Garrett Hawke
Member
Same. It still blows my mind, if there was some kind of temporal AA Arkham Knight would legitimately look like a CG film.
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In praise of Physical Based Rendering [PBR]
- Thread starter cyberheater
- Start date
Icyflamez96
Member
Ratchet & Clank deserves a mention.
There are very few next gen games that combine both PBR with cartoon stylizing, which makes me very sad.
The second is a shot from the movie btw.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
The game in the first shot arguably looks better, lol.
DOWN
Banned
julzillamilitia
Banned
that gif is the best
Ratchet & Clank deserves a mention.
There are very few next gen games that combine both PBR with cartoon stylizing, which makes me very sad.
this looks straight up cgi movie quality.
dampflokfreund
Banned
Basically, its THE current gen technology. .
It does use a Temporal AA...
potatohead
Member
It's not a bad game, it's just that kind of game.
It's just a very linear/narrative focused style. But in that style they did really well IMO.
Shooting is actually really well done in it and I enjoyed it.
I personally feel Battlefront looks the best IQ overall actually.
Even better than The Order (but Order is not on PC obviously, and in some scenes Order is really excellent as well, beyond what I would expect from PS4 and even PC...).
JordanN
Banned
Ayyy, fixing that pronto (really hope this one's from the game. It's hard to tell the difference).
potatohead
Member
It helps that BF has AA enabled. It also is using a prebaked GI solution which helps a lot, but isn't really feasible if you want to change global lighting conditions.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I kinda feel PBR has become an umbrella term to mean "i really like the lighting and textures" in impressive scenes where rendering quality can be attributed to a whole bunch of things.
Tatsumi Oga
Banned
Which games are those?
Unfortunately that's the downside of PBR in regards to 100% cartoonish Visuals. To apply a cartoonish visual style they really need to deviate from a realistic PBR system which is, at the moment, the easiest PBR lightning and rendering style to achieve, mainly because you have our own reality to base all of the values to get there (both Unreal and CryEngine for example have test scenes which have real color cards and sets that can tremendously help to achieve whatever material you'd like, realistically).
Basically to get a consistent cartoon style through a PBR like pipeline you need to invent your own reality material rules and values, and it can be a bit of a pain to do that in a cohesive way, while achieving the intended visual style and that is why in that regard it's still used an "old school" approach (where you tweak the shaders as you go and see fit, without any particular rule).
The example you gave, is probably the best way to achieve a middle ground, where you get an hybrid approach between Cartoon with physical based shader rules applied to it.
Garrett Hawke
Member
Well it's not very strong, there's a lot of shimmering in motion and IQ isn't all that great.
potatohead
Member
That's a good point.
For its purposes it works for Battlefront to pre-bake some/a lot of the lighting, but yes very good point.
True. However, PBR is the ultimate confluence of Lighting and Textures.
In fact the rendering equation is literally about light.
NullPointer
Member
Love the hell out of it.
They've been applying it to more and more assets in Warframe with every update, so its been easy to see the difference piecemeal, and its pretty dramatic. Every once in a while I'll stop and look at some metal tube that used to be so dull and plasticy, and now shines like polished bronze. Love it.
They've been applying it to more and more assets in Warframe with every update, so its been easy to see the difference piecemeal, and its pretty dramatic. Every once in a while I'll stop and look at some metal tube that used to be so dull and plasticy, and now shines like polished bronze. Love it.
julzillamilitia
Banned
That is not to say that Enlighten doesn't to real time GI, but one cannot ask that from consoles.
DOWN
Banned
From how I've seen that criticism of the popular use of the term explained before on GAF, it's not exactly the most locked down term to the industry either... There's a broad array of techniques that make up what people call PBR in the industry and most of the time, people on GAF are at least correct when they identify a game as having PBR, even if there are strong influencers that also deserve credit for the looks. There are things that may or may not be used in PBR pipelines but the result is often fairly obvious when a high quality extensive use of the techniques is applied thanks to the core principle of what PBR is.
So yeah, PBR love is real even to laymen.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The game most likely ended up that way due to a focus on tech and presentation.
potatohead
Member
Haha fair enough.
But either way it looks gorgeous, even on PC... very much enjoying the PC version.
Sometimes I play it at 1440p but it makes my 760 GTX crawl to under 30 fps sometimes at that resolution.
But 1080p is working great at Ultra settings
Some of the examples in the thread are not PBR though.
Some of them are just HDR lit conditions and not really focusing on differences of materials shading that PBR is actually offering.
But yea I agree with you broadly that PBR is a wide array of approaches to lighting, but it is based on material shading, not really the HDR lighting pics (some of which are in this thread).
Like this would be PBR example, because it is focusing on the difference between the matte-like shader of the paper versus the more reflective shader upon the lead of the "pencil" drawing.
But this picture here is not really an example of good use of PBR, but rather good use of HDR:
I cannot really notice any differences in material PBR based shading besides the hair in this picture.
And then back to PBR, we are comparing shaders based on materials, not based really on high/low lighting conditions like in this The Order picture I have:
It shows strong differences in shading based on the material, whether metallic or wood or cloth/etc.
DOWN
Banned
Haha fair enough.
But either way it looks gorgeous, even on PC... very much enjoying the PC version.
Sometimes I play it at 1440p but it makes my 760 GTX crawl to under 30 fps sometimes at that resolution.
But 1080p is working great at Ultra settings
Some of the examples in the thread are not PBR though.
Some of them are just HDR lit conditions and not really focusing on differences of materials shading that PBR is actually offering.
But yea I agree with you broadly that PBR is a wide array of approaches to lighting, but it is based on material shading, not really the HDR lighting pics (some of which are in this thread).
Like this would be PBR example, because it is focusing on the difference between the matte-like shader of the paper versus the more reflective shader upon the lead of the "pencil" drawing.
But this picture here is not really an example of good use of PBR, but rather good use of HDR:
Sweetie every picture you've posted is like uber tiny compressed 400x320 pixels so I can't see what you are pointing out
EDIT: The Lara Edit I see big. Yes, I bet the person posting that didn't grasp PBR. It's a mostly flat image. The only hint of PBR is her elbow.
But this picture here is not really an example of good use of PBR, but rather good use of HDR:
I cannot really notice any differences in material PBR based shading besides the hair in this picture.
As I stated earlier, it *is* PBR. Only the problem in RoTR is that the lighting model doesn't support energy conservation.
The Baron Count
Member
Glad The Order is getting lot's of mentions here. I really don't think anyone has come close to their stuff.
The materials in that game are the closest to reality I have ever seen in a real time application.
The materials in that game are the closest to reality I have ever seen in a real time application.
DOWN
Banned
How exactly can you tell from that picture? All materials in the environment and her clothes seem to just have the same soft material level of reflectiveness. (I know elsewhere the game does more, but from this shot please explain).
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Agreed. I went in knowing it was story driven, and I actually rather enjoyed the story. Wish we could get a sequel after the ending... damn.
I was also pleasantly surprised with the shooting. The very low input lag/response was magically well done in a locked 30fps game. Very quick response times. Had a 60fps "feel" to the gameplay and input response due to it.
Because the developers said so. There are also other examples in the game. PBR isn't an ad-hoc solution, you either use it or you don't, you cannot selectively apply it, this has already been explained.
Giving shinier materials shinier reflections isn't intrinsically PBR at all; it's been standard practice forever.
PBR is achieving that by specifying physically-based parameters, and expressing them through a physically-based lighting model.
This argument mostly emphasizes the extent to which using "PBR" as a checkbox is nebulous. A lot of people would argue that energy conservation is absolutely essential to calling an approach "physically based", for instance.
Shin-Ra
Junior Member
Yibing Jiang's ArtStation profile has a nice mix of movie and realtime game-engine stuff.
https://www.artstation.com/artist/yibingjiang
https://www.artstation.com/artist/yibingjiang
I'm playing Star Wars Battlefront and it's one of the most realistic games I've ever seen. A truly stunning title and it's due in large part because of physically based rendering or PBR.
An example.
Taken from the Unreal Engine docs.
This results in around 4 material parameters. These are base colour, roughness, metallic (reflectivity) and specular (gloss). Here is an example.
Here is another example from a game. Note how the reflectivity and gloss is physically accurate.
I really love this technique. It looks wonderful in games and I hope to see more of it.
Do you have anymore examples of games that implement this technique.
To be fair, while PBR does an tremendous amount, Battlefront also has Photogrammetry to thank for its excellent texture work.
Vanishing of Ethan Carter also had both PBR and Photogrammetry IIRC and its stunning, especially on UE4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96HzcZSgPNs
I remember it looking notably bad and shiny.
Sure. There are plenty that argue otherwise, but it is indeed a weakness and most (but not all) implementations do include energy conservation. They often specifically state in the descriptions that their lighting model includes energy conservation , as if it isn't agreed to be a standard feature.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
I've yet to see a better use:
Yeah. The attention to detail on modelling the materials is exemplary. A stunning example.
DOWN
Banned
Nah, no need to repeat something I already addressed, our point was that THIS screenshot was posted in this thread as supposed good depiction of PBR, but that screen shows very little obvious markers for it. It's a very bad screenshot for showcasing PBR quality and extensive quality use. You ignored the question about PBR being discussed with THIS screenshot.
potatohead
Member
Lmao sorry bruh, I forgot about that... haven't used Facebook to upload PS4 shots in a while!
These are the higher resolution versions:
Sorry that is not what I meant.
As another poster pointed out, I meant to say "the degree in which this picture is showing off the PBR". It's not a strong example is what I was saying, in showing the disparities between materials shading.
I know it's not "just" materials shading, but just didn't feel that kind of pic is really highlighting PBR strengths any more than HDR really, and probably less than the HDR solution.
DOWN
Banned
The skin was good. Shine level is subjective (they did it intentionally). Many didn't like it, but that skin was absolutely some of the better skin ever on cross gen and with customizable characters at that point in time. That game did some good fake PBR. They mentioned how they tried to imitate PBR.
I was explaining why it is a bad screenshot and the reason for why it looks bad, namely the lack of energy conservation. The other poster was saying it was only showing HDR. But it isn't, what it is showing is a weakness of the PBR implementation used in that game.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
That's the technique of not only capturing the textures but also the way the light works isn't it. And yes it looks amazing when used with PBR.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Although texture work love is a probably huge part of it, lighting is a bigger part with PBR.
potatohead
Member
Didn't know about this technique, thanks! Will take a look.
FranXico
Member
Wow. The replacement shot you found that actually comes from the game looks even better than the movie one.
The game looks better than the CGI movie. How crazy is that?
Doesn't PBR use significantly more separate texture layers than usual? I feel as though it'll be partially offset by developers once again gimping texture resolution to compensate for that. That's sort of what happened in the last generation which wasn't really such a big jump in texture fidelity on consoles, since stuff like normal maps effectively doubled the memory requirements for textures.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Yeah, PBR and Screen Space Reflections becoming commonplace are the biggest leaps of this generation IMO.
Shadowfall
Ryse
Driveclub
Battlefront
The Order
Alien Isolation
and many others benefit SOOO much from it.
Games with mildly disappointing implementations are Halo 5 and Fallout 4.
Both can look amazing in certain scenes, but lack the consistency of other PBR titles.
Shadowfall
Ryse
Driveclub
Battlefront
The Order
Alien Isolation
and many others benefit SOOO much from it.
Games with mildly disappointing implementations are Halo 5 and Fallout 4.
Both can look amazing in certain scenes, but lack the consistency of other PBR titles.
TheOfficeMut
Unconfirmed Member
These Infamous shots are making me salivate. I feel like getting it again. But I also want First Light. Is there a combo with both games or will there be one in the future? Or am I relegated to purchasing them separately?
JordanN
Banned
Also, no love for (really well done) ambient occlusion?
Last gen had that crappy SSAO which made everything look like halos, on top of also baking AO in the textures.
This time, AO is kept out of the texture and now everything occludes light properly when either two objects are near each other or when they fall under a shadow.
Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge improvement.
It's very subtle but One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 seems to have it.
Last gen had that crappy SSAO which made everything look like halos, on top of also baking AO in the textures.
This time, AO is kept out of the texture and now everything occludes light properly when either two objects are near each other or when they fall under a shadow.
Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge improvement.
It's very subtle but One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 seems to have it.