running.
Changing topics now, thanks for the explanation about the appearance of skin, Laa-Yosh. Yes, that natural translucency was the appearance I was nitpicking on, and something I felt the texture work on the Shenhua face gave a better illusion of (even though neither game was performing SSS or even employing a separate effect to fake its appearance). Those models you posted show how the true effect combined with a host of other elements (lighting, highlighting) can allow skin to start looking more natural.