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[bomblord1]

Vector art is a way to draw graphics where instead of being represented and rendered by pixels it is instead created using geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygons. By drawing a 2d image with vectors you can scale it up infinitely without loss of quality. Vector graphic are essentially resolution independent much like modern polygons are.

An example of a vector graphic scaled up vs the same image drawn as a sprite

So I'm curious why modern 2-D games don't use vector art instead of high res sprites. Is it lack of GPU functions dedicated to handling it? Is it too performance heavy? Something more mundane like major engines not supporting it? Has there been any research into the field? I'm curious why this format isn't used more often in 2-D games.

 

[CaptainLoveline]

Because vector images are limited in what colours you can use, you'd have to lose a lot of detail on that alone.

 

[hoserx]

You're not fooling me with that image........ I know that isn't ice cream!

 

[foxbeldin]

Vector is a pain in the ass to use. Especially for colors.

 

[bomblord1]

Because vector images are limited in what colours you can use, you'd have to lose a lot of detail on that alone.

I have experience doing vector art in Adobe Illustrator I've never ran into a color limitation. Could you explain further maybe point me to some examples of what you are referring to? I'm not saying you are wrong i'm just seeking to understand better.

 

[Social]

Vectors require quite a lot of CPU power compared to Bitmaps. Performance wise, it wouldn't fly.

 

[John Kowalski]

vector is UGLY

 

[KainXVIII]

So I'm curious why modern 2-D games don't use vector art instead of shitty 8-bit sprites.

Fixed for you.

 

[Hero of Legend]

A bottle of Ice Cream?

 

[Naked Snake]

Some indie and mobile games do I think.

Super Hexagon?

Dyad?

Aren't most/all Flash games vector too?

 

[Tenck]

I believe The Banner Saga is all vector. Looks so nice.

 

[funkystudent]

Vectors are a lot more limiting from the art POV.

I bet some art styles could work but anything complex would be a nightmare.

 

[Occam]

I'm pretty sure there are lots of 2D games that use vector graphics.

 

[Misterinenja]

Because vectors fucking suck past simple graphic design.

 

[Chobel]

From here

Unlike other art forms, vector art requires extremely high precision, making it unsuitable for many art styles. Basic shapes and such are easy using Vector art but it's just a pain to add small details which would be really easy to paint. So its kinda restricted to very simple "symbolic" styles. For everything else painting just works better.

 

[CaptainLoveline]

I have experience doing vector art in Adobe Illustrator I've never ran into a color limitation. Could you explain further maybe point me to some examples of what you are referring to? I'm not saying you are wrong i'm just seeking to understand better.

That's what I learnt in college, if I remember you could only have 256 colours in a vector image. (Unless I've gotten confused with something else)

 

[gingerbeardman]

Some do.

See:

Another World (PC etc)

Ghost Trick (DS) kind of as it prerenders them as sprites

Monument Valley (Mobile)
Fez (360 etc)

 

[Dreamwriter]

Lots of 2D games are animated in Flash, using vector art.

 

[Cucurbitacée]

In the case of very detailed art, this would require way, way more work to do it in vector when it's a straight forward job in bitmap paint.

 

[ArtHands]

It is quite time consuming to make vector graphic (get the same person to draw an eye in both photoshop via wacom tablet and on illustrator), and is more complex in terms of algorithms manipulation. I am guessing it'll be hard to port it across the engines.

Also, vector graphic doesn't support many stuffs such as blur and image filtering.

 

[morukutsu]

Vectors require quite a lot of CPU power compared to Bitmaps. Performance wise, it wouldn't fly.

Exactly, and considering you are likely to animate them, it will require a lot more of CPU / GPU power. Moreover, you need to provide a coherent worlflow from asset creation to rendering. Vector artists like to work with Illustrator, rendering .SVG in a game engine is not hard but more difficult if you want to render them quickly at high resolution. I experimented different workflows for vector graphics from NDS to PC HD graphics.

I think the best is to stick with high res pre-rendered 2D graphics, if you are not going to zoom too much, the GPU filtering will do the work.

Otherwise, you can use usual 3D tools to create 2D assets as you would create 3D assets, the rendering will be fine (if you use some kind of AA of course, because jaggies will kill the effect), animation will be a pain in the ass and good luck to find a 2D artist who is willing to work with that.

 

[JessicaPadkin]

I actually love the visuals in Vectrex games. Looks really classy.

 

[rjc571]

Rayman Origins uses vector art, no?

 

[pinkurocket]

That's what I learnt in college, if I remember you could only have 256 colours in a vector image. (Unless I've gotten confused with something else)

You're thinking of gif or png files?

Vectors can use a wide range of colors, the only limitation comes from the color profile you use.

 

[3DShovel]

Some do.

See:

Another World (PC etc)

Ghost Trick (DS) kind of as it prerenders them as sprites

Monument Valley (Mobile)
Fez (360 etc)

Uhhhh...

 

[dex3108]

Rayman Origins uses vector art, no?

Nope just hi res artwork.

Vector art is very demanding. You need to spend much much more time to achieve results you want and 90% of time you won't be able to achieve desired results.

Standard painting in Photoshop is fast, easy and artist have more freedom that is why it is most popular choice.

 

[vio]

I think Another World used it for the characters. Animated nice but it was very slow on Amiga.

 

[bomblord1]

It is quite time consuming to make vector graphic (get the same person to draw an eye in both photoshop via wacom tablet and on illustrator), and is more complex in terms of algorithms manipulation. I am guessing it'll be hard to port it across the engines.

Also, vector graphic doesn't support many stuffs such as blur and image filtering.

You can use a wacom tablet in illustrator. I don't have much hands on experience with it to understand the nuances but it definitely works.

Exactly, and considering you are likely to animate them, it will require a lot more of CPU / GPU power. Moreover, you need to provide a coherent workflow from asset creation to rendering. Vector artists like to work with Illustrator, rendering .SVG in a game engine is not hard but more difficult if you want to render them quickly at high resolution. I experimented different workflows for vector graphics from NDS to PC HD graphics.

I think the best is to stick with high res pre-rendered 2D graphics, if you are not going to zoom too much, the GPU filtering will do the work.

Otherwise, you can use usual 3D tools to create 2D assets as you would create 3D assets, the rendering will be fine (if you use some kind of AA of course, because jaggies will kill the effect), animation will be a pain in the ass and good luck to find a 2D artist who is willing to work with that.

Workflow is interesting I never considered that. You're referring to drawing -> final product right not the actual CPU/GPU workflow? It's harder to get artists to put out high quality vector graphics in a short amount of time then?

 

[Tailzo]

Using vector graphics doesn't limit the range of colors you can use. But the more details you add, the more CPU power hungry your game will be. I remember having a lot of trouble with Flash when I tried to force it to show complicated characters and backround-art. Bugs, crashes, slowdows...

 

[Foxy Fox 39]

You can use a wacom tablet in illustrator. I don't have much hands on experience with it to understand the nuances but it definitely works.



Workflow is interesting I never considered that. You're referring to drawing -> final product right not the actual CPU/GPU workflow? It's harder to get artists to put out high quality vector graphics in a short amount of time then?

I dont really see the point of using a wacom tablet in illustrator unless you're using the freehand tool which isn't all that precise. The point of illustrator is precision.

I always use a mouse in illustrator and the tablet in photoshop.

 

[Baron_Calamity]

I actually love the visuals in Vectrex games. Looks really classy.

Those monitors were awesome. Taking those graphics and rendering them on a modern screen is far less impressive.

 

[Metal-Geo]

Because rasterizing vectors is very, very demanding. That is, if we're talking about vectors with the features found in programs like Inkscape and Illustrator.

 

[the TMO]

Because rasterizing vectors is very, very demanding

This.

 

[ArtHands]

You can use a wacom tablet in illustrator. I don't have much hands on experience with it to understand the nuances but it definitely works.



Workflow is interesting I never considered that. You're referring to drawing -> final product right not the actual CPU/GPU workflow? It's harder to get artists to put out high quality vector graphics in a short amount of time then?

I am not saying you can't use a wacom with illustrator. My point is you can draw an eye easier and faster by drawing it rather than create it as vector art.

 

[bomblord1]

I dont really see the point of using a wacom tablet in illustrator unless you're using the freehand tool which isn't all that precise. The point of illustrator is precision.

I always use a mouse in illustrator and the tablet in photoshop.

Well I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on it as my experience is limited to learning the basics in a class and then doing a few simple things on my own but there's a whole class here about drawing in illustrator with a wacom tablet so it seems there's a purpose to it.

 

[thewhitehawk]

Vector art is a way to draw graphics where instead of being represented and rendered by pixels it is instead created using geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygons. By drawing a 2d image with vectors you can scale it up infinitely without loss of quality. Vector graphic are essentially resolution independent much like modern polygons are.



So I'm curious why modern 2-D games don't use vector art instead of high res sprites. Is it lack of GPU functions dedicated to handling it? Is it too performance heavy? Something more mundane like major engines not supporting it? Has there been any research into the field? I'm curious why this format isn't used more often in 2-D games.

I'm not sure of the technical reason why it's not used in videogames, but in web development vector graphics don't always make sense because graphics can scale infinitely but they aren't adequate for all sizes and in the case of small graphics like icons, you will often lose more detail than you would otherwise if you were using a bitmap type image. This article exemplifies it: http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-icons.html

When you consider that game aesthetic are very tightly integrated into games. I reckon that at least part of the reason is that the artists don't want to see some of their finer art and detail being lost on a technicality. Personally, I'm fine with non-scalable graphics.

 

[bomblord1]

I am not saying you can't use a wacom with illustrator. My point is you can draw an eye easier and faster by drawing it rather than create it as vector art.

I don't think there's a large difference from my experience. I've actually drawn an eye (an eye specifically) in illustrator and did not seem appreciably slower than doing it in another program or free hand. I would defer this to people with more experience using said programs though because like I've said I am not an expert.

 

[Dunkley]

Super Meat Boy and Castle Crashers do.

Edit:

Actually just prerendered apparently; nevermind.

 

[Muzicfreq]

Vectors are great but waaaayyyy too demanding on the cpu.
The more stuff you toss at vector work to make it more detailed the harder it is to run

 

[Somnid]

Performance arguments? The entire point of 3D hardware is to make vector rasterization fast. Nearly all 3D games are vectors.

It's used pretty heavily to some degree in most games, even 2D (the sprites are just bitmaps on a 3D vector quad). I don't think it's used in a raw from because I don't imagine most artists want to draw everything in splines or if they did they use a full 3D system and throw a shader effect on top to get a similar look.

 

[Meffer]

Vector art takes more memory than bitmap.

 

[Somnid]

Vector art takes more memory than bitmap.

No, no it doesn't.

<circle cx="4000" cy="4000" r="4000">

This is a lossless 8K vector image of a circle. It's 37 bytes. As an uncompressed 2 color bitmap it would be 6.4MB.

 

[Doc Holliday]

You guys realize a lot of 2D games/TV animation out right now uses vectors right?

pretty much any indie game with 2d art that isn't using 8-bit pixel look use vector art

 

[Portugeezer]

It reminds people of old crappy flash games.

I think I prefer pixel art myself, but I never really thought about it.

 

[PlumCantaloupe]

Flash games/animations were often Vector ...

The issues are that they is CPU bound and requires a special skillset to make complicated pieces. The main advantages it has are memory, as it takes up much less space that pixel data, and unlimited scaling and precision; because it defines all shapes/curves as equations rather than thousands of RGBA values. Both of these "advantages" are relatively well covered by the present generations move towards 3D (which in a way is vector as a wireframe) and huge memory and HDD space.

Mostly the advantages aren't worth the additional investment in not only finding capable vector artists (minority compared to pixel/raster artists ) and having to build a special engine for displaying them.

EDIT: Many of the examples above may have had graphics created by vector based programs, like Illustrator, but are not actually being displayed by a vector engine. They were output from a vector program to .png's.

 

[Peltz]

You guys realize a lot of 2D games/TV animation out right now uses vectors right?

pretty much any indie game with 2d art that isn't using 8-bit pixel look use vector art

So basically, what your saying is that these games could be rendered in 4k without seeing any pixelization?

 

[charsace]

Because it is a pain in the ass and resource intensive.

 

[PlumCantaloupe]

So basically, what your saying is that these games could be rendered in 4k without seeing any pixelization?

Yes, if and only if they vector graphics being rendered by a vector engine and not just output .png's for example.

 

[beril]

You guys realize a lot of 2D games/TV animation out right now uses vectors right?

pretty much any indie game with 2d art that isn't using 8-bit pixel look use vector art

Eh no, some of those may use vector graphics in production, (I really don't think Castle Crashers does though), but in the final product it's all simple textured quads. Some of them use 2D skeletal animation rather than predrawn animation frames, but that doesn't qualify as vector graphics

 

[KojiKnight]

Try to create a game like Muramasa with vectors... there's your answer.