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[Javin98]

The retail shot I quoted are indeed using the gameplay shaders (that does not seems to feature SSS at all actually, at least for the characters' skin, but even the clothes when very close to the camera does not seems to absorb any light), I know that the cinematic ones are more complex and close to the early demo (but still inferior I think)

The lack of shadows also really hurt the global quality of the quoted, and give the "ultra low setting" feel, if your know what I mean. Now that I think about it, It is actually strange that this part of the game use the gameplay shaders since it is supposed to be a cinematic...

I'm guessing it's because the rain, wind and wave simulations all in that section are very demanding on the hardware. I've noticed that certain visual elements are tweaked per level basis, actually. The most noticeable one being shadows. In quiet and confined areas, shadow quality can actually be really good, utilizing high res shadows. Generally, shadow quality is decent, shadow resolution is relatively decent, but jagged edges are easily seen. However, in large areas and/or scenes with lots of action and destruction, shadow quality takes a huge hit. In fact, shadow resolution is reduced dramatically to the point that it looks like low res mess. Of the top of my head, the open New Devon area with lots of vegetation and huge pools of water and the building collapsing setpiece have really low res shadows. Inversely, the slow paced, indoor scenes have really high quality shadows.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that SSS is also tweaked on a per level basis. It's on most of the time during gameplay, but it is also turned off sometimes. I'm guessing ND thought it was best to turn it off in the rainy beach scene to focus more resources on the environment. Furthermore, I bet 99% of players wouldn't even notice.

 

[RenderJosh]

Regarding the question from the previous page on the Bloodborne hair technology, it looks like the usual carefully-placed-plane-cards all the way, probably animated depending on the intensity of the movement of the object it is attached to. If the engine is indeed using Havoc for all the physics interaction again, there you have it. And it does not seem to get any particular lighting/shading treatment either, looks like a plain diffuse map and nothing else. It seems to a least have basic interaction if there are dynamic lightsources, such as in the Darkbeast Paarl fight with all its lightnings.

What HairWorks clearly lack (if it is not the case already) is a good LOD implementation. I might be wrong, but having the same amount of tesselation if the object (a wolf for example) is 5m or 50m away from the camera is not ideal at all. I don't know much about the PureHair technology from RoTTR, but the performance impact is definitely greater than the 3% that was raised previously, I have tweaked and played with the options enough to be aware of that, I think.
And while the perf impact in obviously less important than in the Witcher 3, the only object in the whole game that is affected by PureHair is actually Lara only, whereas in the Witcher 3, you can have a whole wolf pack against you with their furs giggling around, and the perf impact will actually not be as strong as we might expect if we compare it to a situation with Geralt alone, so hmm...
I fiddled with HairWorks in Maya and if you take time to tweak it correctly, for a real time solution, it is really convincing (But bruteforce as hell indeed).
TressFX 3.0 is supposed to be used in Deus Ex Mankind Divided, since PureHair was a custom implementation (I think) of TressFX, this might be the first look we get at it.

Talking about physics made me wonder, how does a physics engine actually handle things like clothes or deformation ? Using vector fields maybe ? It is the subject in which I might have the least amount of knowledge since I never tried to use one.

 

[Javin98]

Regarding the question from the previous page on the Bloodborne hair technology, it looks like the usual carefully-placed-plane-cards all the way, probably animated depending on the intensity of the movement of the object it is attached to. If the engine is indeed using Havoc for all the physics interaction again, there you have it. And it does not seem to get any particular lighting/shading treatment either, looks like a plain diffuse map and nothing else. It seems to a least have basic interaction if there are dynamic lightsources, such as in the Darkbeast Paarl fight with all its lightnings.

What HairWorks clearly lack (if it is not the case already) is a good LOD implementation. I might be wrong, but having the same amount of tesselation if the object (a wolf for example) is 5m or 50m away from the camera is not ideal at all. I don't know much about the PureHair technology from RoTTR, but the performance impact is definitely greater than the 3% that was raised previously, I have tweaked and played with the options enough to be aware of that, I think.
And while the perf impact in obviously less important than in the Witcher 3, the only object in the whole game that is affected by PureHair is actually Lara only, whereas in the Witcher 3, you can have a whole wolf pack against you with their furs giggling around, and the perf impact will actually not be as strong as we might expect if we compare it to a situation with Geralt alone, so hmm...
I fiddled with HairWorks in Maya and if you take time to tweak it correctly, for a real time solution, it is really convincing (But bruteforce as hell indeed).
TressFX 3.0 is supposed to be used in Deus Ex Mankind Divided, since PureHair was a custom implementation (I think) of TressFX, this might be the first look we get at it.

Heh, I actually raised the question on the fur in Bloodborne. I initially assumed it was fur shaders, but almost everyone who replied is convinced that the fur uses polygon strips with Havok applied. That, IMO, is a brilliant idea. While it may not move realistically (probably intentional), the movement of fur looks great. Since Hairworks or TressFX 3.0 is out of the question for fur on consoles this gen, I wonder if more devs will try to do something similar to Bloodborne for fur. Sure, fur shaders look nice up close, but they are completely static, at least from the examples I've seen. Next gen, though, I would really love to see Hairworks-like implementation for fur.

 

[RenderJosh]

This kind of implementation is actually the most simple and logical if you don't want it to be too expensive. And while I don't have a particular example in mind at the moment, I am pretty sure that it was used many time in the past since, like I said, it is not really expensive.
I can't be used without caution too, since I can look bad depending on the object and the way the cards are placed. You have to take the scale and the moveset of the object in account since if badly used, it can look quite silly (I am looking at you, Vicar Amelia). It is definitely harder to make it looks convincing on a simple wolf than on a huge demonic beast here since, as you said, some exaggerated movements of the fur can feel "on purpose".

Watching the SIGGRAPH 2016 PBR course (at the UE4 hair shading solution right now), always remember me that I am supposed to implement a BRDF in my engine. Really have to try to go with the GGX BRDF model since I am quite interested in high end VFX studios. Huh.

 

[gamerMan]

The presentation from ND about their character shading clears up a historical point a lot of people were curious about. Remember how people were saying how that the original UC4 demo rendering is not the same as the one in the launched game / was perhaps not actually real time?

According to their chracter slides:

Then they ended up using some very different tech / paradigms.
---

Doom uses Clustered Forward, interesting!

So this pretty much confirms that the original demo was prerendered. It's at least a couple generations ahead of our time. I wondered why Naughty Dog made us believe that it was running in realtime on a PS4.

 

[Wishmaster92]

What makes the original demo really shine, apart from the larger amount of light sources, far higher quality SSS, a lot more self-shadowing/contact shadows, textures etc, is really the Depth of Field effect.

The DoF is present absolutely everywhere in the shot, with its strength varying not only using the whole object's distance (here Nathan) from the camera, but also using, it seems, something like a per-fragment distance from camera, giving a lot more subtle details and the Holy Grail-ish cinematic/CGI feel. In the retail shot, just like in most of games and especially on consoles since you can't use a shitload of samples for your DoF, the object, if close to the camera, seems to be "cut" from the world. The effect is still quite nice given the approach used, since we can't really see artifacts around the objects (*wink wink FFXV*).

The Order 1866's IQ always seems so clean and silky smooth because of its DoF, just look at any shot, especially the ones in interiors environment with a lot of objects and clutters. By playing with the camera's position/angle, it is possible to nearly eliminate the DoF effect, and things get suddenly a lot less pretty. Which is normal.


EDIT : Just look at these shots. Despite having excellent materials, texture arts... what really convey the filmic look is definitely the DoF. Jesus, the second one just nailed it perfectly.

Thanks for the interesting post. Upon closer inspection i did add dof in photo-mode to this comparison

And i agree, the dof implementation is quite different to each other. It's one of the things that really bugged me about the retail build of U4. By the way thank you, i guess you learn something new every day. I didn't really know why i could get such perfect composition in my order 1886 pictures, i thought it might be the 4xmsaa/fxaa combination coupled with the high quality motion blur and i'm sure it's part of the reason why, looking closely though it's definitely their dof method they have going on. Everything is grounded to the world and like you said, it's what really gives the picture that offline cg type of look.

 

[Javin98]

So this pretty much confirms that the original demo was prerendered. It's at least a couple generations ahead of our time. I wondered why Naughty Dog made us believe that it was running in realtime on a PS4.

Stop it with the goddamn hyperbole, please. We're all trying to be rational in this thread. It's not far fetched to assume something along the lines of the Neo (4+ TFlops machine) could render this in real time. Perhaps not at the perfectly locked 60FPS, but definitely at 1080/30. The specs of the Neo is nowhere near a generational leap over base PS4 specs, let alone "a couple generations".

 

[Dictator93]

A lot of image spam in general.

As much as I find your enthusiasm nice, it would be nice if you accompanied image posts with reasoning and/or descriptions of what we should be looking for in the image on a per image basis. We need to have common ground to talk about using common terms and whatnot so that discussion is at all fruitful and fun.

I don't know, I prefer the natural approach of the skin shader and the moonlight (way more natural too) exposed in the retail version over the reveal one.
He looks way more like a real human on the final product. Just my opinion, even if technically, the reveal is above.
However wet skin is more convincing in the final product :

Or even if you do type out things descriptively - Like here for example - you could IMO state why you find things the way you find them to be. Just stating the skin is more “natural” or that wet skin is more “convincing” is not enough to grasp for a third party reader. At the moment, your commentary is just too…

I'm getting this from my eyes and my experience with the game.

Subjectively-laden (as above). This is not a problem, as we all have our own experiences and eyes shaping what we see, but without any intersubjective connective points to help us realise what you are saying, most people are at a loss. Point out what you mean specifically and – IMO -

Please, do not downplay ND's accomplishment !

Avoid the need to think people are deriding others’ works. Pointing out technical inconsistencies or realities is not a downplaying, it is just being thorough.
-------------
edit: The Deferred Lighting in UC4 Course from Advances in Realtime Rendering is now online!

 

[gofreak]

Looks like it might be one to watch for dev's looking to target 4K on PC or the new consoles:

4K Rendering Breakthrough: The Filtered and Culled Visibility Buffer

http://schedule.gdceurope.com/sessi...ugh-the-filtered-and-culled-visibility-buffer

Modern rendering systems do not run well on higher resolution displays like 4K monitors. The next generation of consoles will support 4K monitors, therefore one can expect a large amount of target devices that run on 4K resolutions very soon. In this lecture, they will present a new rendering system: the filtered and culled visibility buffer that will perform much better than the traditional systems with higher resolutions, and at least as good as traditional rendering systems with the most common resolutions. Instead of storing data in a G-Buffer that increases with screen resolution substantially, it stores triangle data in a visibility buffer. To optimize that amount and quality of triangles stored in this buffer, triangle filtering and culling is applied in a pre-step. Additionally, the triangle and culling pre-step also prepares all other reader views like shadow map rendering. The source code of the demo application will be freely available. Come and join their talk if you want to see the latest breakthrough in 4K rendering.

Takeaway
Attendees will get an insight into modern rendering design and will receive a complete working solution with performance numbers and implementation details to integrate it into their game engine. Most 3D games are expected to benefit from the visibility buffer system described in the lecture.

 

[JaseC]

So this pretty much confirms that the original demo was prerendered. It's at least a couple generations ahead of our time. I wondered why Naughty Dog made us believe that it was running in realtime on a PS4.

Even back then, Yu absolutely refusing to use the term "real-time" was a big red flag. The image in your post is actually a great example.

 

[E-Cat]

Stop it with the goddamn hyperbole, please. We're all trying to be rational in this thread. It's not far fetched to assume something along the lines of the Neo (4+ TFlops machine) could render this in real time. Perhaps not at the perfectly locked 60FPS, but definitely at 1080/30. The specs of the Neo is nowhere near a generational leap over base PS4 specs, let "a couple generations".

Yeah, "a couple generations ahead" is basically 100+ TFLOPS at which point stuff like path tracing starts to become tractable.

 

[nOoblet16]

Alright here's something fun...hunchback Elena:

Bonus Drake face

and we know now that cutscenes model = ingame models

I know you posted shots and all but this is not the case.
ND has themselves mentioned that they have like 4 different LOD for Drake with LOD 0 being the cutscene model which you never really have in gameplay. It was in one of the videos where the character modellers were in a podcast/webinar. I think it's somewhere in here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgDv7njYUWU.

Also your shots avoid the artifacting crate by TAA because that's just the way it is..and the TAA artifacting was what spawned this discussion regarding the IQ.

However wet skin is more convincing in the final product :

That's...actually not convincing.
It needs to be subtle but there's way too much specularity in there and the lower quality SSS brings out the imperfection even more.

This is akin to the almost meme worthy discussion here where people would say they think a sharpened image or black crushed image looks better because the colours "pop"

 

[tuxfool]

That's...actually not convincing.
It needs to be subtle but there's way too much specularity in there and the lower quality SSS brings out the imperfection even more.

This is akin to the almost meme worthy discussion here where people would say they think a sharpened image or black crushed image looks better because the colours "pop"

Yeah. I can't say I'm convinced by the speculars of that wetness shader. It looks great on materials with relatively high roughness values like the fabrics but it breaks down on skin and the leather. I suspect it also looks better under less harsh lighting conditions.

 

[Wishmaster92]

My biggest gripe with Uncharted 4 visuals among others is the sss during gameplay which is very inconsistent. It sucks that tlou remaster is more consistent in this regard but i really hope that by the time tlou 2 comes out they can have a better sss implementation during gameplay. Top notch during cutscenes but that's a given. You can also see how much the hair was improved too, it doesn't look super fake anymore. I assume that's where most of their polygon budget went.

Here is an sss and lighting comparison cutscene vs photo mode gameplay.

Very distracting when it goes from one extreme to the other in a matter of seconds. Hopefully the ps neo can further improve this solid engine.

 

[KiraXD]

Neat thread idea. I'm not graphics savvy enough to give any meaningful input/debate, but I guess this is a place where questions can be asked too?

I thought this was a nice touch in ROTR. I don't think I've seen a projector cast an image onto a character before in a game. It seems fancy.

Yeah Watchdogs did it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP7LjpDCbCk


(welp posted before reading past your post lol.. ah well)

 

[RenderJosh]

I assume that's where most of their polygon budget went.

Well, actually...

Hair in UC4, as usual, are (here very) carefully placed 3D planes on which you apply a texture. The biggest difference between UC3/TLoS and UC4 is the way the said planes are lit more than anything else.
They especially nailed the specular part, and being only, well, planes, the implementation hold up very well against more complex technologies such as HairWorks, to the point where people at work actually asked me about how they did it since they were after a way to do hair on characters without necessarily relying on fur/hair techs for budget reason and render time.

Planes should not be regarded as a "lazy" solution of anything sort since I know a lot of people who would prefer using more complex techs rather than spending a huge amount of time perfectly placing a lot of these planes since they are supposed to look and feel perfected under angle or light conditions. Having witnessed this, that can quickly become annoying as hell if you are not used to it.

 

[tuxfool]

They especially nailed the specular part, and being only, well, planes, the implementation hold up very well against more complex technologies such as HairWorks, to the point where people at work actually asked me about how they did it since they were after a way to do hair on characters without necessarily relying on fur/hair techs for budget reason and render time.

Cards done properly *look* better than all the other hair technologies. But they don't act like hair, which is the main difference, that is why they're fundamentally limited. Great for short hair or sections of a model where there is very little deformation ( for example monsters in Witcher 3 with hairworks vs cards).

It should also be noted that the sheer volume used in UC4 would probably be too expensive if they weren't using TAA.

 

[dr guildo]

I know you posted shots and all but this is not the case.

Yep, and it proved my point : ingame models = showroom models without enhanced lighting
You thought that showroom models were cinematic models, in the sense that they get superior texture resolution, higher polycount plus extra light sources.


As we saw, the polycount and hair are exactly the same between ingame and showroom models, texture resolution too, the only difference is in the lighting which is more advanced in the showroom context, cinematic lighting as shown in the ND's slide I provided in the previous page.

ND has themselves mentioned that they have like 4 different LOD for Drake with LOD 0 being the cutscene model which you never really have in gameplay. It was in one of the videos where the character modellers were in a podcast/webinar. I think it's somewhere in here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgDv7njYUWU.

Why have you cut my sentence ? I wrote that :

and we know now that cutscenes model = ingame models + better lighting (more light sources, better SSS...)

Extra light sources are part of details (LOD). Please tell me if you always think that viewer showcases cinematic model (higher polycount, better textures, advanced lighting) ?

That's...actually not convincing.
It needs to be subtle but there's way too much specularity in there and the lower quality SSS brings out the imperfection even more.

This is akin to the almost meme worthy discussion here where people would say they think a sharpened image or black crushed image looks better because the colours "pop"

I applied a filter and modified the brightness, it's not the original settings from ND.

 

[RenderJosh]

I applied a filter and modified the brightness, it's not the original settings from ND.

Tweaking some simple values on the picture will not change the tech behind it. In this example, the wetness is definitely not convincing enough and looks more like a simple glossy map on top of the rest. In other situations and of course during cutscenes, it is a lot better (duh), but here well, at best it is a kind of aggressive LOD...

 

[xenorevlis]

I know you posted shots and all but this is not the case.
ND has themselves mentioned that they have like 4 different LOD for Drake with LOD 0 being the cutscene model which you never really have in gameplay. It was in one of the videos where the character modellers were in a podcast/webinar. I think it's somewhere in here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgDv7njYUWU.

The models are the same, though. This is why in almost every single cutscene which is preceded by gameplay, all the dirt / mud / blood / etc. that your character dynamically accrued is visible in the exact same spots. The difference is the animation rigging, SSS / shader quality, and lighting. Also, the silhouette tessellation can probably be amped up to further increase the edge quality of characters (smoother / more detail). These aren't your static poly-count characters of the past gen.

 

[dr guildo]

My biggest gripe with Uncharted 4 visuals among others is the sss during gameplay which is very inconsistent. It sucks that tlou remaster is more consistent in this regard but i really hope that by the time tlou 2 comes out they can have a better sss implementation during gameplay. Top notch during cutscenes but that's a given. You can also see how much the hair was improved too, it doesn't look super fake anymore. I assume that's where most of their polygon budget went.

I feel almost the same about the SSS thing you are speaking about.
And during the 10GBs of screenshots I have made in UC4, and during my shots sessions of TO1886, I managed to almost catch up the cinematic quality when the lighting setting context was favorable for the SSS to express at its best.

SSS is not a problem for the PS4, it can handle it quite easy when all planets are aligned.
That's why cinematic have extra light sources, to allow the SSS to explode. I'm not sure the Neo will give something better, because it's a lighting condition setting, the context is the king.

Here is an sss and lighting comparison cutscene vs photo mode gameplay.

Very distracting when it goes from one extreme to the other in a matter of seconds. Hopefully the ps neo can further improve this solid engine.

I allow myself to share some screenshots that I think they almost catch up the cinematic level of SSS :

 

[xenorevlis]

Also, that Corrine Yu post CONTINUES to be misunderstood.

She said it's in-engine, running on a real level. This does not mean REAL TIME. In-engine means that their game engine rendered out the visuals using the assets given. This is different then something like 3D CG studio work, in which you get insane level image quality, ray tracing, hair strands, etc.

The level was obviously not finished and contained elements (such as the crazier hair and sand animation) that didn't make the cut, but that doesn't mean it was a "pre-rendered CG" quality video. It was targeted that way within their engine, and ran at 60fps to set a target. Perhaps someone else misquoted her as saying it was real time, but in-engine and CGI level stuff are worlds apart.

 

[dr guildo]

Wow, I just came back from a screenshot session in the sister level, in fact the use of SSS in this game is the best showcase seen in the whole industry, it's simply amazing :

(Of course, and as usual, no cinematic, only ingame contexts)

 

[Dictator93]

lot's of images in general

As I stated earlier in the thread, although you have a great enthusiasm to post, it would be nice if you would not necessarily post a lot of images without context per-image. I would prefer as thread creator if this thread has a flow and one can have an overview of the posts that is comprehensible and that casual readers can come in and follow the conversations in a intuitive fashion. Large image posts without context, citation, or descriptive text per-image just confuses the thread IMO. It also gives the thread a flavour that I am not too fond of where conversations and challenging questions are met with just "images". Responding directly to people IMO is something we should want. Because otherwise it discourages proper conversation, exchange, and good natured arguments.

Also, your images tend to be a bit over sharpened, you may want to tone that down from an aesthetic point of view... but that is completely tangential.

Extra light sources are part of details (LOD). Please tell me if you always think that viewer showcases cinematic model (higher polycount, better textures, advanced lighting) ?

AFAIK, very rarely do character model LODs have anything to do with having extra light sources which follow the characters around to accentuate their shading / materials. Rather, those are just hand placed things for cutscenes and or specific set piece areas (fake point lights just being in places, for example). LODs on the other hand could change the material model of a character. For example, LOD 0 and 1 could use an expensive skin shader, but after a certain distance LOD 2 could just use the standard material shader to drive the surface.

 

[nOoblet16]

Posting images and claiming it's the best use of SSS in the industry without actually explaining why or giving a comparison to the other implementations does not really refute your post. For instance, the models in Until Dawn (especially the doctor) are incredibly high quality you can very clearly see the translucency, same for Star Citizen or even Advanced Warfare/Infinite Warfare. What would make the UC4 implementation better?

Also the shots posted above are so sharpened that any evidence of good SSS gets wasted because all I see is pores.

The models are the same, though. This is why in almost every single cutscene which is preceded by gameplay, all the dirt / mud / blood / etc. that your character dynamically accrued is visible in the exact same spots. The difference is the animation rigging, SSS / shader quality, and lighting. Also, the silhouette tessellation can probably be amped up to further increase the edge quality of characters (smoother / more detail). These aren't your static poly-count characters of the past gen.

Did I not mention in the post you quoted that ND themselves said that LOD0 which is cutscene model...is never used in gameplay ? Existence of dirt/ mud/ blood (mudblood!!) in the same place is not really evidence of same model.

The image I posted had nothing to do with LOD, it was just for comic purpose. And I do not know if UC4 actually uses the adaptive silhouette tessellation.

 

[RenderJosh]

Wow, I just came back from a screenshot session in the sister level, in fact the use of SSS in this game is the best showcase seen in the whole industry, it's simply amazing :

(Of course, and as usual, no cinematic, only ingame contexts)

Either there is something I am missing here, either you are confusing SSS with nice texture art/normal maps. A lot of the shots you linked (especially the sharpened ones as it has been said) lack of subtle details specific to SSS and seeing them, the first thing coming to my mind is definitely not "best SSS showcase seen in the whole industry", but something more along the lines of "oh, nice eye shaders" for example.

The most obvious use of SSS in your shots is the one with young Nathan showing us his back, around his ear, when translucency is indeed noticeable. Apart from that, nothing that eyecandy, at least not enough to claim that this is the best implementation in the whole industry.

(Cinematic implementation is of course something else)

 

[Crossing Eden]

As someone who casually reads this thread, I feel like photomode shots are usually unrepresentative of the visuals of a game due to all the filtering that gamers go crazy with. Such as the automatic sharpening. Those screenshots dr.guildo have been posting haven't exactly been good for discussion and it doesn't seem like they're very aware of technical details, (lighting placement is not part of LOD), so much as they just wanna highlight ND games specifically. ಠ_ಠ

 

[tuxfool]

As someone who casually reads this thread, I feel like photomode shots are usually unrepresentative of the visuals of a game due to all the filtering that gamers go crazy with. Such as the automatic sharpening. Those screenshots dr.guildo have been posting haven't exactly been good for discussion and it doesn't seem like they're very aware of technical details, (lighting placement is not part of LOD), so much as they just wanna highlight ND games specifically. ಠ_ಠ

I was going to let somebody else say it first. Permit me to be more blunt. It looks like a fanboy vomited screenshots all over the thread.

 

[Crossing Eden]

I was going to let somebody else say it first. Permit me to be more blunt. It looks like a fanboy vomited screenshots all over the thread.

Honestly I've always felt like the Order 1886 has consistently more successfully emulated the look of CGI than UC4, especially during gameplay.

 

[tuxfool]

Honestly I've always felt like the Order 1886 has consistently more successfully emulated the look of CGI than UC4, especially during gameplay.

Yes, but at the same time I think it is way too soft. It doesn't have the sampling advantages inherent in CGI.

It reminds me of a high quality upsampled DVD transfer of one of those movies. It needed a slight postfx sharpen.

 

[Javin98]

I love your shots, dr.guildo, and it is undeniable you have a great eye for art and composition but let's be honest. You don't know much about what you're talking about when it comes to tech. That's okay, since this thread is generally very inactive as 90% of posters on GAF have no idea what the terms thrown around here even mean. I think it would really help the thread and its discussions if you don't make questionable claims. I myself often get confused by the more advanced technical terms, but I never hesitate to ask.

Edit: Let me just tell you about a friend you reminded me of so you can relate to our issues better. One day, a friend of mine in college was playing Bioshock 2. So he said "This game has aged well" regarding the visuals. Then the nerdy side of me was like "No, it hasn't. The materials look so dated because of the lack of PBR, the textures are quite low res, it is an old game, so many techniques today are missing". Then, as he went on, I finally realized what he was referring to was the art style. In visuals, guy looks at the art style more than anything. Similar case here, if you ask me.

Honestly I've always felt like the Order 1886 has consistently more successfully emulated the look of CGI than UC4, especially during gameplay.

While I think Uncharted 4 looks better, I definitely agree on this. The higher quality post processing (especially the great use of bokeh DoF) really helped to achieve that CGI look better. It's my personal view, but at the same time, I found the excessive post processing detrimental to the image quality. I tend to prefer sharp images.

*snip*

Hey, man, I don't mean to be bothering you, but did you check out the PM I sent to you a few days ago?

 

[RenderJosh]

It reminds me of a high quality upsampled DVD transfer of one of those movies

Eww, that's harsh here haha.
And the softness of the image is quite like to the one you can get with a digital camera such as a RED Dragon. The grain and very sharp edges are almost always prod-production related.

 

[Wishmaster92]

Here are some old screenshots i had saved back when the game released. The implementation is great, however this is misleading. The photo mode in uncharted 4 is misleading when compared to the last of us photo mode which has near identical user interface iirc. For starters, the photo mode in the last of us does not alter the image quality whatsoever, that is not true for uncharted 4 the hair dithering present during gameplay is gone after you go into photo mode and the taa basically supersamples after a couple of seconds and sharpens everything. In some instances i've even noticed it adds geometry such as plants in some scenes. The iq in realtime is just not as good as the last of us remaster sadly(iq not graphics), it's really blurry if you have motion blur enabled and the sharpening filter is really distracting.

edit: removed picture

Here are some shots showing the sss and skin translucency in effect.

Gameplay never looks like this due to blurring and over sharpening even if you try to put the camera really really close. Only in photo mode. That is why the last of us remaster is more consistent iq wise as it looks 1:1 the same in gameplay/photo mode.

 

[gamerMan]

Also, that Corrine Yu post CONTINUES to be misunderstood.

She said it's in-engine, running on a real level. This does not mean REAL TIME. In-engine means that their game engine rendered out the visuals using the assets given. This is different then something like 3D CG studio work, in which you get insane level image quality, ray tracing, hair strands, etc.

The level was obviously not finished and contained elements (such as the crazier hair and sand animation) that didn't make the cut, but that doesn't mean it was a "pre-rendered CG" quality video. It was targeted that way within their engine, and ran at 60fps to set a target. Perhaps someone else misquoted her as saying it was real time, but in-engine and CGI level stuff are worlds apart.

Yibing Jiang clearly stated it was a real time render. We now know it was not from the slides. Maybe they were being careful with their words, but Naughty Dog intentionally was misleading us. This was never rendered on a single PS4 in realtime. Perhaps it was rendered in realtime on a farm of PS4s, but even that is misleading.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/character-shading-for-nathan-drake-uncharted-4

 

[nOoblet16]

Yibing Jiang clearly stated it was a real time render. We now know it was not from the slides. Maybe they were being careful with their words, but Naughty Dog intentionally was misleading us. This was never rendered on a single PS4 in realtime. Perhaps it was rendered in realtime on a farm of PS4s, but even that is misleading.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/character-shading-for-nathan-drake-uncharted-4

Odd thing to say that if shading is written in code then it's real time, considering they have to be written in code even for CGI movies.

Did the slides say it was not real time or did it just say that it was not on PS4?
I mean it could have been running on a powerful PC and hence could be real time, or it could have been just rendered using PS4 render farms.

 

[tuxfool]

Here are some shots showing the sss and skin translucency in effect.

Gameplay never looks like this due to blurring and over sharpening even if you try to put the camera really really close. Only in photo mode. That is why the last of us remaster is more consistent iq wise as it looks 1:1 the same in gameplay/photo mode.

I should point out that SSS is only clearly/obviously visible on the ears. In other areas it isn't obvious that it is there, without direct comparison of it being on or off the average person cannot tell it is there. The only reason I can extrapolate its existence from those shots is that I've seen plenty of examples of what it does under various lighting conditions.

For example, an educated guess would be that without sss, the bridge of his nose would be obviously a lot more darkened on the shadow side. I cannot guarantee that is the case because I have no evidence of the same shot without sss.

 

[Wishmaster92]

I should point out that SSS is only clearly/obviously visible on the ears. In other areas it isn't obvious that it is there, without direct comparison of it being on or off the average person cannot tell it is there. The only reason I can extrapolate its existence from those shots is that I've seen plenty of examples of what it does under various lighting conditions.

For example, an educated guess would be that without sss, the bridge of his nose would be obviously a lot more darkened on the shadow side. I cannot guarantee that is the case because I have no evidence of the same shot without sss.

Actually i think that's what actually happens, i might have a screen without sss i'll check.

Edit: maybe here?

 

[tuxfool]

Actually i think that's what actually happens, i might have a screen without sss i'll check.

Edit: maybe here?

Unfortunately, I can't tell. It may be the lighting not showing it up (it isn't particularly strong), but in theory if the face is dirty you should get less light entering the skin. I don't know if that actually happens here. His pores seem to be much more contrasted (SSS would even that out a bit) and the surface roughness of the skin is much more apparent, so I would say SSS is still present but the shader is doing its job?

In absolute terms it doesn't look too good (I'd say it is too pronounced), but those are the limitations of the technology at this point in time.

 

[dr guildo]

Either there is something I am missing here, either you are confusing SSS with nice texture art/normal maps. A lot of the shots you linked (especially the sharpened ones as it has been said) lack of subtle details specific to SSS and seeing them, the first thing coming to my mind is definitely not "best SSS showcase seen in the whole industry", but something more along the lines of "oh, nice eye shaders" for example.

The most obvious use of SSS in your shots is the one with young Nathan showing us his back, around his ear, when translucency is indeed noticeable. Apart from that, nothing that eyecandy, at least not enough to claim that this is the best implementation in the whole industry.

(Cinematic implementation is of course something else)

Do you know that SSS is not only when you see translucensy through skin, but the way the light is absorbed by the skin, not only parts like fingers, or ears, do you know that ?

MGS5 PS4 has SSS, XboxOne doen't have it :

SSS is not only on ears and fingers, but all over the skin of a body.

Very odd that Dictator knows that, but it doesn't correct you, Javin or Tuxfool about this fact. Maybe because the enemies of his enemies are his friends...

Apparently, Wishmaster92 is one of the few ones who knows what SSS really is... and it is definetely not only about translucency through ears...

 

[LastNac]

The presentation from ND about their character shading clears up a historical point a lot of people were curious about. Remember how people were saying how that the original UC4 demo rendering is not the same as the one in the launched game / was perhaps not actually real time?

According to their chracter slides:

Then they ended up using some very different tech / paradigms.
---

Doom uses Clustered Forward, interesting!

Where'd you find these?

 

[Dictator93]

Hey, man, I don't mean to be bothering you, but did you check out the PM I sent to you a few days ago?

Oh I did that scroll thing again. ^^^^^^^°°°° :/
/writing to you

Where'd you find these?

Here! Just scroll to the most-bottom presentation and download it.

 

[gamerMan]

Odd thing to say that if shading is written in code then it's real time, considering they have to be written in code even for CGI movies.

Did the slides say it was not real time or did it just say that it was not on PS4?
.

Here is a summary of the slides.

 

[dr guildo]

Large image posts without context, citation, or descriptive text per-image just confuses the thread IMO..

Ok, I will try to make citation or descriptive text per image, I didn't get it, sorry for that ! You are completely right about that.

 

[tuxfool]

Very odd that Dictator knows that, but it doesn't correct you, Javin or Tuxfool about this fact. Maybe because the enemies of his enemies are his friends

Enemies?

He is the OP, he only wants cogent conversation in this thread. Your screenshot spam isn't conducive to that. If you want to do that, there are threads for that.

As to your other point. It is impossible to determine the effect and quality of SSS without a comparison to it off, like your MGSV screenshot, except in places where it is obvious, such as the ears. Otherwise one only has a holistic impression of the overall quality.

 

[rambis]

Oh I did that scroll thing again. ^^^^^^^°°°° :/
/writing to you


Here! Just scroll to the most-bottom presentation and download it.

Wait, this really isnt saying what you said.


Its detailing their process, which is to take a high resolution "basic" shader and rewrite it till its capable of running realtime. It said nothing about the trailer.

As for the hair slide with the pic from the trailer, that was a seperate topic. They had to rethink the hair because of overdraw issues.


I don't think this has any implications on the trailer.

 

[tuxfool]

Wait, this really isnt saying what you said.


Its detailing their process, which is to take a high resolution "basic" shader and rewrite it till its capable of running realtime. It said nothing about the trailer.

As for the hair slide with the pic from the trailer, that was a seperate topic. They had to rethink the hair because of overdraw issues.


I don't think this has any implications on the trailer.

The trailer is using MSAA and using the Brent Burley BRDF. There is a clear difference in the lighting quality of that trailer and the final game.

 

[rambis]

The trailer is using MSAA and using the Brent Burley BRDF. There is a clear difference in the lighting quality of that trailer and the final game.

Yes there is but that is not to say that the trailer wasnt realtime. Theres a difference between a slice of cutscene in a tech demo and a full game.

Here is the quote from that presentation

"The most valuable lesson we learned was - Shipping a game was way different than making a real-time demo.Gameplay and having smooth framerates are always the number one priority. There are so many things in our game could slow down the frame rates, such as crowds, particles, complex environments, etc.

We had to cut down the cost of characters constantly, instead of mainly focusing on pretty images. There were so many times we almost lost hope about whether we were able to ship something decent with such strict limitations.Fortunately, we have a great team with all kind of creative ideas and always there to help each other. It’s a great honor to be part of the team, and it’s a great learning experiences to work on this challenging project."

 

[tuxfool]

Yes there is but that is not to say that the trailer wasnt realtime. Theres a difference between a slice of cutscene in a tech demo and a full game.

Here is the quote from that presentation

The final game did look worse and at half the frame rate of that cutscene. I cannot empirically say whether or not it runs on a ps4 as they suggested. But the game didn't work as a whole with that technology.

It is the same situation as the Witcher 3. Their original renderer worked in isolated demos, but didn't work for the game as a whole.

I'm certainly willing to give them a pass on mistakes, but at the time it was interesting to see people dig their heels that all these things were possible to extrapolate to the whole game. Apparently ND didn't even know at the time they created the demo.

 

[rambis]

The final game did look worse and at half the frame rate of that cutscene. I cannot empirically say whether or not it runs on a ps4 as they suggested. But the game didn't work as a whole with that technology.

It is the same situation as the Witcher 3. Their original renderer worked in isolated pockets, but didn't work for the game as a whole.

This is the whole point.

People are treating this as proof that the demo itself was a faux when that doesnt seem to be the case.

 

[nOoblet16]

Here are some old screenshots i had saved back when the game released. The implementation is great, however this is misleading. The photo mode in uncharted 4 is misleading when compared to the last of us photo mode which has near identical user interface iirc. For starters, the photo mode in the last of us does not alter the image quality whatsoever, that is not true for uncharted 4 the hair dithering present during gameplay is gone after you go into photo mode and the taa basically supersamples after a couple of seconds and sharpens everything. In some instances i've even noticed it adds geometry such as plants in some scenes. The iq in realtime is just not as good as the last of us remaster sadly(iq not graphics), it's really blurry if you have motion blur enabled and the sharpening filter is really distracting. This is the only comparison i could put together since i don't have the game with me, i know the lighting is not a complete match but disregard the lighting for a second and pay attention to the hair, arms, belt buckle, etc...

I wish someone could do a better comparison to show the differences more clearly. The photo mode shot is gameplay distance so it is what you should see when playing.

You again with this bogus comparison? Everyone pointed out why it was incorrect back when you posted this the first time.
One is unlit while the other is lit. One is during gameplay where Nate is always moving causing the artifacts due to TAA while in the other he is still since photo mode freezes the game as such you don't see the artifacts.

There is no difference between photo mode and gameplay in terms of IQ , except for the slightly added sharpness by default, it's purely a matter of how TAA works.