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[bomblord1]

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

I don't see anything there that cannot be drawn with vectors. I don't know how expensive it would be as an end product to render, I don't know how long it would take to draw any individual part, but it can be done.

 

[Metal-Geo]

I don't see anything there that cannot be drawn with vectors. I don't know how expensive it would be as an end product to render, I don't know how long it would take to draw any individual part, but it can be done.

Very expensive.

 

[Mr.Pig]

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

Much of Castle Crashers is drawn and animated in Flash.
They are probably not displayed in a vector engine though.

 

[hey_it's_that_dog]

Another bomblord thread where he asks a technical question, gets a ton of negative answers from experienced people, and proceeds to ignore them or argue against them.

 

[bomblord1]

Another bomblord thread where he asks a technical question, gets a ton of negative answers from experienced people, and proceeds to ignore them or argue against them.

What?

 

[dragonzdogma]

Vector graphics are being used in gaming but they are not functional like
when Adobe illustrator uses them.

This means that all vector graphics have to be rasterized (converts a vector layer to pixels) and set to whatever resolution the Artist decides.

So to answer the OP question directly:
I don't think there is gaming engine out there that is currently processing all
animations on the screen and rendering them vector style for scaling purposes.

 

[Pietepiet]

Some do.

See:

Another World (PC etc)

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

Monument Valley (Mobile)
Fez (360 etc)

No it doesn't. Ghost Trick uses 3D models rendered to sprites.

 

[bomblord1]

Very expensive.

Alright

 

[KojiKnight]

I don't see anything there that cannot be drawn with vectors. I don't know how expensive it would be as an end product to render, I don't know how long it would take to draw any individual part, but it can be done.

Possible? Certainly. Practical? Very much no.

It's much much MUCH more practical and cheaper to render high and use filtering to scale an image in-gameplay. It also allows for your 2D games to run on a myriad more devices since it's a lot less intensive.

 

[bomblord1]

Possible? Certainly. Practical? Very much no.

Yea, that was my point. It's possible. I don't know how practical though.

 

[FrontalMonk]

What?

You've more or less ignored the point that has been brought up again and again, which is the fact that 2D games don't use vector art because it's far more demanding on the CPU than working with bitmaps, which is CPU time that could be used for a number of other functions that need to be run many times per second.

I'm not saying you aren't reading them, I'm saying that you're being very selective in what you're choosing to respond to, and you're choosing to respond to points other than the one that's been made repeatedly that counters your argument.

 

[nded]

Yea, that was my point. It's possible. I don't know how practical though.

Yeah, not very practical on multiple levels. It would take an artist much longer to draw any element on that Muramasa screen to the same quality as the raster image, and running the game in real time with all those color gradients, lighting effects and transparencies would be extremely taxing.

 

[Flai]

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.

I think you are confusing vectors and polygons. I'm pretty sure no mainstream GPU supports rendering vector graphics.

 

[bomblord1]

You've more or less ignored the point that has been brought up again and again, which is the fact that 2D games don't use vector art because it's far more demanding on the CPU than working with bitmaps, which is CPU time that could be used for a number of other functions that need to be run many times per second.

I'm not saying you aren't reading them, I'm saying that you're being very selective in what you're choosing to respond to, and you're choosing to respond to points other than the one that's been made repeatedly that counters your argument.

I'm not ignoring it it's a solid point so I have nothing else to add or request clarification on. Short of just quoting it and saying ok there's nothing to say. So I don't say anything.

 

[quesalupa]

Why does that bottle say Ice Cream?

 

[Living Proof]

Another bomblord thread where he asks a technical question, gets a ton of negative answers from experienced people, and proceeds to ignore them or argue against them.

Shhhh! Cant you see he's slowly figuring out all of the industry secrets that the big-wigs have been forcibly suppressing for years?

It's not like people who actually know what they're talking about haven't already discounted this inquiry dozens of times or anything like that-- it's obviously a ploy to sell us video games that run worse than they need to and to trick us into thanking them for the privilege!

Spoiler

I had a feeling in my gut that I knew who started the thread as soon as I read the title

 

[Paz]

Yea, that was my point. It's possible. I don't know how practical though.

I'd also say something being 'technically' possible and actually possible are two completely different things.

It's more than impractical, it's improbable that someone would 100% replicate it in Vector art.

There are a million and one ways to do both 2D and 3D art but the best results always come from having the shortest iteration times.

 

[Doc Holliday]

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

What does pre drawn vs puppet have to do with it being considered vector images? I mean don't most web based flash games scale up depending on the resolution you're viewing them?

 

[Metal-Geo]

I think you are confusing vectors and polygons. I'm pretty sure no mainstream GPU supports rendering vector graphics.

Polygons are essentially vectors.

The problem occurs when you want fancy features like bezier curves.

 

[M3d10n]

The more detailed your art is, the more complex the end result vectors will be. Complex shading must be done by basically blending a bunch of layered gradients, which is far more CPU/GPU intensive than simply displaying a bitmap.

You also have almost zero GPU acceleration for Illustrator-style vectors.

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

None of those games use vectors in real time. It's all high resolution 2D images generated from vectors. Castle Crashers does not look much sharper at 1080p, for example.

 

[KojiKnight]

Shhhh! Cant you see he's slowly figuring out all of the industry secrets that the big-wigs have been forcibly suppressing for years?

It's not like people who actually know what they're talking about haven't already discounted this inquiry dozens of times or anything like that-- it's obviously a ploy to sell us video games that run worse than they need to and to trick us into thanking them for the privilege!

Spoiler

I had a feeling in my gut that I knew who started the thread as soon as I read the title

Guys are being a little overly critical IMO... They might be being a little insistent, but sometimes when you don't understand something, or want to understand more you push beyond people who simply answer "no that won't work."

 

[bomblord1]

I'd also say something being 'technically' possible and actually possible are two completely different things.

It's more than impractical, it's improbable that someone would 100% replicate it in Vector art.

There are a million and one ways to do both 2D and 3D art but the best results always come from having the shortest iteration times.

That's a good point similar to what a person said earlier about workflow which is something I never considered initially.

Guys are being a little overly critical IMO... They might be being a little insistent, but sometimes when you don't understand something, or want to understand more you push beyond people who simply answer "no that won't work."

Thank you that is what I'm trying to do.

 

[Wolf Akela]

I don't see anything there that cannot be drawn with vectors. I don't know how expensive it would be as an end product to render, I don't know how long it would take to draw any individual part, but it can be done.

Very expensive.

Understatement. It would be extremely expensive.

It's not a question of the artist, but of the CPU/GPU power required to render them. The tinier details are a lot more costly to render, unless you're okay with a lot of rounded edges.

As for the coloring, vectors rely on perfect shapes and curves. You can't perfectly represent organic looks without a heck lot more more vertices, much less representing the colors.

None of those games use vectors in real time. It's all high resolution 2D images generated from vectors. Castle Crashers does not look much sharper at 1080p, for example.

Yup. For example, Castle Crashers was drawn/animated in Flash, but they're all exported as raster. Why? Because it's a lot more expensive to render vector than raster.

As much as the internet hates Flash right now, they should know that a lot of the more graphics-intensive Flash don't even render in vector. Devs/artists need to export them to raster to get acceptable framerates, even if it means larger file sizes.

 

[Flai]

Polygons are essentially vectors.

The problem occurs when you want fancy features like bezier curves.

Yeah true, I somehow didn't realize that But polygons only support triangles, so you can't for example make a "infinite detail circle" or other stuff like that with GPU acceleration (unless we make some crazy pixel shader thingy that somehow does something idontknow).

 

[Shig]

I don't see anything there that cannot be drawn with vectors. I don't know how expensive it would be as an end product to render, I don't know how long it would take to draw any individual part, but it can be done.

"Why'd you use big paint rollers to paint this room when you could have used tiny little model brushes and gotten the same result?"

Games have budgets and deadlines. The asset production pipeline has to line up with those constraints. Throwing logistics out the window and testing the limits of what's possible is a nice romantic notion, but in the framework of making products, it's a good way to spend piles of money to get next to nothing done.

 

[bomblord1]

"Why'd you use big paint rollers to paint this room when you could have used tiny little model brushes and gotten the same result?"

Games have budgets and deadlines. The asset production pipeline has to line up with those constraints. Throwing logistics out the window and testing the limits of what's possible is a nice romantic notion, but in the framework of making products, it's a good way to spend piles of money to get next to nothing done.

I understand now thank you. In regards to the Muramasa pic I was trying to talk in a theoretical sense not a practical one.

 

[Krejlooc]

I just can't take topics like this anymore. So much misinformation. PNG has a 256 color palette? Vectors "inherently look shitty"? We don't have strong enough GPUs to do vector art?

Too frustrating to try and correct.

 

[bomblord1]

I just can't take topics like this anymore. So much misinformation. PNG has a 256 color palette? Vectors "inherently look shitty"? We don't have strong enough GPUs to do vector art?

Too frustrating to try and correct.

It would help me a lot if you could at least try to address some of the stuff on a surface level. Obviously vectors don't look inherently bad but I would love if you could talk about how well GPU's can or cannot process complex vector images since you have a lot of experience in the area of programming and game development.

 

[rjc571]

Nope just hi res artwork.

You sure? The Wii version of Origins rendered in 1080p in Dolphin looks virtually identical to the PC version, so unless the Wii version is running full res HD assets and downscaling them, they must be using some sort of 3D rendering process.

 

[todahawk]

Guys are being a little overly critical IMO... They might be being a little insistent, but sometimes when you don't understand something, or want to understand more you push beyond people who simply answer "no that won't work."

He is consistently getting feedback that he is being dismissive of questions that are already answered. I think some posters have issues with how he phrases his questions and follow-ups. Now he's saying he was more concerned with the theoretical than the practical.

If this thread was started from the standpoint of "explain the pros and cons of various 2d game art creation methods" it would have a much different tone and probably be a lot more productive. Instead we're getting off topic because of the way bomblord handles his interactions.

 

[Vark]

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.

Ehhh not quite. Vector Art as they're talking about here aren't actually vectors. They're Bézier curves. 3d graphics are ultimated stored and rendered as triangles. The only vector on a polygon triangle is it's normal which indicates what direction it is facing.

 

[Timeaisis]

This is a weird topic.

1) Vector isn't an art style, but because of Flash, it apparently has become one?
2) CPU-wise, we have fucktons of processing power at hand to render stuff in Vector. Maybe 20 years ago we'd come up with bottlenecks, but we're playing games in damn 3D now, boys and girls, I think we can handle some vector art.
3) Plenty of games draw stuff in "vector" programs like illustrator and then convert it to high-res images, and just render that. This is the majority of what you are seeing when you play "high-res" 2D games like Rayman or Guacamelee.

The difference you are seeing is "pixel art" vs "vector art", but only stylistically. Pixels don't scale very well, while "vector art" most of the time is converted to a regular high-res image file, and is drawn at a much higher resolution, so looks better and is not pixelated at, say 1080p. But again, the pixel art style is to be pixelated. So...yeah.

That being said, I'm sure there exists plenty of games that render in vectors.

 

[bomblord1]

He is consistently getting feedback that he is being dismissive of questions that are already answered. I think some posters have issues with how he phrases his questions and follow-ups. Now he's saying he was more concerned with the theoretical than the practical.

If this thread was started from the standpoint of "explain the pros and cons of various 2d game art creation methods" it would have a much different tone and probably be a lot more productive. Instead we're getting off topic because of the way bomblord handles his interactions.

I specifically said

I don't know how expensive it would be as an end product to render, I don't know how long it would take to draw any individual part, but it can be done.

In the post people are taking issue with. To me this heavily implies that I'm not sure about the practicality of it just that in a theoretical sense it can be done. I apologize if my wording was confusing or misleading.

 

[todahawk]

I specifically said


In the post people are taking issue with. To me this heavily implies that I'm not sure about the practicality of it just that in a theoretical sense it can be done. I apologize if my wording was confusing or misleading.

This is the second thread that people have said you're being dismissive of answers. Maybe the wording was confusing or misleading in your post but if you want productive threads and learn from other members I'd try not to come across as dismissive. I don't think anyone on here would fault you for asking why or why not but if posters think you're being disrespectful you're gonna get called out.

And I'm not trying to call you out, I'm trying to help you have more productive threads. You seem like a genuinely curious person and that you want to learn.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Cruise for a Corpse used vectors for characters and objects (but not the background location).

The game is from the same developer as Another World / Out of this World.

 

[bomblord1]

This is the second thread that people have said you're being dismissive of answers. Maybe the wording was confusing or misleading in your post but if you want productive threads and learn from other members I'd try not to come across as dismissive. I don't think anyone on here would fault you for asking why or why not but if posters think you're being disrespectful you're gonna get called out.

And I'm not trying to call you out, I'm trying to help you have more productive threads. You seem like a genuinely curious person and that you want to learn.

Alright and thank you for the advice. Could you perhaps point me to a specific example of wording I could have done better? Should I be quoting more posts that I don't have anything to add to in order to show I am in agreement so people don't think I'm ignoring them (ex the "it's too expensive" posts should I quote them and say ok?).

 

[Krejlooc]

Ehhh not quite. Vector Art as they're talking about here aren't actually vectors. They're Bézier curves. 3d graphics are ultimated stored and rendered as triangles. The only vector on a polygon triangle is it's normal which indicates what direction it is facing.

Systems that use quadratics as primitives like the Sega Saturn and 3DO (or cards like the Nvidia NV1) could do bezier curves with ease

They had 3 or 4 control points for the curve depending on hardware mode used.

 

[Vark]

Systems that use quadratics as primitives like the Sega Saturn and 3DO (or cards like the Nvidia NV1) could do bezier curves with ease

They had 3 or 4 control points for the curve depending on hardware mode used.

The N64 used quads too but those were dark times and we don't speak of them anymore.

 

[Doc Holliday]

The more detailed your art is, the more complex the end result vectors will be. Complex shading must be done by basically blending a bunch of layered gradients, which is far more CPU/GPU intensive than simply displaying a bitmap.

You also have almost zero GPU acceleration for Illustrator-style vectors.



None of those games use vectors in real time. It's all high resolution 2D images generated from vectors. Castle Crashers does not look much sharper at 1080p, for example.

Ahh i see, i didn't realize the op wanted real time specifically. I was thrown off by posters commenting how vector graphics are ugly, which is weird since some of the best looking animated shows atm use toon boom(vector based).

One question, What about a game like Burrito Bison, Isn't that game real time? How else does the game up res depending on what resolution you're viewing the game on?

I remember working on a flash game back in the early 2000's and i believe everything was rendered in real time. That's why we had to be careful how we drew our lines.

 

[Haunted]

I think the OP is just trying to learn, I wouldn't give him such a hard time.

 

[Orayn]

Some of the examples like Muramasa might be POSSIBLE to do as vector art—esp. since Vanillaware uses a lot of paperdoll animation techniques—but it could easily prove to be a gigantic pain in the ass in terms of workflow while offering relatively few benefits. The game's look is detailed enough that using rasters is more efficient and gives the artists a lot more control over how the final game looks.

 

[Somnid]

I think you are confusing vectors and polygons. I'm pretty sure no mainstream GPU supports rendering vector graphics.

Polygons are vectors, the bitmap equivalent of 3D is voxels. Vectors are simply expressing the rasterized end product as a series of draw instructions which is how almost all engines work. This is why you can arbitrarily change the output resolution and it will scale with no artifacts.

Ehhh not quite. Vector Art as they're talking about here aren't actually vectors. They're Bézier curves. 3d graphics are ultimated stored and rendered as triangles. The only vector on a polygon triangle is it's normal which indicates what direction it is facing.

In old 3D systems, yes, you were generally limited to only a few draw primitives (still vectors though they were just lines and points). You could still do curves (NURBS) and current 3D can also define things like geometry shaders which can algorithmically add vertices to shapes depending on user-defined conditions. These are bit more low-level than say SVG, but the idea is the same and you could theoretically build on top of it. In modern systems you are allowed to determine your draw operations as you see fit. Polygons are just easy to work with which is why I speculate people didn't like 2D pure vectors because doing curves can be a pain but there's a million tools to make 3D polygonal creation easier (no reason you couldn't just drop the Z and get a true 2D product either) and you can throw a pixel shader on that if you need a specific look.

A good example of a vector system that was largely used is Flash.

 

[MrBadger]

 

[Shin-Ra]

Much of JSRF's beautiful texture work could be vector/polygonised, as well as the HUD, effectively future-proofing it.

You'd need very robust LoD scaling for when you're standing one end of a large environment looking across hundreds of polygonised 'textures' though.

 

[ppor]

Some of the examples like Muramasa might be POSSIBLE to do as vector art—esp. since Vanillaware uses a lot of paperdoll animation techniques—but it could easily prove to be a gigantic pain in the ass in terms of workflow while offering relatively few benefits. The game's look is detailed enough that using rasters is more efficient and gives the artists a lot more control over how the final game looks.

You can do paper doll with raster graphics though. Like Castlevania Bloodlines.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

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

Absolutely not, are you crazy? Its just high res bitmaps.

For the OP, and people wondering, most of the UI done in games is done in vector art. That allows the UI to be scalable in different resolutions, this is specially so in mobile and Facebook.

As far as its use in actual games, its really hard to use well and animate for in game use. The pool of talent able to replicate vector art and make it look as good as bitmap art is limited, and your only good animation tools are Flash, which is also pretty limited.

Tons of Facebook and mobile games use vector art, specially very simple games like puzzle games and such ... but for grander scale games its just not a good idea production wise.

 

[Purple Cheeto]

The iPhone doesn't have hardware support for it. Even for native non gaming apps.

 

[ozfunghi]

Vectors can have just as many colors as bitmaps. What are all you people claiming the opposite talking about? Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about. The more complex the artwork though, the more a pain in the ass coloring becomes, especially with gradients and alpha.

Vector graphics require more computing power compared to bitmaps, and they are not suited for photographic artstyles, or painted artstyles or the like.

So it really depends what you want to do with the art direction. Vectors aren't suited for lots of detail (photo, realistic textures etc...). It is however suited for stylized graphics.

 

[Orayn]

You can do paper doll with raster graphics though. Like Castlevania Bloodlines.

Oh, totally, I was just saying that paperdoll is potentially vector-friendly since you've got separate parts that are being squashed, stretched, rotated and moved rather than everything being a complete hand-drawn frame.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

vector is UGLY

Boy, you crazy!