You are ignoring the improvements in rendering performance from the software side. CGI rendered in computer farms is and has always been very brute-forcy in a lot of ways.
The move towards CGI. What consitutes 'the look' and how close are we getting?
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
You are ignoring the improvements in rendering performance from the software side. CGI rendered in computer farms is and has always been very brute-forcy in a lot of ways.
VFX_Veteran
Regular
Thanks for this thread!
Shifty,
You mentioned DriveClub as a game close to CGI when seeing it from the rain. I have DC and it doesn't even make me feel it's anywhere close to CGI for a variety of reasons:
1) The resolutions destroys the illusion. There is simply too much aliasing going on despite the very good lighting in the game.
2) The geometry is a HUGE limitation in games that I don't see any dev trying to solve. No matter how complicated the shaders/textures become, the illusion will be destroyed by lack of properly tessellated surfaces.
3) Shadows are too low res. This is another detractor in all games that needs improvement.
4) Reflections are very inaccurate and too low res. SSR has become very popular of late, but it's still years and years before it even looks like something we see in CGI.
5) Interior driving in DC completely breaks the illusion of CGI with the cockpit textures/shading and the hands, dashboard, mirrors, etc...
Here is a look at one of the best renderers in offline rendering for cars. Absolutely no other company can make such an impressive suite of tools for rendering CGI cars. Hopefully you can compare this footage with that of DC to see all of it's flaws.
Also, there is a lot of complexity that goes into a car paint shader. It's very subtle but important:
Notice the area light specular, flakes, and variation in diffuse colors -- none of which are on any of the cars in DC.
Shifty,
You mentioned DriveClub as a game close to CGI when seeing it from the rain. I have DC and it doesn't even make me feel it's anywhere close to CGI for a variety of reasons:
1) The resolutions destroys the illusion. There is simply too much aliasing going on despite the very good lighting in the game.
2) The geometry is a HUGE limitation in games that I don't see any dev trying to solve. No matter how complicated the shaders/textures become, the illusion will be destroyed by lack of properly tessellated surfaces.
3) Shadows are too low res. This is another detractor in all games that needs improvement.
4) Reflections are very inaccurate and too low res. SSR has become very popular of late, but it's still years and years before it even looks like something we see in CGI.
5) Interior driving in DC completely breaks the illusion of CGI with the cockpit textures/shading and the hands, dashboard, mirrors, etc...
Here is a look at one of the best renderers in offline rendering for cars. Absolutely no other company can make such an impressive suite of tools for rendering CGI cars. Hopefully you can compare this footage with that of DC to see all of it's flaws.
Also, there is a lot of complexity that goes into a car paint shader. It's very subtle but important:
Notice the area light specular, flakes, and variation in diffuse colors -- none of which are on any of the cars in DC.
VFX_Veteran
Regular
This is it in a nutshell. Until the hardware changes dramatically with large amounts of VRAM (i.e. 24G or more) and the typical triangle setup pipeline changes, I don't see RT catching up to offline anytime soon. I know of studios that would love to use RT graphics to produce a movie but the memory just isn't there and the overall way the graphics card works would have to change. I'm waiting for a ray-tracer accelerated chip with a really fast handling of bounding volume hierarchies and extremely large memory. I do think the shaders are close though. The Order, ACU, and Ryse all have amazing PBR-like shaders that look 'good enough' to pass for CGI.
Offline rendering is a moving target. It will never be catch by real-time rendering but I think the true question is when real-time will fully catch offline movies from 20 to 15 years ( from Toy Story to FF Spirit Within).
Will we continue ad vitam eternam with rasterization and we will never reach complex geometry of offline rendering for example?
Will we continue ad vitam eternam with rasterization and we will never reach complex geometry of offline rendering for example?
ArcticCircle
Newcomer
I think it's wrong question. Toy Story or Spirits Within don't look anything special. Yes, we know how long each frame took to render and what kind of gear were used to render it.
But we're talking about the look of CGI, not what CGI is or what kind of power was used to make it.
Here are 2 pictures of Spirits Within
http://abload.de/img/ff5xasbh.jpg
http://abload.de/img/ff9e2kn5.jpg
Don't you think we're past that? If we're talking about the look. Feature set of these pictures looks ancent IMO.
VFX_Veteran
Regular
Getting hardware based off of REYES algorithm would be a start. Film has already taken another giant leap in tech by switching to full path-tracing. Now the race is who can make the fastest one and which renderer can implement bi-directional path tracing using Metropolis Sampling in a way that it can be feasible for production.
VFX_Veteran
Regular
No. Those characters have real hair.. name a game besides TR that renders real curves as hair? Also, even though the shaders seem basic, the geometry complexity is still way past games.
This still looks better than even the Drake model in the cutscene of UC4.
In certain way yes this is why I say fully... Do you see aliasing in FF the spirit within pictures, do you see blurry texture, the geometry is perfect too. And same thing for the quality of motion blur and defocus blur aka depth of field when you see the movie.
For example I think the order look better globally but don't pass detailed scrutiny and it is better than other game because RAD did a great job with IQ...
Drive Club look like a great game but I think the real-time rendering problem break the illusion...
I think the day we will stop to speak about IQ, or bad motion blur or DOF, or blurry texture, or polygon edge, or horrible shadow will be THE biggest DAY of realtime rendering.
ArcticCircle
Newcomer
These replies tell me that this is really good topic because it shows how differently we see what CGI look means. Personally I can't stand this late 90's early 2000's "Poser" look, no matter how perfect geometry or AA is. For me the advancements in past 15 years in various techs like Jansen's work in newer subsurface scattering methoids weight much more.
The CGI aspect is the quality of the image, the complexity of the scene, the accuracy of lighting and shadows and shading and so on.
The overall look depends on the art direction and the assets, and there you can clearly see how far digital content creation software has come in the past ~15 years.
The overall look depends on the art direction and the assets, and there you can clearly see how far digital content creation software has come in the past ~15 years.
Your views are those of an expert. I'm seeing these games as a layman. I can eat some cheese and say, "yep, tastes like cheese," while a connoisseur will spit it out calling it garbage and the worst cheese he's ever tasted. He can then pass me some real, quality cheese and I'll eat it and notice it tastes different but not necessarily awesomely better. Humans become incredibly sensitive to their areas of focus.
I think there's the potential here for you and Laa-Yosh and others to learn how the world of graphics is perceived b the lay-person. If Joe Public can't tell the difference between one complicated paint shader and one simple one, you'll learn you can save time and effort going simple (although having to live with the ignominy and creating deliberately sub-par art!).
On the subjective case of how people perceive and distinguish between realtime and non-realtime renders, it has to be worthwhile to determine what exactly people think it is that elevates games to 'that look'. I know I'm curious on others' theories as to why games look CG to them.
Yep. But when zoomed out and viewed at distance with some motion blur, does the lack of individual hairs really make the difference? That's where games can look like CGI without being of the same quality. Again, this is to Joe Gamer, not CGI Veteran.
No. Those characters have real hair.. name a game besides TR that renders real curves as hair? Also, even though the shaders seem basic, the geometry complexity is still way past games.
This still looks better than even the Drake model in the cutscene of UC4.
Well it's remarkable what we are achieving now on a $300 little box. In realtime - allegedly - compared to those CGI shots, produced by immensely powerful render farms at god know what rendering times. Sorry but I think the FFTSW is starting to look very, very dated even compared to today's tech.
VFX_Veteran
Regular
Yep. But when zoomed out and viewed at distance with some motion blur, does the lack of individual hairs really make the difference? That's where games can look like CGI without being of the same quality. Again, this is to Joe Gamer, not CGI Veteran.
Well hell! If that was the case, why does the gaming development community need to keep progressing? Call it a day since people are saying games like the Order look CGI.
VFX_Veteran
Regular
Well it's remarkable what we are achieving now on a $300 little box. In realtime - allegedly - compared to those CGI shots, produced by immensely powerful render farms at god know what rendering times. Sorry but I think the FFTSW is starting to look very, very dated even compared to today's tech.
Looks very very good and pretty close to The Spirits Within..BUT then you see something like this:
And realize that there is still a long way to go..Multiple layers of scattering is going to look leagues better than the painted texture look with a spherical harmonics approximation to SSS on Nathan.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Critical for Uncharted 5: Drake gets root canal
I'd like to propose a forum rule. Whenever someone starts with the real time vs. CGI comparison, lets all assume from the get go that everyone knows actual CGI uses curved surfaces tessellated to micro-polygon sizes, super sampling, extremely high-res textures and etc.
Come on guys, this is Beyond 3d, I can't believe any user here would seriously propose a game has reach the same level of geometry complexity, texture resolution or IQ of a motion picture. Stating those easy differences is a bit obvious in my opinion, It should be obvious the comparison is not meant to be taken so literally. Show footage of DriveClub to my mother, and the V-Ray demo reel posted earlier, and ask her which one is a game and which is offline CGI, and I wouldn't be surprised if (after asking me what the hell offline CGI is) she couldn't tell the difference.
We all here can tell the difference, and still will even when we get real time path-traced Reyes games, we'll still know where to look for flaws to point out. The eyes of enthusiasts and profecionals is a stupid metric for such an casual and subjective (and cleary non technical) comparison in my opinon.
I think these proves game devs have gotten their priorities right so far.
Come on guys, this is Beyond 3d, I can't believe any user here would seriously propose a game has reach the same level of geometry complexity, texture resolution or IQ of a motion picture. Stating those easy differences is a bit obvious in my opinion, It should be obvious the comparison is not meant to be taken so literally. Show footage of DriveClub to my mother, and the V-Ray demo reel posted earlier, and ask her which one is a game and which is offline CGI, and I wouldn't be surprised if (after asking me what the hell offline CGI is) she couldn't tell the difference.
We all here can tell the difference, and still will even when we get real time path-traced Reyes games, we'll still know where to look for flaws to point out. The eyes of enthusiasts and profecionals is a stupid metric for such an casual and subjective (and cleary non technical) comparison in my opinon.
I think these proves game devs have gotten their priorities right so far.
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Looks very very good and pretty close to The Spirits Within..BUT then you see something like this:
And realize that there is still a long way to go..Multiple layers of scattering is going to look leagues better than the painted texture look with a spherical harmonics approximation to SSS on Nathan.
Those are some good teeth!
Coz we can only manage it some of the time, and in limited circumstances (corridor shooter) plus, as others say, CGI is a moving target. As we get used to the look of games, we start to notice their flaws more. When we get 'like a CGI' in COD and Madden with photoreal people etc., then we can call it a day.Well hell! If that was the case, why does the gaming development community need to keep progressing? Call it a day since people are saying games like the Order look CGI.
