mckmas8808 said:
You are a big help. So basically if a dev was to create a animal, alien, human, etc. and wanted to have a high level of animation/the stuff you explained then using a higher number of polys is what the dev should use?
Well that question may be a bit confusing. Let me ask this. (Not picking on GOW or the Xbox 360) What is it that the monsters in Gears of War would lack (being that Epic took the Lower Res Mesh + Normal maps route) that another dev using a high number of polys would have?
Well from what I understand, again my memory's fuzzy and I ain't up to snuff in a lot of this stuff, but as I was saying from what I understand they're basically animating the underlying geometry the rest of the detail just moves along with it. So if you try something like animating the skin so that it creases/folds/bends into itself realistically or seemingly slide over a seemingly underlying muscle, you just can't without increasing the geometry cause what would be actually animated would be the low-poly geometry. Same with simulated moving clothes, what's animated is the underlying geometry.
Also for example see the MGS4's robot thingie, from what I understand the cable that was used has to be round to look round, you just can't use normal maps over a low-poly structure to make it look and animate like that. So if you've a tentacle monster, you need a good amount of geometry so that those tentacles can be properly animated. It also seems like things that protrude substantially like some spikes, limbs, tentacles and certain features require their own underlying geometry. A chain, a strap, cloth, a vein that is simply added through a normal map to a low geometry object won't animate separately from the model. IT won't make a sphere look rounder around the edges, and the like.
pre-post edit: Basically what Laa-Yosh said, he beat me to it.
Laa-Yosh said:
Looks like everyone got distracted by my comment on that hill (which I'll get back to in a minute) and missed the more important point. So I'll repeat.
Every single techdemo and finished game that we've seen from the nextgen consoles - that have been proven to be real and realtime - share some very important common qualities. From PGR3 and Kameo, through Gears of War and MGS4 and Heavenly Sword and Fight Night, to Lair and Project Offset, they are all relying on the combination of implementations and extensions of well-known hardware rendering techniques, different mostly in art direction and efficiency. Many of them are justly considered to be state of the art, coming from the leading studios of the industry - but they're all using texture mappedd polygons, normal mapping and (in CG terms) simple surface shaders; they're all suffering from various geometry and shading aliasing artifacts, and they're all still easily identified as realtime rendered scenes. Especially the image quality (the one developers can do the least about, given the limits of the hardware) is noticeably different from the polished look of most CGI, but this is also the first thing that's cured in a shakycam video.
My point is that we're still just taking the first steps into this next generation of consoles, and developers are still in the stages of adapting to the new technology. While I'm somewhat aware of the exciting new possibilities of the hardware, experimentation is still constrained by budgets and deadlines. It is unrealistic to expect developers to totally revolutionize hardware rendering techniques in such a short amount of time, and it is foolish to expect or even demand CG-like quality from the upcoming games. People should have learned by now, based on the above mentioned games' graphics, what they should get to see; and it should also be at least a bit more obvious when a publisher, developer or hardware manufacturer tries to fool us with prerendered stuff. Unfortunately, it seems that they are still able to do it again and again... and I wonder if it's worth arguing about, or should I just wait and let time decide it.
So, getting back at those hills, I've said that if it is not a photo (or otherwise pre-calculated and baked) texture, than it's not likely to be realtime. As good as normal mapping is, it'd still not be enough to produce that kind of self-shadowing and soft lighting on those hills, you need geometry to do that, and loads of it. But please take your time and read my post again, it was just the first thing I've mentioned because there's a lot in that small video already that suggests it to be CGI...
Suggest it to be Cg, but using at the very least some or all ingame assets. It's true that we're still limited as you say in terms of the variety of techniques, geometry, iq. But as I've said the increase in geometry is gonna provide some of the features which I consider cg'ish. Look at the FFVII:tech demo, that blows the FFVII CG opening out of the water, and it's pretty close to FFVIII's cg, some details look even better than FFVIII CGi(clothing animation and hair animation for most characters-exception a few things like Edea's long thin hair scene, but that seems feasible- for example, as far as I recall, fuzzy memory, even the FF:movie and toy story had stiffish cloth animation. Some times algorithms just improve to the point were they simply beat what was available once. I think skin texturing is also superior to FFVIII's for the most part from what I recall. )
FFVII TECH DEMO(LIKE WOW
):
http://i.afterdawn.com/news/SQUARE-ENIX-FINAL-FANTASY-V2.jpg
http://i.afterdawn.com/news/SQUARE-ENIX-FINAL-FANTASY-V.jpg
That looks cgish/cg-like, only when blown up can you begin to see the realtime nature of it. Given the seemingly direct-feed FFVII tech demo trailer looks like the non-blown up pics, it does indeed look cgish. When you blow it up you can see all the small details, and the geometry that composes the folds of, for example, Cloud's shirt or the individual 3d eye-lashes and 3d individual hairs on the eye brows..
You see that? That is what a TRUE high-budget big time dev. can pull-off with even weaker h/w than ps3 and AT 60FPS, in other words cut-scenes and ingame can look 2x[30fps] as detailed if they so wish, given the nature of rpgs gameplay would remain unaffected(Oh, and all assuming we'd actually use alpha, final h/w is of course even more powerful, heheh.). Character model detail and animation, clothing physics in those are basically a generation apart even from high-end titles like D3, Quake 4 or HL2. The human mind is said to be different not necessarily in quality but in quantity from lower animals, there comes a point when if you add enough and you add it right it simply looks qualitatively different and beyond.
Current gen games like CON: return to arms, and Ninja Gaiden, Metroid Prime feature excellent image quality. Sure there's a small flaw here or there if you look closely, but this ain't a hollywood movie and it ain't gonna be integrated with life action elements and blown-up by several meters. In some sequences, camera angles, scenes, cutscenes, replay angles, etc the iq looks better practically perfect you simply can't see iq flaws(at least using crt tvs.).
This ain't n64/psx were the iq hurts the eye, iq is excellent nowadays with xbx/gc and some ps2 titles that bother do things properly and it is even substantially better with the next-gen titles I've seen(and those ain't even properly using the AA that next-gen consoles are capable of.).
When I see things like this, I can only think that it simply looks cgish, and in motion wow(at the next gen models and at 60fps on non-final h/w):
