Photorealistic characters?

[Magic_Al]

Image Metrics, which produced over 300 minutes of facial animation for the 80+ characters of GTA IV, has released a new technology demo called Emily.

 

Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games

 

Should the next GTA take photo-realism to this level, or should it continue to have a graphic-novel stylized look?

 

I think photorealism isn't bad per se, but it can have no distracting flaws. A stylized look lets you get away with imperfections because you can say it's part of the style.

[Sergi]

R* should create multiple looks for GTA. For the handheld and possibly Wii GTAs they should resemble the past GTAs. For PS3,360 and PC GTAs they should look how they look with IV.

 

IV's graphics were great for a game in the free roam genre but they are from from the best looking graphics in general. The graphics in the 1st GTA IV trailer released looked 10 times better then the GTA we got but that isn't a bad thing. GTA wouldn't seem right in a photo realistic setting. Not to mention that tech is primarly PC based and I doubt the PS3 and 360 would be able to even render anything like that tech demo. Maybe the PS3 could at the very en of the road but devs are already talking about how hard it is for larger games for the 360 because of the DVD.

 

Maybe with the PS4 and next Xbox but not this current gen besides PC will we see anything like that video.

 

Ok at first I thought they were saying that the girl wasn't real then I was going to say that I don't even know of the PS4 and next Xbox could handle that and definatley not the PS3 but then I realized that they were talking about the animations ant the very end. In that case then yues the next xbox and Playstation will probably be able to handel those animations at the end but not the PS3 or 360. In all honesty I've seen CGI that looked 10 times better in other then that video in other films.

 

Even then I wouldn't trust a tech demo about how graphics can look for the next gen because I remember at the very beginning of this gen they were saying games would look better then Shrek. I still haven't seen a game in real time that looks better then Toy Story and that's what 15 years old?

Edited August 19, 2008 by Sergi

[Drunk Russian 9]

They trick you in that video. The body and chair is completly real, however, the face is not. If you focus on the face you'll notice it has pretty much a perfect even skin-tone with no imperfections. Thats extremely unlikely for a real human being. However, its pretty impressive and imerssive.

[CarnageRacing00]

I'm going to call BS on this one, simply for the fact that a video filter can easily make a human face look animated. It's as easy as moving a few sliders these days.

 

Look at that hair... there is no way that's animated. Either way, until they release a real tech demo, I'm not buying it. Maybe someday... but that is definitely not computer animation.

[unopescio]

Its just a waste of god damn time. This whole move for the photorealism has always been bullsh*t, it doesnt add to the game, it just ups the production time of the game INCREDIBLY, and it doesnt make the game any more enjoyable. Other features of the game lack as a result of it too. f*ck it, this is why Im just replaying games from 10 years ago these days.

[Magic_Al]

Image Metrics refers to the Times story on their own website, so hopefully it's not BS. Link