Did you ever think...[Graphics]

Olivaw

PoP is more like a painting than a comic book

Borderlands is what you're thinking of

Wicked Uncle Ernie

While it is difficult to make the argument that video games are reaching that lofty height called Art, we cannot argue that Art goes into the making of video games. And in most art, the suggestion of the human form is usually more powerful and convincing than an attempt at perfect facsimile of the human form. this is just as true in video games. The upcoming Borderlands game is a perfect example. Trading bleeding edge technology aimed at reality for a more stylized art direction aimed at the suggestion of humanity, they have managed to make significantly more believable and memorable characters. just by virtue of image, we have no idea of their personality etc..

The caveat is that you dont need bleeding edge technology to do this. World of warcraft is a good example, its characters look right while they move about the world. but by todays standards the engine is lackluster. going further back, Flashback's hero was very convincing whilst he rolled and jumped around. In fact, i belive this hard-on for polygons is ultimately detrimental to gameplay and story.

Robman

I wouldn't say it's really a painting, it's like a fusion of comic book and watercolour style.

Robman

Wicked Uncle Ernie wrote: »

While it is difficult to make the argument that video games are reaching that lofty height called Art, we cannot argue that Art goes into the making of video games. And in most art, the suggestion of the human form is usually more powerful and convincing than an attempt at perfect facsimile of the human form. this is just as true in video games. The upcoming Borderlands game is a perfect example. Trading bleeding edge technology aimed at reality for a more stylized art direction aimed at the suggestion of humanity, they have managed to make significantly more believable and memorable characters. just by virtue of image, we have no idea of their personality etc..

The caveat is that you dont need bleeding edge technology to do this. World of warcraft is a good example, its characters look right while they move about the world. but by todays standards the engine is lackluster. going further back, Flashback's hero was very convincing whilst he rolled and jumped around. In fact, i belive this hard-on for polygons is ultimately detrimental to gameplay and story.

Shadow of the Collosus, Psychonauts, and The Longest Journey all leap to mind and refute your statement that games aren't art

Olivaw

Robman wrote: »

Wicked Uncle Ernie wrote: »

While it is difficult to make the argument that video games are reaching that lofty height called Art, we cannot argue that Art goes into the making of video games. And in most art, the suggestion of the human form is usually more powerful and convincing than an attempt at perfect facsimile of the human form. this is just as true in video games. The upcoming Borderlands game is a perfect example. Trading bleeding edge technology aimed at reality for a more stylized art direction aimed at the suggestion of humanity, they have managed to make significantly more believable and memorable characters. just by virtue of image, we have no idea of their personality etc..

The caveat is that you dont need bleeding edge technology to do this. World of warcraft is a good example, its characters look right while they move about the world. but by todays standards the engine is lackluster. going further back, Flashback's hero was very convincing whilst he rolled and jumped around. In fact, i belive this hard-on for polygons is ultimately detrimental to gameplay and story.

Shadow of the Collosus, Psychonauts, and The Longest Journey all leap to mind and refute your statement that games aren't art

He said "it is difficult to make the argument that video games are reaching that lofty height called Art"

He did NOT say "games aren't art"

Reading comprehension++

UncleSporky

I'm so tired of seeing these awesome, near-photorealistic graphics, and then you watch your guy climb a ladder and it's a completely obvious mocap that loops exactly once and has this awkward unrealistic look when you stop and change directions, nothing procedural/natural about it at all, can't even watch him breathing or turning his head to look around independently...

Animation is the next step. It's really easy to photograph a blade of grass at 1000x1000 pixels and tell the computer to repeat it a million times. It's harder to give a character real life besides programming in "run animation," "jump animation," "death animation."

EDIT: Wicked Ernie said mostly what I mean.

Olivaw

UncleSporky wrote: »

I'm so tired of seeing these awesome, near-photorealistic graphics, and then you watch your guy climb a ladder and it's a completely obvious mocap that loops exactly once and has this awkward unrealistic look when you stop and change directions, nothing procedural/natural about it at all, can't even watch him breathing or turning his head to look around independently...

Animation is the next step. It's really easy to photograph a blade of grass at 1000x1000 pixels and tell the computer to repeat it a million times. It's harder to give a character real life besides programming in "run animation," "jump animation," "death animation."

Preach the gospel, brotha Sporky

Robman

We need more skeletal animation systems. It's pretty sad that HL2 + Co. are still the games to beat, and they aren't even moc-cap'd iirc.

Olivaw

I think not being mocapped actually helps their animation, personally

Mocapped animation almost always looks mocapped when it's applied to models

UncleSporky

Robman wrote: »

We need more skeletal animation systems. It's pretty sad that HL2 + Co. are still the games to beat, and they aren't even moc-cap'd iirc.

Mocap is the lazy way out. When I see really good animation in games or movies, I usually read something later or hear from the devs that they mocapped sparingly and did a lot of keyframing with actual animators. Pixar does this all the time. Even cheaper movies like what Dreamworks churns out mocap the walking but keyframe the facial animation, because it looks far more natural.

The Sims isn't any technological marvel but I remember one of the facts mentioned in-game was that they'd mocapped walk cycles for the characters, but also had an animator create one on his own. The custom made one looked more natural and tested better with audiences.

emnmnme

What about Uncharted? A dozen unique idle poses and such.

Arrath

That was what struck me about a CryEngine 2 tech video saw, a bit about procedurally blended keyframed (I think) animations, as a character model walked, up hills, down hills, crouched, etc. It was smooth and natural and looked wonderful.

The nuke physics flattening a village at the end of the vid was icing on the cake.

thejazzman

One of the problems making animation in games is that the faster the player wants feedback, the more you have to bend the rules for how to animate an action. So like a good example is jumping, in a game that has a lot of precise platforming you don't want there to be much of a delay to your input, but the reality is you need time for your body to prepare for a big jump, you've also got stuff like players expecting every jump to go the same height/distance, but in real life that stuff depends on how much of a run up you've had etc, things which are rarely accounted for in games, partly because you don't want to frustrate a player by having the kind of variations you get in the real world get in the way of gameplay.

Stuff like run cycles that have procedural variation will become standard as time goes on (I think uncharted 2 does this if I recall correctly). The best solution imho is the sort of thing done in shadow of the collosus, where characters/collosi, had a mixture of hand keyframed sequences and procedural environment based animation rules. For example, a collosi would have a 'walk cycle' but its feet would automatically account for slopes and uneven ground. There was also a lot of procedural physis stuff going on with how wander gets tossed about while clinging to a collosus as it thrashes about.

Crysis has similar techniques to this where a humans movement animation will change naturally as it goes up a slope, or turns in a tight circle.


EDIT: Looks like the guy above me mentioned the Crysis stuff already

Jaunty

Darksier wrote: »

One of the struggles with art direction lies in that the camera for many games are fixed over the shoulder or "in the head" so to speak of the player character. A lot of what makes visual art work with the viewer are elements such as composition, and angle. These things are hard to control when the player is chasing chest high walls. I remember an area in Shadow of the Colossus where the camera shifts to a "side scrolling" angle to put a waterfall in the backdrop whereas if they opted to use the regular camera you may never have seen it...or at least not in the way the artist desired.

This is why 2d/2.5d is making a comeback, and I love it

BlueDestiny

thejazzman wrote: »

One of the problems making animation in games is that the faster the player wants feedback, the more you have to bend the rules for how to animate an action. So like a good example is jumping, in a game that has a lot of precise platforming you don't want there to be much of a delay to your input, but the reality is you need time for your body to prepare for a big jump, you've also got stuff like players expecting every jump to go the same height/distance, but in real life that stuff depends on how much of a run up you've had etc, things which are rarely accounted for in games, partly because you don't want to frustrate a player by having the kind of variations you get in the real world get in the way of gameplay.

Stuff like run cycles that have procedural variation will become standard as time goes on (I think uncharted 2 does this if I recall correctly). The best solution imho is the sort of thing done in shadow of the collosus, where characters/collosi, had a mixture of hand keyframed sequences and procedural environment based animation rules. For example, a collosi would have a 'walk cycle' but its feet would automatically account for slopes and uneven ground. There was also a lot of procedural physis stuff going on with how wander gets tossed about while clinging to a collosus as it thrashes about.

Crysis has similar techniques to this where a humans movement animation will change naturally as it goes up a slope, or turns in a tight circle.


EDIT: Looks like the guy above me mentioned the Crysis stuff already

Half-Life 2 had elements of this. The legs of characters would adjust to proper footing on uneven surfaces. Also, Robot Alchemic Drive for the PS2 had it, although it worked awkwardly in certain situations.

Wicked Uncle Ernie

Olivaw wrote: »

Robman wrote: »

Wicked Uncle Ernie wrote: »

While it is difficult to make the argument that video games are reaching that lofty height called Art, we cannot argue that Art goes into the making of video games. And in most art, the suggestion of the human form is usually more powerful and convincing than an attempt at perfect facsimile of the human form. this is just as true in video games. The upcoming Borderlands game is a perfect example. Trading bleeding edge technology aimed at reality for a more stylized art direction aimed at the suggestion of humanity, they have managed to make significantly more believable and memorable characters. just by virtue of image, we have no idea of their personality etc..

The caveat is that you dont need bleeding edge technology to do this. World of warcraft is a good example, its characters look right while they move about the world. but by todays standards the engine is lackluster. going further back, Flashback's hero was very convincing whilst he rolled and jumped around. In fact, i belive this hard-on for polygons is ultimately detrimental to gameplay and story.

Shadow of the Collosus, Psychonauts, and The Longest Journey all leap to mind and refute your statement that games aren't art

He said "it is difficult to make the argument that video games are reaching that lofty height called Art"

He did NOT say "games aren't art"

Reading comprehension++

This, thanks

Stormwatcher

UncleSporky wrote: »

Robman wrote: »

We need more skeletal animation systems. It's pretty sad that HL2 + Co. are still the games to beat, and they aren't even moc-cap'd iirc.

Mocap is the lazy way out. When I see really good animation in games or movies, I usually read something later or hear from the devs that they mocapped sparingly and did a lot of keyframing with actual animators. Pixar does this all the time. Even cheaper movies like what Dreamworks churns out mocap the walking but keyframe the facial animation, because it looks far more natural.

The Sims isn't any technological marvel but I remember one of the facts mentioned in-game was that they'd mocapped walk cycles for the characters, but also had an animator create one on his own. The custom made one looked more natural and tested better with audiences.

MoCap can work in very specific situations, though, like Gollum in the LotR movies. But there you have a good "motion" actor doing something very specific (ugh, hate repeating words like this) and mocapping the whole scenes, not just a bunch of movements that are going to be repeated.

But that also means that keyframing is just better for games.

sabyul

On the technical side, animation is kind of a huge problem in games.

1. Now that graphics are becoming more and more photorealistic, animations are looking more awkward when applied to something that looks real... in screenshots. For the illusion to work, animations must advance in quality faster than graphics, which just isn't possible given how parallel graphics tasks are (especially with the move toward multicore computing).

Some games have tried to take advantage of this. Heavenly Sword allegedly devoted 1 CPU core of the PS3 to animate Nariko's hair. Maybe they should have used that core to make the game run at an acceptable framerate.

2. Animation data is extraordinarily difficult to compress. Sexy algorithms can be written to imitate tangential curve interpolation and all that fun stuff, but those come at the cost of CPU. Since the world is moving to console gaming, it's relatively easy to anticipate the framerate at which the game runs, so animators will often bake their entire animation to completely conserve its quality, at the cost of its scalability, flexibility to blend with other animations, and a massive filesize increase.

3. Jazzman is correct that some main principles of animation (namely anticipation and followthrough) are very difficult to nail down in games because when the user presses A, he'd rather see his character jump than see his character shift his weight in believable preparation of his jump. A game like Assassin's Creed gets away with beautifully believable animation because the player's input is not direct control of the character, but rather simply a guiding suggestion. "Do crazy shit in this direction" =/= "Jump as soon as I press this button"

My favorite games like Street Fighter or Devil May Cry have extremely complex "cancel" systems build into the gameplay, because cheating your way out of the animation is often very beneficial to the gameplay.

4. Motion capture is useful. This does not mean it's better, because keyframed animation (generally with video reference) is always best, and theoretically they take the same amount of resources. The difference is that mocap takes technical guys and expensive equipment to get working properly, whereas keyframe animation takes specialized artists, and takes much longer. For a software company, it's a much better bet that they have more engineers on staff than artists, making motion capture an easy choice.

Robman

Really what someone needs to do is like what Valve did with facial animations/speech matching to the whole body. Create 'feelings' for non-critical characters, so that you can convey fear, aggression, etc and apply it to the whole body skeleton, and couple that with AI behaviours. Imagine in HL2 Ep3, if you're fighting with some resistance members and you hear a gunship approaching. Everyone gets a panicked look and starts running for cover ASAP, and huddles under whatever they can find.

Imagine the Combine spotting you, and immediately starting aggresive supression fire as they try and flank you. The supression fire causes your fellow resistance members to run for cover and to try and counter the flanking move with grenades in the likely avenues of attack. You'd see hesitation and fear in your squadmates, you'd see robotic precision in the combine. Fuck that would be sweet.

Rex Dart

I remember the last time I was ever blown away by graphical realism was in Shenmue. I had never imagined I'd experience a game like that so soon. I marveled at every little detail.

But it also made me realize that complete photo-realism wasn't too far off. Even though it blew me away in 2000, seeing stuff like Crysis doesn't amaze me. I certainly appreciate it, but I also feel like it was an obvious, almost inevitable, advancement.

emnmnme

Who here would like to go back in time and give their ten year old self an XBOX with Shadow Complex on it?

Jaunty

"What the heck is HD?"

Bartholamue

Back then, for me, it was, "What the heck is progressive scan?"

maximumzero

emnmnme wrote: »

Who here would like to go back in time and give their ten year old self an Gamecube with Metroid Prime on it?

Me.

Halfmex

emnmnme wrote: »

Who here would like to go back in time and give their ten year old self an XBOX with Shadow Complex on it?

When I was ten years old, the NES had literally just been released. Keep in mind, the idea of a "control pad" was entirely foreign to people (such as myself) who only had joysticks as their primary input device, so a 360 pad would A) be way too large for me at the time and B) probably cause me to have a seizure trying to figure it all out. It'd be like handing a calculator to a pilgrim.

Asamof the Horrible

I can't believe somebody actually suggested tech replacing artists, scanning people into the game. If this actually happened at some point then games would die for me

a good example of tech vs art is EQ2 vs WoW. EQ2 was way more advanced and had mocap animations, but everything looked wrong and ugly. as gabe had said, the world looked like it was created by mathematics rather than art

then you have WoW, and we all know how that turned out.

also I don't think there's anything wrong with mocap as long as there's artists to go over it and add their own flair to it. that's how the dead or alive games are animated

NotYou

Asamof the Horrible wrote: »

I can't believe somebody actually suggested tech replacing artists, scanning people into the game. If this actually happened at some point then games would die for me

a good example of tech vs art is EQ2 vs WoW. EQ2 was way more advanced and had mocap animations, but everything looked wrong and ugly. as gabe had said, the world looked like it was created by mathematics rather than art

then you have WoW, and we all know how that turned out.

also I don't think there's anything wrong with mocap as long as there's artists to go over it and add their own flair to it. that's how the dead or alive games are animated

They already scan people in, although it's largely used for nailing celebrity likenesses perfectly. Tons of cleanup to do for the artists though, so time isn't really saved. It just removes the artistic element.

slash000

Asamof the Horrible wrote: »

I can't believe somebody actually suggested tech replacing artists, scanning people into the game. If this actually happened at some point then games would die for me

a good example of tech vs art is EQ2 vs WoW.

This made me think of something else actually.

Mortal Kombat, versus Street Fighter II.

In one case, you literally have people "scanned" into the game. In the other, you have the characters completely created by artists.

One game looks like total and complete ass. The other looks great.



Of course this example isn't per se applicable to 'modern' times, but it does go to show that fancy tech innovations don't necessarily replace artistic renditions.

Robman

I would go back in time with a computer loaded with FS:X with tons of scenarios and some head tracking hardware to look around. Holy shit that game is cool.

Zombiemambo

Bartholamue wrote: »

Back then, for me, it was, "What the heck is progressive scan?"

I still don't know

Hockey Johnston

Rex Dart wrote: »

I remember the last time I was ever blown away by graphical realism was in Shenmue. I had never imagined I'd experience a game like that so soon. I marveled at every little detail.

I agree. That's the first game I remember really evoking a location in me -- and it was possible to do even on 1999 tech. More games should be set in the recent past, or in smaller towns. I'd like to see more realism in settings, even though we're usually talking about graphical fidelity and characters.

Zombiemambo

Hockey Johnston wrote: »

Rex Dart wrote: »

I remember the last time I was ever blown away by graphical realism was in Shenmue. I had never imagined I'd experience a game like that so soon. I marveled at every little detail.

I agree. That's the first game I remember really evoking a location in me -- and it was possible to do even on 1999 tech. More games should be set in the recent past, or in smaller towns. I'd like to see more realism in settings, even though we're usually talking about graphical fidelity and characters.

Hehehe...for me it was Blue Stinger. Does that make me a bad person?

xzzy

Zombiemambo wrote: »

Bartholamue wrote: »

Back then, for me, it was, "What the heck is progressive scan?"

I still don't know

It's not interlaced, of course!

desc

I know this is not exactly a fresh or previously-unheard opinion, but I think we're already at a point where there's enough hardware power to allow people to start shifting their attention to mood or style and away from just trying to push polygon counts.

Honestly, I would rather play Okami than Crysis 3. The end results of most 3d engines seem fairly samey to me in the way they're used and the visual language with which the art direction is typically speaking. The cel shading/cross hatched sort of pencil look to things like Valkyria Chronicles really grab my attention whenever I see them. I've played a lot of 360 games with 3 dudes running around and none of them really differentiated themselves beyond minor flavor variation in costume or set design.

The next big jump that would interest me would be getting away from having only one tool in the toolbox, namely wrapping textures around polygons. If the computing horsepower were there, I'd like to see a game where objects were made of bodies of compressed and colored gas, liquid or light. Physics engines get better every day, lighting engines get better every day and the hardware gets better every day. I want to see a leap akin to the jump from Academic classicism in the 19th century to Impressionism. Right now, I still feel like the overwhelming majority of games are all students of the same visual "school" right now, although we're moving into things where camera work, cloth simulations and the like make a game like Little Big Planet stick out as developing its own language.

I want to see games serve up a catholicism of styles on par with the rise of Modernism in painting.

Couscous

I never thought this would be possible:
http://tinyurl.com/lgbphp

Robman

On deeper reflection I think the "next big thing" for gaming will be head tracking for a lot more games. Sure, right now you need TrackIR and $$$ to do it, but as better webcams get out there it's only a matter of time until some brilliant programmer writes some lean code to track your head.

God that would be so awesome in a racing game, it would remove all the normal feeling of lost perspective that you get by using the driver's view. And once you start using it in flight games, you start to wonder what the fuck was wrong with the developers when a space sim or flight sim doen't have it as an option.

Pata

Couscous wrote: »

I never thought this would be possible:
http://tinyurl.com/lgbphp

I would play a game that looked like this.

Robman

desc wrote: »

I know this is not exactly a fresh or previously-unheard opinion, but I think we're already at a point where there's enough hardware power to allow people to start shifting their attention to mood or style and away from just trying to push polygon counts.

Honestly, I would rather play Okami than Crysis 3. The end results of most 3d engines seem fairly samey to me in the way they're used and the visual language with which the art direction is typically speaking. The cel shading/cross hatched sort of pencil look to things like Valkyria Chronicles really grab my attention whenever I see them. I've played a lot of 360 games with 3 dudes running around and none of them really differentiated themselves beyond minor flavor variation in costume or set design.

The next big jump that would interest me would be getting away from having only one tool in the toolbox, namely wrapping textures around polygons. If the computing horsepower were there, I'd like to see a game where objects were made of bodies of compressed and colored gas, liquid or light. Physics engines get better every day, lighting engines get better every day and the hardware gets better every day. I want to see a leap akin to the jump from Academic classicism in the 19th century to Impressionism. Right now, I still feel like the overwhelming majority of games are all students of the same visual "school" right now, although we're moving into things where camera work, cloth simulations and the like make a game like Little Big Planet stick out as developing its own language.

I want to see games serve up a catholicism of styles on par with the rise of Modernism in painting.

I wish people would stop pretending that crysis is just pretty graphics and empty gameplay. If it's a boring shitty shooter it's because that's how you're choosing to play it. I was a stealthy predator and fucked with patrols as much as I engaged them, and it was one of the best shooters I've played in years. Of course, I played it on the hardest difficulty and run+gun gameplay would get me dead in a heartbeat.

I mean shitballs, in Crysis:Warhead there was a rail section, where sitting on the rails was entirely optional. Want to sprint alongside the train and jack someone's ride? Go nuts!

That's actually something I'd like to see more of, great physics combined with good AI and a character with the tools to exploit both.

Stormwatcher

Robman wrote: »

desc wrote: »

I know this is not exactly a fresh or previously-unheard opinion, but I think we're already at a point where there's enough hardware power to allow people to start shifting their attention to mood or style and away from just trying to push polygon counts.

Honestly, I would rather play Okami than Crysis 3. The end results of most 3d engines seem fairly samey to me in the way they're used and the visual language with which the art direction is typically speaking. The cel shading/cross hatched sort of pencil look to things like Valkyria Chronicles really grab my attention whenever I see them. I've played a lot of 360 games with 3 dudes running around and none of them really differentiated themselves beyond minor flavor variation in costume or set design.

The next big jump that would interest me would be getting away from having only one tool in the toolbox, namely wrapping textures around polygons. If the computing horsepower were there, I'd like to see a game where objects were made of bodies of compressed and colored gas, liquid or light. Physics engines get better every day, lighting engines get better every day and the hardware gets better every day. I want to see a leap akin to the jump from Academic classicism in the 19th century to Impressionism. Right now, I still feel like the overwhelming majority of games are all students of the same visual "school" right now, although we're moving into things where camera work, cloth simulations and the like make a game like Little Big Planet stick out as developing its own language.

I want to see games serve up a catholicism of styles on par with the rise of Modernism in painting.

I wish people would stop pretending that crysis is just pretty graphics and empty gameplay. If it's a boring shitty shooter it's because that's how you're choosing to play it. I was a stealthy predator and fucked with patrols as much as I engaged them, and it was one of the best shooters I've played in years. Of course, I played it on the hardest difficulty and run+gun gameplay would get me dead in a heartbeat.

I mean shitballs, in Crysis:Warhead there was a rail section, where sitting on the rails was entirely optional. Want to sprint alongside the train and jack someone's ride? Go nuts!

That's actually something I'd like to see more of, great physics combined with good AI and a character with the tools to exploit both.

Robman is 100% right (oh god I feel so dirty typing that). Crysis is a fucking great game with excellent gameplay and level design. It's really fun to play and completely rewards several different gameplay styles.

Player must have at least some smidgen of imagination, though. Drones who just like to trudge through endless identical corridors and confusing Covenant- I mean alien star cruisers need not apply.

Stormwatcher

Robman wrote: »

On deeper reflection I think the "next big thing" for gaming will be head tracking for a lot more games. Sure, right now you need TrackIR and $$$ to do it, but as better webcams get out there it's only a matter of time until some brilliant programmer writes some lean code to track your head.

God that would be so awesome in a racing game, it would remove all the normal feeling of lost perspective that you get by using the driver's view. And once you start using it in flight games, you start to wonder what the fuck was wrong with the developers when a space sim or flight sim doen't have it as an option.

actually there is something like that. You do need to make the led thingy to attach to a headset, but other than that all you need is the free software and a webcam.