K^2 Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Any word on modding? Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Modding's in for sure. I can't find the source, but you'll find it in the video interviews Don posted a few pages back. I'm surprised that that can make realistic (apparently) snow, but they still haven't mastered human f*cking hair. Oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Real time rendering of dynamic hair on multiple (read many) targets is very challenging. Snow is not that bad, because area affected by snowfall can be pre-computed. So long as you don't have to deal with serious deformations of the snow due to collisions (I doubt there are snow plows in Skyrim) all you really have to do is add realistic tracks, and with Shader V3+ it's not that hard to do. Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moth Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 (edited) Any word on modding? I do believe they will be releasing something like the GECK for the new engine. Found it:Modding tools Edited February 8, 2011 by The General. Formerly known as The General Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Garcia Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Uh huh, but do you guise see that f*cking dragon!? So gonna be Skyrim's deathclaw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 (edited) Real time rendering of dynamic hair on multiple (read many) targets is very challenging. Snow is not that bad, because area affected by snowfall can be pre-computed. So long as you don't have to deal with serious deformations of the snow due to collisions (I doubt there are snow plows in Skyrim) all you really have to do is add realistic tracks, and with Shader V3+ it's not that hard to do. It's art that I'm talking about, here, not really the technical implementation. Hair as one solid, textured, lump is really disappointing. I'm sure you've seen screens (or played?) Resident Evil 5 - some of the best hair I've seen in a game. I wouldn't expect such high detail in a game like this, where I'm sure we'd all prefer to have many actors on screen, but come on. An ounce of art direction goes a long way here. I brought up the snow as an abstract comparison - why pump so much detail into one thing while ignoring another? (Don't answer that rhetorical question.) It's all very cheeky, though. The game looks like a great visual step up from Oblivion. And yes, I know, the hair shown above is not one solid textured lump. There are strands poking out, etc. But it still looks rather blah. Edited February 8, 2011 by Otter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xeon Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 A small little issue I had with Oblivion that I hope is fixed is the interior lighting. I always found it irksome that, no matter what time of day you walked into a building, you could always see clear daylight shining through the windows, and candles lit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Really? I could have sworn that the time of day changed the light coming in from windows. Rose tinted glasses maybe? Or maybe it was a mod. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 It's art that I'm talking about, here, not really the technical implementation. Hair as one solid, textured, lump is really disappointing. I'm sure you've seen screens (or played?) Resident Evil 5 - some of the best hair I've seen in a game. Everything I've seen in Resident Evil 5 has extremely simple hair styles. Free-flowing hair is the one that's difficult to achieve, and that's what you see here. The best way to do it, by far, is volume rendering, and that's a bit expensive, mostly in terms of video memory. Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Garcia Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Speaking of hair, it sure looks awkward here. Oh, and I hope I'm not pissing anyone off with these big ass pics. My laptop is wide so it doesn't look very bothersome to me, and I just want you guys to get the full effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 (edited) It's art that I'm talking about, here, not really the technical implementation. Hair as one solid, textured, lump is really disappointing. I'm sure you've seen screens (or played?) Resident Evil 5 - some of the best hair I've seen in a game. Everything I've seen in Resident Evil 5 has extremely simple hair styles. Free-flowing hair is the one that's difficult to achieve, and that's what you see here. The best way to do it, by far, is volume rendering, and that's a bit expensive, mostly in terms of video memory. The hair looks bad. That we can agree on, no? That's all I'm saying. I don't care about free flowing hair. I don't care about rendering fur. I don't care if the hair is "simple" as long as it looks good. Which it obviously does not in the screen Don just posted. Stop arguing with me for the sake of arguing. We're discussing what it looks like - not what the engine can do. I thought the hair in Resident Evil 5 - all of the graphics, in fact - looked incredible. In game, and during the realtime cutscenes. And the countless hair mods that currently exist for Oblivion, Fallout, etc, exist for this purpose - for some reason, Bethesda don't like drawing hair. @ Don: Thanks for those picks. They went to town with the normal mapping on that Ogre/Giant, hey? Not too pretty from that angle. The dragon looks bad ass, though. Edited February 8, 2011 by Otter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moth Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Speaking of hair, it sure looks awkward here. Oh, and I hope I'm not pissing anyone off with these big ass pics. My laptop is wide so it doesn't look very bothersome to me, and I just want you guys to get the full effect. http://i56.tinypic.com/28ssi68.jpg http://i55.tinypic.com/rigg2f.jpg http://i51.tinypic.com/5l9q4l.jpg http://i53.tinypic.com/2h3u9fa.jpg First: Deer Second: Ogre or Goblin? Third: Zombie Soldiers? Fourth: Dragon They look great for what they are suppose to be. Except for the deer, it seems to have only one antler. Formerly known as The General Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rawra Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Second is a giant. Giants can be passive and quest bearers. Third is undead Skyrim Nord (priest) warriors Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Ooh, so you can talk with some of the beasts/monsters? That's cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-King Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Third is undead Skyrim Nord (priest) warriors If they're back I swear to god they better have my f*cking Horkers. |PropagandaIncorporated:|: Steam:|: DeviantArt:|: Last.FM| Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rawra Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Horkers are pretty much a given; in the interview with Todd Howard there is a picture of the meat in it, and Horker Meat is depicted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonshield Posted February 8, 2011 Share Posted February 8, 2011 Ooh, so you can talk with some of the beasts/monsters? That's cool. Yeah, I read in the Game Informer article that not all creatures are immediately hostile. The more sentient ones obviously moreso, like the giants and maybe goblins, but probably not things like bears, wolves, or even trolls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Garcia Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 Think they'll carry over NV's faction relationships with these 'friendlier' creatures? Like maybe giants can be indifferent to you until you start chopping those f*ckers down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darthYENIK Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 I really like the amount of foliage in these pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 The hair looks bad. That we can agree on, no? That's all I'm saying. I don't care about free flowing hair. I don't care about rendering fur. I don't care if the hair is "simple" as long as it looks good. Which it obviously does not in the screen Don just posted. Stop arguing with me for the sake of arguing. We're discussing what it looks like - not what the engine can do. I thought the hair in Resident Evil 5 - all of the graphics, in fact - looked incredible. In game, and during the realtime cutscenes. I'm disagreeing that the Resident Evil 5 hair looks good. It's painted pretty, but you can see that it's just painted over a smooth surface. It has no volume, it doesn't move like real hair, it doesn't reflect light like real hair. They go for the old trick. Can't make hair look good, put it in a pony tail. Works in real life. Works in games. All the RE5 devs had to do is apply a shader that actually makes it look like hair, rather than paint on plastic, and they failed that. The textures are nice, but that's about it. And that's hair that was specifically designed for a specific character, not one of the set of many hair styles that have to work with all possible variations of facial structure. Do you think people would be happy if your only options for hair in Skyrim would be buzz cut, short hair with too much moose, or a pony tail like it is in RE5? Bethesda has to work around a lot of issues with hair. Considering the constraints, it's not that bad. It could be better, but it's far from bad. Pretty much all of the Oblivion's hair mods simply up the resolution of the hair texture to make it look better. Again, same trick as used in RE5. If your computer exceeds requirements, that's always an option. There will be high-resolution hair packs for Skyrim, don't worry. Bethesda had to make the game work on mid-range machines, however, and so it wasn't an option for them with Oblivion, and it isn't with Skyrim. Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 (edited) Don't be pedant. "Painted pretty" is exactly what I'm talking about. Again - can we not agree that the hair in Oblivion looked bad? Eh? Yes, one of the tricks is upping the resolution, but the mod community is rife with entirely new hair models that just.look.better. It's obvious Beth has increased the resolution for faces and bodies in Skyrim... but not that ugly hair. That's all I'm saying. Please, don't try to teach me a lesson on technological limitations. It's an art direction issue. One reason that we were stuck with ugly hair in Oblivion was that you could change the length of it, I'm sure. I'd sacrifice that in a minute. Jesus, talking with you has a way of turning one into a whiny bitch. Point in fact; the hair looks a bit sh*te. I'll deal with it. Edited February 9, 2011 by Otter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 Ok. Pay attention. Bethesda cannot arbitrarily increase resolution of the hair texture and hair mesh because they have to make it work on machines with limited resources. Modders can. The triangle counts and texture resolutions on some of these hair mods are absurd. When you have 4MB of compressed DXT3/5 hair texture alone (and these are conservative ones), and polygon counts in hair exceed these in the actual body mesh, it's not something you can do for the game you actually publish. Skyrim has increased both the resolution and mesh complexity. They still can't go as high as some of the hair mods you've mentioned. "Painted pretty" only works with fixed surfaces. With hair that's actually moving, it doesn't do crap, because if you "paint it pretty" and let it move, you'll see the textures stretch and distort. You either use many, many layers of texture each with individual movement, which kills most mid-range machines when there is more than one such wig to render, or you hide it with a simpler texture. That's what Oblivion and Skyrim do. This is 100% technical. I've read books that run for several chapters on just the hair rendering. I've written implementations of many of these techniques. I've written volume renderers. I've written custom shaiders for hair effect. I know what goes into that stuff. It's not just art. Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 Ha. 'Arbitrarily.' Right over your bloody head, as always. I'm glad you have such a high opinion of yourself. Unfortunately, you keep dodging the issue. The hair looks p bad. Deal with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 (edited) There are no absolutes. Show me hair that looks good, allows for multiple hair styles, rendered in real time, and supporting high number of targets in complex environments on mid-range machines. Then we talk about how it's an art direction and not a technical issue. And if you wish to discuss this in technical details, we could. How the filtering has to be non-linear, and how the shader lighting model is adjusted to specifics of geometry of the single hair. We can then talk about advantages and disadvantages of guide hairs, and modifications to the standard linked-pendulum model that have to be made to prevent tangling and other nasty artifacts. Edited February 9, 2011 by K^2 Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 No, I do not wish to talk technical. I've said so countless times. Just knock it off - either assert that you like how they've done the hair, or that you don't. That's the issue at hand, tiger. I'm done trying to interface with you. It doesn't work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 It doesn't work because you have no argument. You have no idea how the hair is implemented and why it's implemented that way, and you keep talking crap. I like how they've done the hair. It doesn't look great, but it looks descent under technical constraints. They could have done better if they dedicated more resources to it, but not much better. Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 It doesn't look great. Thanks. Everyone, I'm sorry for derailing the conversation with this argument between myself and this self-styled specialist on videogame hair design. Back to your regularly scheduled ESV hype. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Creed Bratton Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 Actually it was ugly as hell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Looks exciting! Will it still allow you to customize and offer lots of different items. Like in Oblivion, where there were probably 100's of weapons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K^2 Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Sure. And with modding tools, you'll have tons more to choose from some time after the release. Prior to filing a bug against any of my code, please consider this response to common concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now