Why do GT games look so freakin good?

[Daozang]

For GT5, it's 180 days actually, per car ...

That sounds very unlikely. Not to say impossible.
Maybe it be that a large team are doing it in a few days where one man would work for 180 to get to the same result? I think I've heard something like that..
Either way it is strange. A link would be appreciated!

 

[Neb]

I wonder this too.

I mean other than KZ2, I dont see PS3 and 360 looking that much apart.

Yet GT5 (car models) looks head and shoulders above PGR4.

Well, one thing I noticed is PGR4 has a ton of stuff going on (weather, tons of buildings, very busy backgrounds, neon lighting etc), while GT5 seems to have very bland, limited polygon backgrounds and trackside scenery, perhaps allowing them to concentrate on the car models?

It is all about balancing according to the machines maximum capabilities (or what the perfomance they can "extract"). If they put more detail and effects and such on the cars then they may have to sacrifice track details.

 

[Daozang]

I would think it's 180 days that it takes one single artist to model each car. If the work is split by 10 artists (Polyphony surely have quite a few artists) working on different parts of the car, it would be 18 days per artist per car.

My thoughts exactly. Although I didn't do the math... That way it does sound reasonable.

 

[_phil_]

Above all they have a good eye.Tha'ts what makes the difference.
Fine tunning at the most subtle level ( color is the most important factor,and a lot is at the texture level) when you don't have a runtime maxwell renderer is a matter of eye.

Now,GT5 have the best car paint shader out there.looking very much like BRDF.

 

[Graham]

They are simply being intelligent with the reflection and light modelling. The eye doesn't focus on the reflection, so it's often times a hard thing to measure. They may also be doing smart things with their normals. The surfaces all look smooth, with no obvious signs of linear interpolation of normals. So it's either very high res normal maps (which I'm not so sure on), or they are doing something smart between the VS/PS to keep the normals in check.

At the end of the day, it's all trade offs. The cars generally don't have many texture resources, but have a lot of geometry. Other games favor texture heavy cars.

Not to say it's anything out of this world amazing or special. There are certainly other racing games out there with comparable light modeling. It mostly just comes down to art style and design trade offs (including both system resources and money). - And of course viewer perceptions and assumptions.

 

[Daozang]

Above all they have a good eye.Tha'ts what makes the difference.

I have to agree. I think PD have great artists. Technically Forza 2 might be on par or even (uneducated guess) better, but GT5 seems to focus only on things that mater the most.
The end results are IMO more pleasing to the eye, more impressive.

 

[nintenho]

I would think it's 180 days that it takes one single artist to model each car. If the work is split by 10 artists (Polyphony surely have quite a few artists) working on different parts of the car, it would be 18 days per artist per car.

yeah I figured they'd have people who model wheels, dashboards, body panels, etc. but it still seems really long since they said it takes a month per car for GT4.

Do a side-by-side. PD just plain nails the colors and reflectivity, where the lesser studios (i.e. everyone except PD ) just don't get it quite right. That's part lighting, part texturing, and part shaders.

I don't know, Dirt looked really good but it's got motion-blur and it's 30 fps. the way the car looks when standing still is still REALLY good plus there's damage.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

They are simply being intelligent with the reflection and light modelling. The eye doesn't focus on the reflection, so it's often times a hard thing to measure. They may also be doing smart things with their normals. The surfaces all look smooth, with no obvious signs of linear interpolation of normals. So it's either very high res normal maps (which I'm not so sure on), or they are doing something smart between the VS/PS to keep the normals in check.

At the end of the day, it's all trade offs. The cars generally don't have many texture resources, but have a lot of geometry. Other games favor texture heavy cars.

Not to say it's anything out of this world amazing or special. There are certainly other racing games out there with comparable light modeling. It mostly just comes down to art style and design trade offs (including both system resources and money). - And of course viewer perceptions and assumptions.

I dont think you need normalmaps or anything like that if you have 100k poly's for a car, it will be smooth by itself if you got that many poly's to spend.

 

[Phil]

yeah I figured they'd have people who model wheels, dashboards, body panels, etc. but it still seems really long since they said it takes a month per car for GT4.

Perhaps - then again, I would think an increase by 6 is fairly reasonable given that now, they are not only modeling the outside of the car, but also the interior (which should be a fair bit more complex given the small details and everything). Then, there's also the damage that's been added (though I wonder how much the artists work accounts there if at all)...

 

[Dr. Nick]

I've been asking about this for awhile now. It obviously isn't that simple to mimic otherwise I can think of a few companies that would have used a long time ago for their racing games. Whatever they are doing for the lighting can almost be considered perfect. The lighting and the colors of GT5 give it more of an on TV look in comparisons to some of these other games that still look like PC titles in a way. Forza 2 has it's moments but comes across more as low rent CG when compared to GT5.

I will say that it is true that the main focus is on the Cars and the road they drive on. When looking back at GT4 you tell that is what they care about the most. They don't waste a lot of ploys on the environment other than the road of course and will use 2D backdrops very close to the road and it works well. I'm surprised that some of these other studios haven't used these tactics yet.

 

[Arwin]

Perhaps - then again, I would think an increase by 6 is fairly reasonable given that now, they are not only modeling the outside of the car, but also the interior (which should be a fair bit more complex given the small details and everything). Then, there's also the damage that's been added (though I wonder how much the artists work accounts there if at all)...

I got that figure from the GDC developer interview linked in this thread. That has Yamauchi and his English speaking friend tell us its 180 days per car, with emphasis and a 'we know, it's crazy' look.

Yes, of course they mean 180 days per car in terms of work hours, and in reality the work is split over several artists. In one of the earlier videos you could see a woman working on modelling the dashboard (which, since it is working in each car, is quite a lot of work right there).

So let's say double the complexity for adding the interior, and the rest for just having 50x the amount of polygons to manage (and hence detail). Also, they can do more with the sound of the cars, I presume.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

50x more poly's doesnt mean 50 times more work though. They just use turbosmooth/meshsmooth or whatever kind of smooth they have in their 3d app and you'll have to do some tweaks to get it perfect but its not like they are placing tens of thousands of poly's by hand.

 

[Arwin]

If I used that kind of calculation, it would have been a simple 30 (days for 4000 polys) x 50 = 1500 days ...

 

[RobertR1]

Hate to break up the technical discussion. It's quite clear that PD is VERY talented and good at what they do. The other factor is budget!

Since the GT series sells so well and it's guaranteed to have a few million sales they can afford to take their time and put all that talent to use as intended. With GT5 they clearly seem to be taking their sweet time. The results of which are obvious. This is a good thing. I'm sure even with their talent, had they been tied to a deadline to release the game this year they might had to make considerable cuts. time = money. and they can afford to spend. Really glad they do

 

[inefficient]

I remember being blown away by the PS2's original GT demo. I watched it over and over thinking it had to be impossible. And of course the Ridge Racer girl knocked my socks off as well.

 

[_phil_]

They just use turbosmooth/meshsmooth or whatever kind of smooth

No way.very bad idea.
Much more probably, they modeled cars using nurbs then converted and tweaked them into polygons.

 

[Acert93]

While PD know their technical stuff (maybe better than everyone else) and have the budgets to pull it off, I think as much as all the other points combined you have to balance it with an eye toward art. Some early shots lacked reflections and still rocked. Graphics aren't photorealistic yet, so the key is getting the most bang for buck, which as Graham noted takes gauging viewer expectations and then fine tuning it for such.

This (and all following) generations really leans on art more so than raw technology, which means balancing your art and technology choices well (and not just grab bagging every PR buzzword technology and tossing it in because it is cool to do). /broken record

 

[Cryect]

I wonder do they do any sort of BRDF or have BRDF's for the various materials on the various cars to tune their shaders to or actually potentially just store BRDF texture for each of the car materials (though that one seems unlikely).

 

[betan]

Hate to break up the technical discussion. It's quite clear that PD is VERY talented and good at what they do. The other factor is budget!

Honestly I don't see much technical discussion.
We know that GT5 has great looking cars -16 of them- , an inside view, 1080p @60 fps.

Naturally every now and then people ask "how?".

The answers are always like "better art", "bigger budget/more effort", "shitty background/resource allocation", etc.

All we know is there is no magic involved.

Honestly though, I consider inside view inferior to their excellence in car shading or even background. It looks so video-game like, average looking that is, admittedly with nice lighting.

So whatever the reason is, it's not working there.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

No way.very bad idea.
Much more probably, they modeled cars using nurbs then converted and tweaked them into polygons.

Not that im even close to being a professional but in the end both poly and nurbs modelling come down to the same, you have to make all the points yourself. This is what a 80k model looks like, placing them all by hand is impossible not to mention if you want to tweak something.

I could very well be wrong, but doign everything by hand seems very unlikely to me.