Uncharted 4: A Thief's End [PS4]

[Warchild]

As for adaptive tessellation, Hable talks about having this feature for this generation even if used in the most extreme cases. So what about tessellating only the silhouette? All in all, Hable’s presentation provides some very interesting clues as to the future of Naughty Dog’s lighting techniques for Uncharted 4 on the PS4.

 

[ultragpu]

Good find, Crysis 3 retail version did miss out on the adaptive tessellation, we'll see if UC4 actually use it. Also very interested in the SHAO.

 

[London Geezer]

So in theory adaptive tessellation takes a tiny amount of resources compared to full-on tess. Interesting

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just curious, can anyone find any polygonal edges on Drake?

Yes. Zoomed in on his nose in the opening close-up, you can see a couple of vertices.

 

[ultragpu]

Yes. Zoomed in on his nose in the opening close-up, you can see a couple of vertices.

You lie Shifty! Come on now the nose is perfectly smooth.

 

[DieH@rd]

All that I could find is small part of his back shoulder that looked funky.
http://abload.de/img/greenshot_2014-06-15_grl7w.jpg
http://abload.de/img/greenshot_2014-06-15_arzih.jpg
http://abload.de/img/greenshot_2014-06-15_joy9j.jpg

 

[ultragpu]

Yeah even that could just be crease or something. Everything else including his fingers, ears, gun harness and many parts of his muscle group are all modeled to extreme smoothness. That's definitely not the result of a typical 60-70k model my friend, ND isn't telling us something.
Any thoughts on this master Laa Yosh?

 

[Warchild]

I don't know if this is supposed to be impressive or not but the face is only 4,684 polys with adaptive tessellation applied to it. Looks really round.

Uncharted 4 must be using this, but i wonder if the last of us remaster will use it or is it something that has to be implemented as you're designing the character model? I think it was Laa-Yosh mentioning something about this.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Uncharted 4 is almost certainly not using that tech.

First of all this is built around scanning a real living human, and that data will provide various details like color and normal textures, expressions, even color maps with blood flow changes.

Now the entire workflow of this tech is about acquiring the scan data and processing it down to a set of textures and blendshapes and such; there's a lot of custom code involved and while it's possible to tweak the final results, it still requires that source data and without that you don't get anything.

Also, this tech uses a relatively low res model because a lot of the detail from the real life talent is captured and represented in the textures (color and normal) and so they don't need more mesh detail.


Naughty Dog however prefers to hand sculpt their characters and so they can't rely on scan data (although they'll probably study real world anatomy and such).
For them it makes more sense to keep the number of maps down (especially with 60 fps) and add more of the facial wrinkles into the actual geometry instead. The joint based rigging approach also works better if they have more vertices to work with. So they probably have a model that's detailed enough to work without tessellation.
Also note that Drake's eyelids, nostrils, lips and other forward-facing facial features are nicely curved as well - so if there's tessellation going on, it's certainly not applied to silhouettes only.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

I just downloaded the 60fps trailer on my phone* and it looks absolutely insane. I'm certain we're going to have LOD drops for normal gameplay, not sure I care though. These second/third phase games are looking great.


*wasn't sure whether it'd play properly, but it certainly did - HTC One M8

 

[ultragpu]

Thanks Laa-yosh, whatever they did with the poly budget is truly outstanding then. I guess this gen is all about surface shaders, muscle simulation, animation and hair rendering more than raw polycount in characters.

 

[patsu]

I for one dont understand why they are shooting for 60fps.
Its begining to seem like it's all about the marketing.
I just dont see them being able to pull off all the characters at that high of detail level while having multiple enemies on screen in a detail rich enviroment at 1080p 60fps.
Something will have to be sacraficed. Whether it be Npc character quality or background detail or number of enemies on screen. I hope they can pull it off. I just dont see the necesity of 60 fps in this type of game.

I am a little surprised they went with 60fps too, but not from user perspective. Core gamers will probably benefit or even appreciate it.

But from Playstation Now's perspective, it may mean a tougher future target to hit.

 

[Xbat]

I feel anouncing you targeting 60 fps can only get you in trouble. By all means target 60 fps and if you hit it awesome but only anounce it once its a lock.
That way you get a positive vibe going just before the game is released but if for some reason you cant hit 60 fps and you have anounced it earlier prepare for a shitstorm.
Doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

My worry isn't that they're targetting 60fps, as it suggests a possible VR implementation. Rather, I'm worried that Uncharted wouldn't compliment VR, to my mind the game would need to change almost completely.

Hopefully we don't get a situation where developers are somewhat pressured to use VR regardless of whether their game suits the device.

 

[DieH@rd]

I think that they are building the game to run on 1080p60 because they dont want to create uber detailed game assets for 1080p30 this early in the console cycle. Their studio is small, much of the crew was tied up in TLOU, and they are aiming for 2015 release for U4. Producing lowpoly assets (except hero charachers) is most probably their only chance to hit their targets.

 

[loekf]

I think that they are building the game to run on 1080p60 because they dont want to create uber detailed game assets for 1080p30 this early in the console cycle. Their studio is small, much of the crew was tied up in TLOU, and they are aiming for 2015 release for U4. Producing lowpoly assets (except hero charachers) is most probably their only chance to hit their targets.

I wouldn't call a "few hundred" devs a small studio. I think they had ~90 people working on UC2. If they have indeed 2 teams, they should have something like 200 employees. AFAIK, there's also an "ICE" team at ND, doing driver stuff, graphics engine work, from which all game studios benefit.

 

[DieH@rd]

They don't have 2 teams. They have one production team, one small team that works on pre-production, and few dozen people on other tasks. Full studio size is 200 + 30 contractors.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...naughty-dog-uncharted-and-the-last-of-us.aspx

 

[Sigfried1977]

I feel anouncing you targeting 60 fps can only get you in trouble. By all means target 60 fps and if you hit it awesome but only anounce it once its a lock.
That way you get a positive vibe going just before the game is released but if for some reason you cant hit 60 fps and you have anounced it earlier prepare for a shitstorm.
Doesn't make sense to me.

If it hits 60fps the way Tomb Raider hits 60 fps then that's certainly good enough for me.

 

[Xbat]

For me an uncaped framerate is fine as long as it doesn't dip below 45fps. Games that hover between 30 and 40 should really be locked at 30 fps

 

[TomRL]

Are Naughty Dog's PS2 games 60fps? Perhaps when the gpu to cpu power ratio is right they switch to targeting 60fps. Because the PS2 had a power ratio similar to PS4 in that the GPU is bloated and the cpu isn't right?

It will be interesting to see how long they can remain the strongest in visual fidelity on PS4 and remain 60fps too.