It's time now where we've gone far enough with polys, effects and modeling to throw out the prerendered CG of old. Everything should be in real-time: Cutscenes, backgrounds, intros, extras whatever. For next gen we've got more then enough power to do most anything a dev can imagine and do it so it looks pretty damn good. Any prerendered CG I see next gen will demonstrate a weakness of the developer.
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Prerendered CG should be extinct next gen.
- Thread starter Oni Jazar
- Start date
Outdoor Miner
Member
Truezors.
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Don't understand how to make games eh?
Prerendered material works great for the following
-Being able to create unoptimized scenes, therefor saving time and money
-Used to hide loading, especially with faster drives.
Optimizing realtime scenes takes a lot of time and effort, which is ok depending on the situation. But in some cases its far easier to just create a prerendered scene, rather then having to code it all in realtime and make sure it runs fast enough to look good.
Prerendered material works great for the following
-Being able to create unoptimized scenes, therefor saving time and money
-Used to hide loading, especially with faster drives.
Optimizing realtime scenes takes a lot of time and effort, which is ok depending on the situation. But in some cases its far easier to just create a prerendered scene, rather then having to code it all in realtime and make sure it runs fast enough to look good.
Suikoguy said:
Thanks for the detailed explanation that I couldn't think of.
There are many reasons to use pre-rendered CGI, and a lot of them depend on the game engine itself. I dunno how Unreal 3 works, but I know there are plenty of cinematics I'd rather create in MAYA than UT 2004.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Nothing wrong with a kicksass CG intro and animations. Just look at Intro for Onimusha 3 or WoW. You can`t have that in realtime on next gen consoles.
The first one there is laziness. Take the time to do it right and show your game with what you've got. Look it was one thing to do it back in the day when in game graphics were horrible compared to CG, but if next gen can produce visuals like MGS4, GOW, Heavenly Sword and (one hopes) Killzone 2 then making us watch pre-rendered footage gives me the big WTF and takes me out of the experience.
As to hide loading? How many games do this? I am not aware of many.
Considering CG of today already outshines everything we've seen in the way real-time graphics from next-gen, I'm going to have to disagree. Strongly.
Still, I think we're going to see a stronger shift to real-time (or, to be exact, pre-recorded sequences using in-game assets -- see Jade Empire, KotOR, etc for some recent examples), as the capabilities of next-gen are going to bring about much better results in this area, at least when compared to the utterly piss-poor results we've seen thus far this gen.
But really, if you think about CG from 5 years ago, and then compare it to CG of today? The difference is massive. So where does that leave us in 5 years from the start of this next generation? Oh right, with CG that outshines anything a developer can do in real-time, and probably ten times over at that... Then again, we're almost close to that point already (see: World of Warcraft's CG opening), so maybe ten times is undershooting.
Then there's, of course, the cost issues. Which do you think is more expensive? Making a CG movie that is a few minutes long, or making a real-time cutscene (with next-generation graphics) of the same length? Not only that, but which do you think is less demanding, resource and time-wise? If you say real-time, you may need to read up on the costs associated with both, and even take a glance at Oddworld Inhabitants, who are getting into full-CG productions because they're much cheaper to make overall.
All of this stacks up to give me one thought: Why do people want CG to die? It's gorgeous, it's less demanding of resources/time/money, and it allows developers to create scenes that their game engine couldn't even hope to handle. Where is the downside? What is there to bitch about?
I just don't get it.
Still, I think we're going to see a stronger shift to real-time (or, to be exact, pre-recorded sequences using in-game assets -- see Jade Empire, KotOR, etc for some recent examples), as the capabilities of next-gen are going to bring about much better results in this area, at least when compared to the utterly piss-poor results we've seen thus far this gen.
But really, if you think about CG from 5 years ago, and then compare it to CG of today? The difference is massive. So where does that leave us in 5 years from the start of this next generation? Oh right, with CG that outshines anything a developer can do in real-time, and probably ten times over at that... Then again, we're almost close to that point already (see: World of Warcraft's CG opening), so maybe ten times is undershooting.
Then there's, of course, the cost issues. Which do you think is more expensive? Making a CG movie that is a few minutes long, or making a real-time cutscene (with next-generation graphics) of the same length? Not only that, but which do you think is less demanding, resource and time-wise? If you say real-time, you may need to read up on the costs associated with both, and even take a glance at Oddworld Inhabitants, who are getting into full-CG productions because they're much cheaper to make overall.
All of this stacks up to give me one thought: Why do people want CG to die? It's gorgeous, it's less demanding of resources/time/money, and it allows developers to create scenes that their game engine couldn't even hope to handle. Where is the downside? What is there to bitch about?
I just don't get it.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Final Fantasy: Advent Children called and said that people like kick-ass CG.
Are you sure about the less money thing? Why would it cost more to use ingame assests and tech then to farm it out to an external CG house (which is what a lot of devs do)? But regardless the point is next gen visuals look great, and I don't need to be interrupted or jarred by visuals which don't represent the game faithfully.
I have WOW and I don't remember being overblown by the intro though I haven't seen it in a long time. Are you saying that it would be impossible to even emulate via graphics like Kameo or Heavenly Sword? I'd be hard to believe that.
And don't get me started on pre-recorded vids using the game assets. That's even worse, not only is it jarring but it looks worse the in game due to compression!
I love kick ass CG too.. like the real time movie of FF7. I would love to have a game like that, all realtime.
while with some dicking around you could certainly expect some nice quality in game cinematics , the above mentioned problems will still occur and it's easier to just send off art data to a 3rd party CG company and have them animate movies.
Recall if you will Halo 2, with its in game cinematics that had a texture delay among other things. I would expect with the 360 alot of companies are gonna be hard pressed on this exact issue becuase in another year or 2 most 360 games will likely require 2-3 dvds to hold all the data but with realtime stuff you don't need to worry about 1280X720 encoded video filling up discs.
Recall if you will Halo 2, with its in game cinematics that had a texture delay among other things. I would expect with the 360 alot of companies are gonna be hard pressed on this exact issue becuase in another year or 2 most 360 games will likely require 2-3 dvds to hold all the data but with realtime stuff you don't need to worry about 1280X720 encoded video filling up discs.
SolidSnakex
Member
NotMSRP said:
Well on X360 at least, they HAVE to kiss prerendered cutscenes sooner or later, because unlike PS3, they wont have luxury of space to store all that much video. Logically, FMV should be the first thing to go, because then they not only svae disc space, but they cut develpment costs by ditching the whole 'high end CG movie" creation-direction-production shennanigans and just need a couple of guys in mo-cap suits
UltraMarioMan
Member
They'll just compress it to fit like most PS2 to GC ports were handled this gen.mr2mike said:
Ok there are only TWO companies out there that have a right to do any kind of CGI and that's Blizzard and SquareEnix. I'll (grudgingly) give them and only them a pass.
Watching some scenes with Perfect Dark 0 I gotta ask why? Why can't they show stuff in game? Oooh here's a nice high rez model that you can see but we'll switch her with crappy wall girl for ya to play with. Even if the game model looks good it will dissapoint when compared to CG. Show me what I'm going to be working with.
Watching some scenes with Perfect Dark 0 I gotta ask why? Why can't they show stuff in game? Oooh here's a nice high rez model that you can see but we'll switch her with crappy wall girl for ya to play with. Even if the game model looks good it will dissapoint when compared to CG. Show me what I'm going to be working with.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
You clearly haven't seen Onimusha 3 intro if you can say that. In my opinion it's more impressive or at least equal to anything Blizzard or Square Enix have put out.Oni Jazar said:
Those scenes in PD0 trailer were filmed real life footage. I think PD0 uses realtime cutscenes, and Joanna looks the same in them as she does in gameplay (and kinda nothing like and not nearly as good as that FHM artwork babe
)
truffleshuffle83
Banned
appearanlty hes never seen any of the DOA cg or anything else done by team ninja
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Yeah, how could I forget those. Great stuff too.truffleshuffle83 said:
Some food for the brain...
CGs tend to be created by or along side of art/vision director throughout the process and can happen parallel to when a game is being developed. On the other hand, cutscenes tend to be done in story boards and have scripters (often junior programmers or designer with some coding skills or experienced programmers) code up the sequence, which usually takes away quite a bit of time and resource from the actual game development. A lot of times the scripter may not have much art talent and not pay much attention to the details...
CGs aren't always a bad thing especially for proper places like game intro or ending where not much of the actual gameplay presents...
CGs tend to be created by or along side of art/vision director throughout the process and can happen parallel to when a game is being developed. On the other hand, cutscenes tend to be done in story boards and have scripters (often junior programmers or designer with some coding skills or experienced programmers) code up the sequence, which usually takes away quite a bit of time and resource from the actual game development. A lot of times the scripter may not have much art talent and not pay much attention to the details...
CGs aren't always a bad thing especially for proper places like game intro or ending where not much of the actual gameplay presents...
"They'll just compress it to fit like most PS2 to GC ports were handled this gen."
That probably wont cut it. "HD Era" and all, it worked on gamecube and it would have worked on PS2 and Xbox, but on 360, it's gonna be harder to justify going from 720p realtime graphics to 480p, compression artifact-riddled footage.
Game built on X360 I mean. I could understand if they did that for ports, but with graphics like next gen will allow, you shouldn't even really need CG in but the rarest off circumstances
That probably wont cut it. "HD Era" and all, it worked on gamecube and it would have worked on PS2 and Xbox, but on 360, it's gonna be harder to justify going from 720p realtime graphics to 480p, compression artifact-riddled footage.
Game built on X360 I mean. I could understand if they did that for ports, but with graphics like next gen will allow, you shouldn't even really need CG in but the rarest off circumstances
"Nothing can touch them and you are full of it if you think next-gen consoles will."
Well I'm not personally hoping for blizzard-level realtime cutscenes, but the point is, next gen should provide good enough graphics that producing realtime cinematics shouldn't limit their directional and artistic value in any way.
Meaning, next gen should have plenty of megahurtz for fancy cinematigraphy that previousely was only possible as pre-rendered. And realtime is a more intelligent choice since you dont get the usual transition from comparatively crappy game craphics, to super duper CG and back down to teh suck.
Well I'm not personally hoping for blizzard-level realtime cutscenes, but the point is, next gen should provide good enough graphics that producing realtime cinematics shouldn't limit their directional and artistic value in any way.
Meaning, next gen should have plenty of megahurtz for fancy cinematigraphy that previousely was only possible as pre-rendered. And realtime is a more intelligent choice since you dont get the usual transition from comparatively crappy game craphics, to super duper CG and back down to teh suck.
SolidSnakex
Member
It'll still be around, but at this point there's no real need for it. Take the FF7 demo for example, yah Advent Children looks better but I don't think anyone, even hardcore FF7 fans, would complain if they entire game looked like that demo.
Open Source
Banned
Why don't we make CG films all realtime, too?
Oh yeah, because that would be equally stupid.
Oh yeah, because that would be equally stupid.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
It just depends if the quality difference between realtime and prerendered is worth the price. CG along the levels of Onimusha 3's intro was $1 million a minute.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
You know considering how many companies are passing off 'target renders' and speed up video for demos they could also just prerender ingame assets for scenes too computationally complex for their engines. It's not just the extreme high end CG that could get prerendered.
SolidSnakex
Member
Beezy said:
She just finished watching the MGS4 trailer.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
CG for life baby!!!! Whaaooo!!
UltraMarioMan
Member
With the increased chip speeds and the compression routines available will allow higher res videos to be compressed and played faster and smaller with less loss.mr2mike said:
Have you SEEN FFVII AC? Clouds hair man CLOUDS HAIR!mr2mike said:
CamHostage
Member
Suikoguy said:
True enough. It's bragging rights to say you're all in-game, but if nobody notices the difference or if the quality is that much better, no reason to throw away a perfectly good tool.
The other thing about pre-rendered is that another studio can do the work, with the models transferred over, whereas it might be hard to work together when you're trying to fit the animation into the game engine you're still developing.
CamHostage
Member
Oni Jazar said:
Yeah ... but all of that talk right now is because we haven't seen in-game from those games, so we're wondering, "Will the game look like that?"
Once it's on store shelves, it doesn't really matter. It's cool when something's realtime, but it's not that big a deal if the experience stays smooth. Ratchet & Clank, for example, has gone with pre-rendered FMV from the game engine to save on loading in FMV, but who cares - it's funny stuff done well that's perfectly in sync with the game, and the game itself is gorgeous. Jak & Daxter can brag that its animation is all in-game, but by this point in the game, it doesn't matter a lick to me if I like how the game looks.
By the way, there can be a fairly big difference between "realtime" and "in-game". Your models switch, you go into collision-sensitive animation sequences instead of canned animation, you sometimes have to lose effect layers or drop a level of quality, plus your camera is in an entirely different arrangement that may be less flattering to the visuals for the sake of gameplay. The effects on character models in EA's next-gen sports games are incredible, but in gameplay, it looks a lot the same; Halo 2 was kind of the same thing, incredible cinematics, but those same effects didn't make the game impossibly stunning once applied acorss a whole scene undirected
CamHostage
Member
RE4 PS2 - Questioning the cutscenes
On the same token, there's a whole debate going about the PS2 version of RE4, which may quite possibly be using some sneaky little tricks to make the magic happen (there's also the question of whether the GameCube game was ever realtime in the first place). There is one big hanging question mark over how Capcom will make costume changes work if this is what they're doing, but the bottom line is, if the gameplay engine looks about as good as the GameCube game, and the FMV is blended so seamlessly that only one editor has really noticed that it might be FMV, that people who have the previewable game right there are questioning whether it is or not, then what's the difference?
On the same token, there's a whole debate going about the PS2 version of RE4, which may quite possibly be using some sneaky little tricks to make the magic happen (there's also the question of whether the GameCube game was ever realtime in the first place). There is one big hanging question mark over how Capcom will make costume changes work if this is what they're doing, but the bottom line is, if the gameplay engine looks about as good as the GameCube game, and the FMV is blended so seamlessly that only one editor has really noticed that it might be FMV, that people who have the previewable game right there are questioning whether it is or not, then what's the difference?
AndoCalrissian
Member
Kaijima said:
That's not the point. If next-gen is so powerful, we shouldn't need kickass CG because the realtime stuff would be of the same or similar quality.
I don't think it will happen until next-next gen though, if even then.