a question about character modeling in doom3, fear etc...

[Newbie's Journey]

I have seen the new f.e.a.r. demo last night, the action and graphics look definitly impressive. I would probably give it a try. However the plot doesn't seem to be original and doesn't interest me much as yet. It reminds me of red faction 2, maybe becuz of the similarity between the ennemies and the type of environement of both games(see the pics below). well, what i just said has nothing to do with the topic of this thread. Now, let's get back to the topic.

I have read many of you saying that the characters in doom3 and fear look shiny and plastic. Well i would invite u guys to look at picture in the following link (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/driver3/screens.html?page=12). I think that pic is not real-time, the point is that the character looks ultra realistic, but somehow it has that "plastic" feeling. I'm just wondering whether doom3 or fear will be the way to go for a more realistic approach in character modeling.

 

[Korgoth]

Well almost all CG suffers from a "plastic" look, in many cases like doom3 and f.e.a.r. it is because the lighting. Although they use real-time lighting models, the light isn't exactly realistic, doesn't cast soft fuzzy shadows and doesn't have much of a falloff. Not to mention it isn't GI so the light doesn't bounce of surfaces and affect neihboring surfaces like you would see in real life. Thats just impossible to achieve in a real time application with todays hardware, mainly due to the fact that pixar and similar studios use these advanced lighting models and it takes the hours upon hours, sometimes days to render 1 frame, but in a video game or real time app you have to have many more frames per second to keep the view refreshed and give you the illusion thats its all happening right there in front of you... If you had to turn your players view around to look at an enemey behind you and it took two weeks to render that, the game wouldn't be very fun now would it?
However, with games like doom 3 and f.e.a.r. using a "more" advanced lighting model instead of baked light (pre rendered) you can tell that the future of gaming is bright. As hardware and algorithms improve graphics will improve but its all a matter of time at this point. So yes, doom 3 and f.e.a.r. are the begining of the future so to speak...

 

[Eywanadi]

This whole plastic debate comes from the use of specular highlights. Specular highlights are basicly the *shinny* effect a surface has. We all have been playing DULL games up untill now and it looks very very odd . We just do not notice it because it has allways been in video games. Specular highlights fix this dull problem however if the texture resolution of the Specular map is low it will be blurry and that will make a surface look plastic like. As video games are able to use higher resolution specular maps this plastic effect will fade away ... remember PIXAR and the ilk use specular maps on probably every texture.

 

[Neutrino]

Well I think it's actually a combination of things that cause the "plastic" look. Sure lighting and spec mapping have a bit to do with it, but I don't think that is the real cause. It think it mostly has to do with the texture artists creating smooth diffuse maps and then letting the normal and spec maps add the detail. This makes the textures appear really smooth with a sort of sheen to them. I don't think it's really a limitation of the engine. It's more a artistic choice.

 

[Devilphish]

Eywanadi is correct. These new games look odd because they are introducing something new that we aren't used to seeing in games. True real time lighting coupled with specular maps on many or all objects is creating what many precieve to be a plastic effect.

Many think this is an overdone effect and that spec maps shouldn't be on all objects. They are wrong. EVERY object in the world has a specular attribute. There is no "this object has specularity and this object doesn't", there is only "this object has more specularity than this other object". Doom3 gives complete control over how much specularity an object has. It's not like the engine makes every object shiny automatically. What specular maps do is give the artists complete control over which parts of the surface are more specular and which parts are less specular, and how specular the object is. You don't have to put specularity on any object if you don't want to, but because a game like Doom3 takes place inside a series of environments built mostly of metal, there is a lot of specularity.


This plastic effect is created by the specular maps being either blurred for some reason or displayed in low resolution. This is why the alpha looks very plastic and official shots dont, because the alpha doesn't display the spec maps correctly on most systems. Look at the comparison:

Alpha

Final

You can see the suit is supposed to be made of hard metal, but the alpha shot looks like a soft plastic material. Then look at the final shot, the suit doesn't look plastic anymore it looks like hard metal. Two things are causing this difference. First, in the alpha shot the specular map is smooth and it is the same on every part of the surface. Second the diffuse map on the alpha shot is much less detailed and adds to the smooth effect, so what you get is a very dull diffuse and smooth even sheen, which is plasticy looking.

But look at the final shot again. Look how detailed the specular map is. It takes into account small scratches and reduces the specular effect on them. The smoother metals are more specular than the other metals, and have a harder shine. Look at the alpha shot and see how soft the shine is al lthe way around. This plus a more detailed diffuse map makes the surface look like metal as it was intended.

Doom3 really looks incredible it's a shame so many people have a flase impression of what it looks like from playing the alpha and seeing messed up screens.


**EDIT**

Thought I should add this plastic effect has nothing to do with normal maps being used. Normal maps have nothing to do with how smooth or soft the sheen of an object is. Look at Unreal3 characters. They use the same type of normal amps and spec maps that Doom3 uses, but no one has said anything about them looking plastic. The reason is because the specular map is in much higher resolution. If the spec maps were as low as some of the alpha shots the characters of Unreal3 would have the same even and soft sheen all over them, and they would look plastic aswell. It has everything to do with the specular maps, though sometimes a less detailed diffuse map can strengthen the plastic effect.

 

[MultiVaC]

Yeah, it is specular maps but I think the problem is developer tend to over-exaggerate the effect to make it look cool. Anyway the Doom guy's armor still looks pretty plastic and so does his face. Not as much as the alpha but still a lot. But it's ok, it's just their style. I think that specular maps should be left out of some surfaces because in reality it's often extremely subtle. I've never seen, for example, a specular map that looks good on a generic unpainted wood fence.

 

[FictiousWill]

Devilphish just laid it all to rest. I would repeat him but I am not as eloquent. Remember that post people, and send all the whiney doom3 plasticy folks to it. Thnks mate.

 

[Devilphish]

lol, thanks FictiousWill. I do what I can :cheers:

ElFuhrer, I can't agree. I think the metal in the final shot, both on the gun and the armor, look exactly as it should. What makes it look plastic to you in the final shot? I can see it on alpha shots and other shots where the specular fidelity is low, but certainly not on that shot.

Skin is another matter though. Until we get subsurface scattering introduced skin won't look much better than that. It could look a bit better with more variation in the diffuse map and specular map, but human skin will retain that hardness it has for a while. But I think for the time being that is a perfectly accpetable rendition of human skin. Games like Doom3 are just laying the ground work for what the future of real time rendering will be. In games like halflife2 the ligthing looks real but doesn't act real. The "realness" is an illusion. A good illusion, but still noticible as an illusion in the game. The lighting in Doom3 focuses on acting real. It looks incredible, but makes sacrifices on looking real to an extent. With hardware where it is right now it simply isn't possible to look as real as halflife2 while at the same time acting as real as Doom3. In the future this is where games will be going, making the realistic acting lighting look more natural. I think the progression will be fairly rapid. As you can see games like Unreal3 will make giant leaps in just a couple of years, I think Quake4 will be making huge strides as well.

 

[Eywanadi]

Oh, I should add that if you do not like the look of specular maps then TURN THEM OFF. You will even get a nice frame rate boost when you turn them off.

So maybe you like specular maps but you think they should not be on all objects and that they should stand out less on other objects. Well just boot up D3Radiant and make a map that way, the power is ... err will be in your hands.

 

[FictiousWill]

Where's that doom3 picture of that guy's arm? There was one pic, and nobody cared about the monster or whatever else was in the picture - they all just said "wow! look at that guy's arm!" I'll try and find that pic now...

edit: I think this is the one, but I seem to remember him holding the gun in a different hand... oh well. This is a nice skin-texture pic, what with the arm I've been going on and on about:

http://games.tiscali.cz/hardware/tema/doom3vshalflife2/boga.jpg

 

[Devilphish]

/edit nevermind.......

 

[FictiousWill]

That one not so much. The lower arm segment of the doom guy's left arm looks decent, but his face, hands and biceps are rather smooth. Nobody has skin that immaculate. Id could add some freckles or something, the skin does look a bit plastiky, but that's a bitmap texture issue, not a specular map issue.

 

[Devilphish]

Yes the hand and the forearm look fantastic. But the upperarm suffers. The lower arm gives you a look at how realistic skin could look if it gets that much attention from the artists though. But that pic is 2 and ahalf years old, perhaps they have reworked the textures a bit since then. I don't remember seeing a recent shot of the Doom3 marine.

 

[Styloid]

Realistic humans, 'fake' lighting for me thanks!

 

[Sparta]

Eywanadi is correct. These new games look odd because they are introducing something new that we aren't used to seeing in games. True real time lighting coupled with specular maps on many or all objects is creating what many precieve to be a plastic effect.

Many think this is an overdone effect and that spec maps shouldn't be on all objects. They are wrong. EVERY object in the world has a specular attribute. There is no "this object has specularity and this object doesn't", there is only "this object has more specularity than this other object". Doom3 gives complete control over how much specularity an object has. It's not like the engine makes every object shiny automatically. What specular maps do is give the artists complete control over which parts of the surface are more specular and which parts are less specular, and how specular the object is. You don't have to put specularity on any object if you don't want to, but because a game like Doom3 takes place inside a series of environments built mostly of metal, there is a lot of specularity.


This plastic effect is created by the specular maps being either blurred for some reason or displayed in low resolution. This is why the alpha looks very plastic and official shots dont, because the alpha doesn't display the spec maps correctly on most systems. Look at the comparison:

Alpha

Final

You can see the suit is supposed to be made of hard metal, but the alpha shot looks like a soft plastic material. Then look at the final shot, the suit doesn't look plastic anymore it looks like hard metal. Two things are causing this difference. First, in the alpha shot the specular map is smooth and it is the same on every part of the surface. Second the diffuse map on the alpha shot is much less detailed and adds to the smooth effect, so what you get is a very dull diffuse and smooth even sheen, which is plasticy looking.

But look at the final shot again. Look how detailed the specular map is. It takes into account small scratches and reduces the specular effect on them. The smoother metals are more specular than the other metals, and have a harder shine. Look at the alpha shot and see how soft the shine is al lthe way around. This plus a more detailed diffuse map makes the surface look like metal as it was intended.

Doom3 really looks incredible it's a shame so many people have a flase impression of what it looks like from playing the alpha and seeing messed up screens.


**EDIT**

Thought I should add this plastic effect has nothing to do with normal maps being used. Normal maps have nothing to do with how smooth or soft the sheen of an object is. Look at Unreal3 characters. They use the same type of normal amps and spec maps that Doom3 uses, but no one has said anything about them looking plastic. The reason is because the specular map is in much higher resolution. If the spec maps were as low as some of the alpha shots the characters of Unreal3 would have the same even and soft sheen all over them, and they would look plastic aswell. It has everything to do with the specular maps, though sometimes a less detailed diffuse map can strengthen the plastic effect.

Somebody might have already said this in this thread, but that "final" shot is actually a done up publicity shot. John Carmack said that you would never see anything like that ingame.

 

[Subz]

Fear does not look as plasticcy as doom3 or farcry.


halflife2 on the otherhand wonderfully has NO plasticyness. But the side-effec is that it does not look as realistic in some areas such as geometry , models, etc.

 

[Styloid]

Fear does not look as plasticcy as doom3 or farcry.


halflife2 on the otherhand wonderfully has NO plasticyness. But the side-effec is that it does not look as realistic in some areas such as geometry , models, etc.

Geometry, models? HL2 has more polygons in it's models as well as normal maps, specular maps, etc... shadowing is what HL2 is short on....
unless you're talking about the pre-E3 screens... then you may be right.

 

[Subz]

hl2 gfx are no longer that good imo.