7 ms·

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I have zero interest in realistic character models in video games. There are limitless possibilities when it comes to art st

by vlunkr 4y ago

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I have zero interest in realistic character models in video games. There are limitless possibilities when it comes to art styles in gaming, and the one AAA picks over and over is realism. It's so boring.

glasss 4y ago
It also is one of the art styles that turns dated / bad quickly. Any stylized art with a decent to strong design will still look good for years and years.
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  [dead]
Arrath 4y ago
I think I have to agree. I much prefer a good stylistic approach over hyper-realism in most of my games. I always point to World of Warcraft, imo the style and 'cartoony' color palette not only looked visually appealing but helped patch over the low poly models and relatively low res textures as the game aged. I understand that recent expansions have given it an HD facelift, yet the style remains strong.
tshaddox 4y ago
Expanding the capabilities of the tools seems important even if literally photorealistic results isn’t the goal of the creative team. It’s hard to go wrong by having the ability to render light in physically realistic ways, have realistic character animations, etc. It’s a bit like complaining about cameras with higher resolution and dynamic range because “I have zero interest in movies that simply portray how reality looks as accurately as possible.”
- jfengel 4y ago
  It’s a bit like complaining about cameras with higher resolution and dynamic range because “I have zero interest in movies that simply portray how reality looks as accurately as possible.” That's exactly what happened. People complain about the way high-frame-rate cameras look cheap. The language of cinema is always unreal. Even the most "natural" performances are always highly stylized. Camera motion, lighting, makeup, etc are all very different from real life. You can see it even in behind-the-scenes footage; everything looks so fake. It's designed to feel right in the captured image, and that's the only goal. They'll use whatever tools they have for it. This might be a good tool, but it's hard to predict. They never really worked out a good use for 3D in film, even though it's also more "natural" than a moving 2D image. It's a different kind of uncanny valley: it didn't resemble real life enough, but you were content with the really unrealistic language of 2D cinema.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    As to the 24 FPS feel of cinema, it's entirely what one is accustomed to. Much like classical music gets associated with grandeur and emotion, yet only in some cultures. I for one love 300x200 graphics of my youth, and still have come to appreciate higher resolutions -- even in games with pixel art assets. Newer generations growing up with 30+ FPS and better animation will develop different tastes.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      > As to the 24 FPS feel of cinema, it's entirely what one is accustomed to. Yep, and it’s also mistakenly assumed to be a necessary ingredient of all the great films you remember, rather than a nearly unavoidable ingredient. After all, those great films were all 24 FPS! And they used that medium in really creative and technically proficient ways! And that’s true and great. But all the bad films were also 24 FPS, and it would be weird to say “imagine how much worse that terrible low budget film from 1978 would have been if they had modern professional digital cameras and shot in 48 FPS.”
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > People complain about the way high-frame-rate cameras look cheap. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, especially regarding aesthetics. But this is pretty much the same sort of complaint that I was criticizing. You can have a genuine steadfast aesthetic preference for black and white films, or silent films, or SD digital video, but I disagree with extending that to anything of the form “technology X is undesirable because it makes films more realistic and films are not supposed to be realistic.”
    - jfengel 4y ago
      I'd say it's not so much that "films are not supposed to be realistic" as that films simply aren't realistic. Any additional change to make them more "realistic" is really an aesthetic choice, which may or may not work for people. People liked some things, like talkies. And they rejected other things, like 3D. I could come up with an after-the-fact rationalization for why some things worked and some didn't, but it's pretty much impossible to tell beforehand.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  Right. I still think these kind of tools are valuable. You can do motion capture and convert it into a style that is not photorealistic. It's arguably a more compelling demo to take live action and instantly turn it into something highly stylized. Then no one is going to complain about how the skin on the characters face doesn't stretch correctly or whatever.
mrandish 4y ago
Yes, I thought the best part of the demo was the more "Pixar-ish" boy shown last. For most kinds of storytelling increased realism isn't that big of a barrier since we can just point a camera at a real human. To me, the ability to bring non-human characters to life is far more creatively enabling.
whateveracct 4y ago
I think it's harder to have a cohesive stylized artstyle when you are trying to parallelize your art across 10s to 100s of laborers. It's a natural result of gamedev via org chart. AAA isn't a value marker. It's a shame every time I see discussions of gamedev it's always "but can you do AAA with this library?" Who cares!
lucideer 4y ago
A good classic modern example of this is emulated graphics mods for Breath of the Wild: this is probably the most well-known recent 3d game that went with very noticeably stylised & simplified character models, likely in part due to the limited hardware. It's also a game with excellent art direction. Now people have modded it to make it more like other AAA titles & every single mod I've seen looks absolutely terrible in comparison to the original. Because they're completely forgoing art direction for something approaching realism. The former should always be the priority. A previous title in the same franchise (Wind Waker) was also lambasted on release for it's alternative art style & today has aged considerably better than most games of that era.
- thih9 4y ago
  > people have modded it to make it more like other AAA titles If anyone is interested in an example, I found this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IP0B45hUPgo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IP0B45hUPgo
  - denkmoon 4y ago
    Thanks, I hate it
  - lucideer 4y ago
    In fairness that's a particularly egregious example. This one doesn't look so bad but still gets a lot of the lighting/shadows & colour balance very wrong, flipping between being oversaturated or too dark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fscwp3RkEvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fscwp3RkEvM
jayd16 4y ago
Don't fret. Realism is just the least opinionated art director. You can apply this tech to more fantastical character models.
Nevermark 4y ago
Realism is the strictest and so most useful test. We also happen to be very good judges of what looks real. And at some point I want to play realistic open world VR D&D, with multi-model intelligent NPC’s, enemies and beasts! Oh, how I have been waiting…
solarmist 4y ago
I don't care about photo realistic stuff, but I do care about the mouth and eyes moving realistically (unless you are specifically going for some effect) and proper tracking. I want game characters that feel alive in all the ways my brain expects creatures to act alive, which I have yet to see done with most NPCs. Even key NPCs usually fall very short. Cartoons have done this for decades, but it's (relatively) easy when everything can be preplanned. This makes that easy whether you want to go realistic or not.
Aeolun 4y ago
AAA is basically meant to indicate that realism though. If you do something non-realistic you do not need an AAA team for it.
stuckinhell 4y ago
I agree, also everything made with Unreal has a very samey look to it. Exceptions exist of course, japanese developers are able to get very cartoony visuals but that means they won't be able to use this metahuman 3d model and animation technology.
_a_a_a_ 4y ago
Word! Although perhaps not for the same reason. I tend to look at games with a very mechanistic viewpoint, it's a puzzle to be solved so get rid of everything that gets in the way of that.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JakeAl 4y ago
I wish they would spend just as much time and energy on gameplay, and less on trying to emulate movies or create interactive stories where you watch and click at the right time for elaborate scripted sequences that make it appear as though you aren't playing a choose your own adventure book disguised with tech. Gameplay needs to come first.

by vlunkr 4y ago

glasss 4y ago

It also is one of the art styles that turns dated / bad quickly. Any stylized art with a decent to strong design will still look good for years and years.

kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]

Arrath 4y ago

I think I have to agree. I much prefer a good stylistic approach over hyper-realism in most of my games. I always point to World of Warcraft, imo the style and 'cartoony' color palette not only looked visually appealing but helped patch over the low poly models and relatively low res textures as the game aged. I understand that recent expansions have given it an HD facelift, yet the style remains strong.

tshaddox 4y ago

Expanding the capabilities of the tools seems important even if literally photorealistic results isn’t the goal of the creative team. It’s hard to go wrong by having the ability to render light in physically realistic ways, have realistic character animations, etc. It’s a bit like complaining about cameras with higher resolution and dynamic range because “I have zero interest in movies that simply portray how reality looks as accurately as possible.”

jfengel 4y ago
It’s a bit like complaining about cameras with higher resolution and dynamic range because “I have zero interest in movies that simply portray how reality looks as accurately as possible.” That's exactly what happened. People complain about the way high-frame-rate cameras look cheap. The language of cinema is always unreal. Even the most "natural" performances are always highly stylized. Camera motion, lighting, makeup, etc are all very different from real life. You can see it even in behind-the-scenes footage; everything looks so fake. It's designed to feel right in the captured image, and that's the only goal. They'll use whatever tools they have for it. This might be a good tool, but it's hard to predict. They never really worked out a good use for 3D in film, even though it's also more "natural" than a moving 2D image. It's a different kind of uncanny valley: it didn't resemble real life enough, but you were content with the really unrealistic language of 2D cinema.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  As to the 24 FPS feel of cinema, it's entirely what one is accustomed to. Much like classical music gets associated with grandeur and emotion, yet only in some cultures. I for one love 300x200 graphics of my youth, and still have come to appreciate higher resolutions -- even in games with pixel art assets. Newer generations growing up with 30+ FPS and better animation will develop different tastes.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > As to the 24 FPS feel of cinema, it's entirely what one is accustomed to. Yep, and it’s also mistakenly assumed to be a necessary ingredient of all the great films you remember, rather than a nearly unavoidable ingredient. After all, those great films were all 24 FPS! And they used that medium in really creative and technically proficient ways! And that’s true and great. But all the bad films were also 24 FPS, and it would be weird to say “imagine how much worse that terrible low budget film from 1978 would have been if they had modern professional digital cameras and shot in 48 FPS.”
- tshaddox 4y ago
  > People complain about the way high-frame-rate cameras look cheap. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, especially regarding aesthetics. But this is pretty much the same sort of complaint that I was criticizing. You can have a genuine steadfast aesthetic preference for black and white films, or silent films, or SD digital video, but I disagree with extending that to anything of the form “technology X is undesirable because it makes films more realistic and films are not supposed to be realistic.”
  - jfengel 4y ago
    I'd say it's not so much that "films are not supposed to be realistic" as that films simply aren't realistic. Any additional change to make them more "realistic" is really an aesthetic choice, which may or may not work for people. People liked some things, like talkies. And they rejected other things, like 3D. I could come up with an after-the-fact rationalization for why some things worked and some didn't, but it's pretty much impossible to tell beforehand.
vlunkr 4y ago
Right. I still think these kind of tools are valuable. You can do motion capture and convert it into a style that is not photorealistic. It's arguably a more compelling demo to take live action and instantly turn it into something highly stylized. Then no one is going to complain about how the skin on the characters face doesn't stretch correctly or whatever.

mrandish 4y ago

Yes, I thought the best part of the demo was the more "Pixar-ish" boy shown last. For most kinds of storytelling increased realism isn't that big of a barrier since we can just point a camera at a real human. To me, the ability to bring non-human characters to life is far more creatively enabling.

whateveracct 4y ago

I think it's harder to have a cohesive stylized artstyle when you are trying to parallelize your art across 10s to 100s of laborers. It's a natural result of gamedev via org chart. AAA isn't a value marker. It's a shame every time I see discussions of gamedev it's always "but can you do AAA with this library?" Who cares!

lucideer 4y ago

A good classic modern example of this is emulated graphics mods for Breath of the Wild: this is probably the most well-known recent 3d game that went with very noticeably stylised & simplified character models, likely in part due to the limited hardware. It's also a game with excellent art direction. Now people have modded it to make it more like other AAA titles & every single mod I've seen looks absolutely terrible in comparison to the original. Because they're completely forgoing art direction for something approaching realism. The former should always be the priority. A previous title in the same franchise (Wind Waker) was also lambasted on release for it's alternative art style & today has aged considerably better than most games of that era.

thih9 4y ago
> people have modded it to make it more like other AAA titles If anyone is interested in an example, I found this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IP0B45hUPgo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IP0B45hUPgo
- denkmoon 4y ago
  Thanks, I hate it
- lucideer 4y ago
  In fairness that's a particularly egregious example. This one doesn't look so bad but still gets a lot of the lighting/shadows & colour balance very wrong, flipping between being oversaturated or too dark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fscwp3RkEvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fscwp3RkEvM

jayd16 4y ago

Don't fret. Realism is just the least opinionated art director. You can apply this tech to more fantastical character models.

Nevermark 4y ago

Realism is the strictest and so most useful test. We also happen to be very good judges of what looks real. And at some point I want to play realistic open world VR D&D, with multi-model intelligent NPC’s, enemies and beasts! Oh, how I have been waiting…

solarmist 4y ago

I don't care about photo realistic stuff, but I do care about the mouth and eyes moving realistically (unless you are specifically going for some effect) and proper tracking. I want game characters that feel alive in all the ways my brain expects creatures to act alive, which I have yet to see done with most NPCs. Even key NPCs usually fall very short. Cartoons have done this for decades, but it's (relatively) easy when everything can be preplanned. This makes that easy whether you want to go realistic or not.

Aeolun 4y ago

AAA is basically meant to indicate that realism though. If you do something non-realistic you do not need an AAA team for it.

stuckinhell 4y ago

I agree, also everything made with Unreal has a very samey look to it. Exceptions exist of course, japanese developers are able to get very cartoony visuals but that means they won't be able to use this metahuman 3d model and animation technology.

_a_a_a_ 4y ago

Word! Although perhaps not for the same reason. I tend to look at games with a very mechanistic viewpoint, it's a puzzle to be solved so get rid of everything that gets in the way of that.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JakeAl 4y ago

I wish they would spend just as much time and energy on gameplay, and less on trying to emulate movies or create interactive stories where you watch and click at the right time for elaborate scripted sequences that make it appear as though you aren't playing a choose your own adventure book disguised with tech. Gameplay needs to come first.