Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio to develop Xbox 360 Splinter Cell

[Laa-Yosh]

And that's from our resident cynic cgi artist....that gets me excited for next gen pretty much more than anything I've heard hear to date.

Obviously I haven't seen it myself, so it's more about having a lot of trust that TN will deliver
I also have to add that I'm quite more impressed with the concept stuff on their website, compared to the art of the E3 trailer. Character design in there just looked odd, couldn't really make out what was what...

Anyway, the thing to keep in mind with what we've seen from nextgen so far is that artists are still learning how to deal with the huge changes in the asset creation.
They can use a few lights only, if they want to have fully dynamic shadows, and it's pretty hard to light a scene that way. Radiosity solutions won't help them anymore. They have to deal with surface attributes, they must make materials look different, they can't just paint in the highlights into the single color texture now. And the amount of detail they must put into everything has at least quadrupled too, on top of this all, so they have to build more things, in more complicated ways. Get more efficient, or build a larger team and manage that more efficiently... it's difficult in all cases.
So they need a little more time to get the hang of things - and we still haven't touched the programing related problems yet...


Am I really looking that cynical though?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

if the trailer is all CG, why the huge discrepancy between the scenes? If it's all CG, then some of it is much much better than the rest, do they have 2 seperate CG teams??

They are probably making several cinematics, and they must prioritize, given the budget and the time constraints. It's always a lot of hard decisions, especially because most artists tend to be perfectionalists at heart - but not every studio has the luxury of polishing their stuff to the end like Blizzard...

If the in-game models are not at least as good as those shots I posted, it will not be a very large step up from SC 3

The realtime stuff won't neccessarily look bad, it can even be better altogether, especially when the CGI assets are rushed and the ingame stuff is polished...
All that I'm saying is that hardware rendered scenes will look different because of the physical constraints in image quality. You will always be able to spot the sharp aliasing artifacts, the 'blury' textures, and all such stuff, that's evident in every real screenshot we've seen. It may not be as important to you as it is to me, but that's an occupational hazard really...

 

[Mmmkay]

New Trailer: http://xboxmovies.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/2840/Tom-Clancys-Splinter-Cell-Double-Agent/

That looks like it has lots of realtime footage to me. For example, the intro screen looks like it shifts from realtime to rendered. He's sitting in the plane, it's the real sam character model, with some facial animations, then he tosses the goggles out the plane and it lands in water that clearly looks CG.

This is probably what Ubi meant when they said they are "blurring the line between realtime and CG cut-scenes"

That's the exact same trailer as the one with the attached 'CGI Trailer for Internet' message. If you want to discredit the authenticity of that then you should probably take that up with the editor-in-chief of gaming-age (note: Not the forum) who posted the video in the first place.

You will always be able to spot the sharp aliasing artifacts, the 'blury' textures, and all such stuff, that's evident in every real screenshot we've seen

Seriously! I mean come on guys, there are tell tale signs of real-time 'defects' which set them apart from CGI. We're a couple of generations off yet before these distinctions become too hard to spot.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Seriously! I mean come on guys, there are tell tale signs of real-time 'defects' which set them apart from CGI. We're a couple of generations off yet before these distinctions become too hard to spot.

i thought the low polygon character model for sam, and rough facial animations made it quite clear that the model was realtime.

The plane scene for example, if that's CG it's noticeably worse than the CG on the xbox1 version.

 

[Mmmkay]

i thought the low polygon character model for sam, and rough facial animations made it quite clear that the model was realtime.

The plane scene for example, if that's CG it's noticeably worse than the CG on the xbox1 version.

His teeth, they 'gleam' when they catch the light as he's taking his goggles off. Bad CGI is not 'proof' that it's realtime, especially when it says that it is a CGI trailer.

 

[seismologist]

i thought the low polygon character model for sam, and rough facial animations made it quite clear that the model was realtime.

And suddenly the shoe is on the other foot.

It looks like obvious CG to me. It didn't even have that rendered to spec CG look like the PS3 demos.

 

[mckmas8808]

Seriously! I mean come on guys, there are tell tale signs of real-time 'defects' which set them apart from CGI. We're a couple of generations off yet before these distinctions become too hard to spot.

A couple of generations? Man you're talking about 2016 right? You think games in the year 2016 will look like that trailer?

Yeah okay. lol

 

[Mmmkay]

A couple of generations? Man you're talking about 2016 right? You think games in the year 2016 will look like that trailer?

Yeah okay. lol

I meant in general, not specifically that real time graphics would match this CGI trailer in 2016. And I was talking about the distinctions, i.e. texture aliasing, lighting, and geometry which set apart CGI from realtime that would become more difficult to spot.

'Couple of generations' was just an off the cuff remark. I just mean we're a while away from this yet.

 

[mckmas8808]

I meant in general, not specifically that real time graphics would match this CGI trailer in 2016. And I was talking about the distinctions, i.e. texture aliasing, lighting, and geometry which set apart CGI from realtime that would become more difficult to spot.

'Couple of generations' was just an off the cuff remark. I just mean we're a while away from this yet.

Oh okay cool. I just had to ask because some people have said a couple of generations and actually meant it as in PS4 or PS5.

 

[scooby_dooby]

And suddenly the shoe is on the other foot.

It looks like obvious CG to me. It didn't even have that rendered to spec CG look like the PS3 demos.

lol, maybe it is CG, i could really care less since we know the game will look deadly. I just don't think this is all CG, and ubisoft has not said either way so....

 

[valioso]

so no one is considering that it may be footage from the xbox version and not the 360? I watched the tv trailer thursday and it didnt say it was 360 footage, nor has it been confirmed by ubisoft.. either way, is been delayed 9 months, so thats quite a bit to bring the graphics up.

 

[czekon]

new read on kikizo

http://games.kikizo.com/news/200602/075_p2.asp

Xbox 360 will be exactly the same story and plotline, but with almost entirely different level designs from the current-gen versions, and with a unique set of 360-only online battle modes that are currently top secret. Because of the 360's extra horsepower, weather FX in the game will be used as an extra tactical layer in the level design.

 

[Sis]

new read on kikizo

"Because of the 360's extra horsepower, weather FX in the game will be used as an extra tactical layer in the level design. "

Is it just me, or does anyone else's bullshit detector go off every time the term "we can do feature X because of the extra power in [brand new console Y]"?

 

[Lysander]

new cool

http://www.360monster.com/mediaview.php?id=0000000152

 

[scooby_dooby]

Is it just me, or does anyone else's bullshit detector go off every time the term "we can do feature X because of the extra power in [brand new console Y]"?

Ya I dunno, they already used weather effects heavily in SC3. When thunder clapped, you could shoot without being heard, when lightning flashed it would expose your position, rain provided some sound masking. I don't know what more they could do really...

Btw, those pics look awesome, notice how there's 2 players in 2 of the pics...campaign co-op mode!?

 

[AlNom]

Btw, those pics look awesome, notice how there's 2 players in 2 of the pics...campaign co-op mode!?

They've mentioned several times that there will be AI helpers along the way...

 

[fearsomepirate]

I didn't want an Xbox 360 until right...now. Think the franchise will make it to Revo? They managed to keep it around on Gamecube, and I expect Revo to have the power to to the sorts of things that were in the Xbox versions.

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

I dont like the visual style of the game, IMO they look rubbish.

 

[czekon]

i'm not impressed too i was expecting something MGS4 like. Hope i'll change my mind when i will see some vids from X360 vers..

 

[Lysander]

old pics in 720p version
http://xboxyde.com/news_2685_en.html