"Nerve-Damage"
Regular
Why do GT games look so freakin good?
- Thread starter Cheezdoodles
- Start date
1/ the cars are certainly hand modeled.Granted ,it's a long and tedious work .
2/ HOS surfaces are just that : surface description with less control points. the exact oposite of your sample.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Ofcourse they are hand modelled, but all 100k poly's? I've never ever heard of anyone modelling a car and not using a smoother (unless its a low poly car ofcourse). You probably cant even get a perfect result by just hand modelling because at some parts everything is so close together its impossible to put every vertices in exactly the right spot.
Maybe you have a source on how PD or any other racegamer maker builds its car models?
Maybe you have a source on how PD or any other racegamer maker builds its car models?
true
yes of the nearly 2 pages of answers thats the main replys,
aka i/we dont know
if u have no idea then please dont write "better art", "bigger budget/more effort", "shitty background/resource allocation". (ild chuck in the num of polygons discussion as well)
Ostepop ( i assume ) + me are wanting valid answers, what we have here is nearly as bad as the gamedev thread
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
You'll still need it for the finer details rather than the parts that are smooth. It's wasteful to be throwing polygons at things like embossed emblems and fine details like the trim lines and minuscule gaps where edges need be rounded off with a very tiny radius. Putting that in geometry can mean a lot of subpixel polys for that matter. Instead, you'd use some low-detail geometry to get the general effect if needed, and then throw normal maps on it.
Either way, it seems to me that you're dealing with a very "ideal-izable" case. A lot of the very same lighting models we'd normally associate with looking fake or "too perfect" look good in the case of a car. We're more accustomed to seeing cars in real life looking miraculously smooth and shiny at auto shows or whatever. We all love to talk about how Phong illumination makes things look plastic, but when you're dealing with an object that actually has plastic trim pieces or plastic bumpers... well, you can see where this is going. It takes a hideous degree of fine-tuning and touchup work, but it is possible to get some pretty good results on something mechanical without the aid of anything fancy.
Conversely, in just about any racing game, you can't say that the human beings look as good as the cars do. But then your eyes are not focusing on them, so it doesn't really matter that much. Technically, there are visual things about the cars themselves which are actually not quite right (the wheel blur, for instance), but they're so small-scale and hidden by the fact that the overall lighting looks as good as it does that you just don't notice.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I understand that you dont want to waste poly's on things like the rims. But I was mostly talking about the main body, I dont assume you really need normalmaps for that if you got 100k on poly's to spend.
I dont understand the second part of your post though and how that relates to what I posted. Or was that comment aimed at everyone and not at me?
I dont understand the second part of your post though and how that relates to what I posted. Or was that comment aimed at everyone and not at me?
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
That second part was aimed at everyone. That was more on the main topic
Yeah, it's true that you don't really need normal maps for the main body. The question of whether they use one big normal map for the entire body including the smoother regions or they use a bunch of localized normal maps for the detail areas (and just plain per-pixel normalization for the rest of the body) is something I don't really know for sure. Unless there was an abnormally large number of these little key details, I would personally want to veer more towards the latter option. Yeah, you have more textures, but it means being able to get more texel density without needing more massively high-res textures (which in turn saves memory and gets you higher detail to boot). Moreover, because logos and insignia are generally brand-uniform, you can share a lot of these detail maps across multiple cars, which you can't really do if those details are embedded in a "master" normal map for the whole car.
Yeah, it's true that you don't really need normal maps for the main body. The question of whether they use one big normal map for the entire body including the smoother regions or they use a bunch of localized normal maps for the detail areas (and just plain per-pixel normalization for the rest of the body) is something I don't really know for sure. Unless there was an abnormally large number of these little key details, I would personally want to veer more towards the latter option. Yeah, you have more textures, but it means being able to get more texel density without needing more massively high-res textures (which in turn saves memory and gets you higher detail to boot). Moreover, because logos and insignia are generally brand-uniform, you can share a lot of these detail maps across multiple cars, which you can't really do if those details are embedded in a "master" normal map for the whole car.
Yes inefficient, at the rate it's going... the moment they can mix in videos of race queens and models in their GT TV channel, I will no longer feel the urge to attend auto-shows.
After creating the perfect model of the car it´s important to present it as well.
PD uses all the tricks from movies and then some. If you watch the replays with a directors eye you can see alot of effort goes into presenting the best angles and doing the best camera moves. GT3 has many examples, on Laguna Seca on the stretch to the finish line the camera moves along with the car, the sun is low on the horizon behind the car, it´s pretty awesome how they set every shot like a scene from a movies.
Example of the laguna seca:
Movie example
PD uses all the tricks from movies and then some. If you watch the replays with a directors eye you can see alot of effort goes into presenting the best angles and doing the best camera moves. GT3 has many examples, on Laguna Seca on the stretch to the finish line the camera moves along with the car, the sun is low on the horizon behind the car, it´s pretty awesome how they set every shot like a scene from a movies.
Example of the laguna seca:
Movie example
Blade47167
Newcomer
I've read articles were they've stated it can take over a month per car. So by hand seems almost 100% guaranteed. Especially with the level of perfection that they constantly demand of their games.
For me it's the opposite :I've never ever heard of anyone modelling a car and using a smoother for gzme models (outside surface extraction) in gaming industry.The coders just wouldn't allow it.
There is also very good resurfacing tools out there ,to rebuild a lower and clean poly model from a *whatever solution* modeled high poly.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Well being the noob modeller i am I never read on any forum about people modelling their cars all by hand. The way I do it, and the way i've seen everybody else do it is just build a low poly model and use meshmooth or whatever smoother your 3d app has to make it look good.
I dont see why a coder wouldnt allow that, it doesnt make a difference if you place them by hand or use a smoother because its all in one mesh anyway.
I dont see why a coder wouldnt allow that, it doesnt make a difference if you place them by hand or use a smoother because its all in one mesh anyway.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Just out of curiosity, what exactly do you define as a mesh smoother? Packages like MAX and Maya, for instance, use the term "mesh smooth" to refer to an operation which is both a subdivide and a smooth. That, I can certainly see programmers having an issue with as it can increase polycount really fast if what you're building is not a normal map source geometry.
Smoothing alone without subdivision is closer to what MAX would call the "relax" operation, in which the idea is simply to reduce hard corners, misalignments, and drastic directional changes between adjacent polys, without actually increasing the polycount. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's not that unusual to use it for something loaded with large-radius curves.
standing ovation
Regular
It's more than lighting. It's more than colors. It's cinematography!
The Grand Canyon circuit was striking with the way the foreground seemed to melt into those background photographs. Now if they could only bring photography into the foreground as well ...
Microsoft Research may be on to something with Photosynth. Down the road, graphics for end-users may not involve polygons but pictures. Why waste time with the former when the latter will almost always be more convincing?
I'm glad that we've finally come to a consensus that GT looks better than any of it's competitors. Thank god for that.
I have an explanation to add:
GT is and always has been the creative product of one (1) director/producer. So not only do they have a tone of time and money to work with, but they don't have a bunch of assholes wasting those resources trying to get their ideas and bits into the game.
It's what gives the product a strong identity. Always with the light jazz music in the menus. The emphasis on photography and lens use and lighting. They lack of damage.
All becasue Yamauchi likes jazz, loves photography and has no desire to see cars all smashed up just for the sake of it.
Most, if not all games/artwork/movies/plays//kitchens/etc benefit from having a single strong creative lead.
I have an explanation to add:
GT is and always has been the creative product of one (1) director/producer. So not only do they have a tone of time and money to work with, but they don't have a bunch of assholes wasting those resources trying to get their ideas and bits into the game.
It's what gives the product a strong identity. Always with the light jazz music in the menus. The emphasis on photography and lens use and lighting. They lack of damage.
All becasue Yamauchi likes jazz, loves photography and has no desire to see cars all smashed up just for the sake of it.
Most, if not all games/artwork/movies/plays//kitchens/etc benefit from having a single strong creative lead.
Wait wait wait. The cars look the best in GT5 Prologue, but other than that there's nothing extraordinary. Aliasing is very bad, reflections in mirrors have extremely low resolution and shadows are very jaggy. Not only that, but environments are quite simple. imo it's not better than competition.
I haven't played the series for a long time, but most of my frinds who have complain about stagnation and lack of substantial innovation in series. Is it really creative?
edit: I know this post may sound extremely provocative (for some oversensitive people), but I'm really no Gran Turismo hater and just stating my observations.
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I dunno, the cars look great but the environments seem bare. It's almost like the a-team worked on the cars, and the rest was outsourced. I just saw this link in another thread on PGR:
http://www.gamersyde.com/news_4905_en.html.
I watched that video. Comparing the two, do you guys feel that GT Prologue looks better than that? Just wondering what you guys are seeing that I'm not. For example, the shot of the viper going over the bridge with the camera locked to the front of the viper looks almost real.
djskribbles
Legend
its quite obvious the rear/side mirrors are not finished yet and they just put those in for place holders. they even said that in the dev walkthrough video.
as for the environments, they are simple because thats how they are. GT uses real tracks, its not like they're going to throw a bunch of city building at Laguna Seca just to make it look pretty. wait until we see some city tracks before you say such things. imo, previous GT's had above average environments, and overall, the best visuals.
as for aliasing, i have to agree. i wish they targeted 720p with anti-aliasing instead of 1080p without. hopefully they can add some AA in the final product. still, aliasing does not make it look worse overall.
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