na, he just photoshoped the eye to be correct ;-p just kidding, Great write up warby. and fun reading other peoples thoughts (daaark) Hope for some more of this on the forums.
yeah the eyes are a texture sheet, no moving parts.
great write up. I played the hell out of this game, it's genius. Later read about the bits they cut and that did give a missing feeling to the game's progression. Was a bit awkward to play on a widescreen telly too, here's hoping they'll re-release on new hardware one day.
really interesting post. This post taught me to experience games in a new way.
And about the letterboxing effect, it's my layman speculation but it might have to do with FOV because motion sickness could be a problem with narrower view.
yeah the eyes are a texture sheet, no moving parts.
I noticed that the eye texture seems to only change when the head is in motion. It makes it look like the pupil actually moved on it's own instead of just switching preset positions.
If you wanted a moving eye with no moving parts, you could use the same technique, but render to a dynamic texture. But that's overkill, and no one would notice the difference unless you needed the eyes to move when the head was still.
I am a big fan of this game and I have been interested in the technical side of it ever since I noticed that the cel-shading in the game is different from cel-shading in other games. Your post confirmed what I already knew (I thought I was the only one to notice the dynamic cloth) and showed me some new things about the game.
About the "cute old-school HDR tone-mapping fake," I've always seen it as a digital camera artifact (when a digital camera is pointed towards a bright light source, the image darkens).
Haha seems your thread has sparked Wind Waker fever all over the net cause even my video is getting a 1000 views again. I even found this thread where people are arguing and calling you inexperienced
I do believe the eye is part of his model. It seems the just shelled out a mesh from the head to make the eyes. The brows are also like this. I have no clue how they did the Eyeball itself. I think someone suggested the uv's moved the eyeball and I think I'll go with that.
I do believe the eye is part of his model. It seems the just shelled out a mesh from the head to make the eyes. The brows are also like this. I have no clue how they did the Eyeball itself. I think someone suggested the uv's moved the eyeball and I think I'll go with that.
how did you rip that model ?!
and yeah i also think the pupil texture is "clamped" and than moved via uvs
If it's been taken from Google Warehouse it might not be the original model.
I believe the eyes atop hair is pretty simple; put Link at the start of the draw order, draw face and hair, draw eyes with backface culling so they don't show through his head but no depth test so they draw over his hair. Everything else gets drawn after so if anything IS in front of his eyes they aren't seen through them.
If it's been taken from Google Warehouse it might not be the original model.
I believe the eyes atop hair is pretty simple; put Link at the start of the draw order, draw face and hair, draw eyes with backface culling so they don't show through his head but no depth test so they draw over his hair. Everything else gets drawn after so if anything IS in front of his eyes they aren't seen through them.
For those wondering about the iris itself, maybe this rip from Twilight Princess will help...
(I composed the images together so the alpha is lost)
The eye has a few separate polygons cut out of the face mesh (the eye part of the face is not actually used there), behind it is an identical mesh, offset so it doesn't clip, I believe that's where the eye itself goes, and the UVs would be animated to move the iris around. The eye area is relatively flat. I have model rips so I can load that up and show. I'm going to assume the greyscale textures handle some sort of gloss or glow.
.3ds file and textures for Zelda: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30439462/Zelda.7z
OOT outputs more or less the same texture result for the eyes.
Link has a normal, modern 3D eyes, but he and Midna's imp form are probably the only ones with that, they also have more articulation and screen time than everybody else.
Someone should do an analysis of Skyward Sword like this!
I don't think Skyward will turn out to be done as craftily as this, judging from the designs in it. It's pretty but it has a clumsy and inexperienced feel to the graphics. I doubt as many tricks were up the sleeves of those who made it, is all.
stop with the IK, it has been around for aalllooooonnng time. I personally remember it in MArio 64, and I can certainly say that that was not the first!
The nearest neighbor parts of that texture are interesting. Do you think they did a low-res texture first to check for bleed or something? Or is that some custom compression format?
Take a look at the model of the Hylian Shield from Twilight Princess. The Triforce bracket and Triforce itself are modeled, but if you delete the geometry, the texture is the same. It leads me to believe that they made low poly stuff first, and then went back and added bits of detail.
The nearest neighbor parts of that texture are interesting. Do you think they did a low-res texture first to check for bleed or something? Or is that some custom compression format?
Do you mean the color banding? I think that's a result of Nintendo's compression format, which takes advantage of the fact that Twilight Princess runs in the GameCube's 18-bit color mode (really a disadvantage in my opinion, as it makes the game look uglier than it should be) to lower the texture file size without reducing the apparent image quality. Besides, if the textures were 24-bit color, the extra colors wouldn't show because the game does not support 24-bit color.
I honestly think that Nintendo's compression system is horrible, because it sometimes introduces JPEG-type artifacts into textures (Zelda: Skyward Sword is an example.
These are the areas I'm talking about specifically.
I can see where they're coming from if the texture was displayed unlit (might as well match 1:1 with the output buffer's colour depth) but given on lit surfaces it's going to be scaled up and down I'd honestly want the extra colour depth to maintain clean gradients and such.
These are the areas I'm talking about specifically.
Here's my best guess, from working on the Wii:
Wii textures can be saved using a variant of S3 Texture Compression, similar to DXT1. This is a block-based scheme where all the pixels in each block get assigned a linear blend between two endpoint colours.
You've probably seen what happens when a sudden colour change happens across a block - the compressor chooses a compromise between the two extremes, making the colours super-muddy and the block edges glaringly obvious.
To reduce these artifacts, the Nintendo-supplied compressor finds areas where the colour doesn't matter (0 alpha), and fills them with a representative colour from the rest of the block before compressing. That way the unseen colour of the 0-alpha areas won't pollute the desired colours for the opaque texels.
I think the GameCube used the same tech. So, those squares you're seeing are probably S3TC blocks along the edge of an opaque piece, and either fully-transparent or otherwise not visible in the resulting render. (eg. outside of the model's UVs)
blizzard entertainment did the same trick for their textures which you can see there :
the model will look like this :
i was wondering how they managed to do that such trick... aside that, your thread is so interesting to read ! it will help me greatly for to make my game
Thanks that clears that up. I had suspected it might have something to do with DXT's blocks system, but I hadn't seen obvious DXT artifacts in any of the games I had on the Cube or Wii, so I thought they were using another format.
I think the GameCube used the same tech. So, those squares you're seeing are probably S3TC blocks along the edge of an opaque piece, and either fully-transparent or otherwise not visible in the resulting render. (eg. outside of the model's UVs)
Yes, those areas are all totally alpha'ed out. Plus, most of the textures have only 1-bit alpha, only the "eyelids" have a soft alpha channel. Locally variable compression is a hella good thing, where can I get it?
My two cents of the block artifacts:
I don't think that it has to do with DXT1 like compression, because these compression algorithm are always based on 4x4 blocks, which do not influence neighbor blocks. Therefore it would be senseless to fill complete blocks with some color, especially the wow texture have larger and uneven blocks.
I think that mipmapping is the reason. Mipmapping always consider 2x2 texel of the upper level, therefore it would explain to fill power of 2 blocks (2x2,4x4,8x8,16x16...) with a similar texture color to avoid muddy colors at lower mipmap levels and especially at seams.
okay i found a tool to extract the files from windwaker and look closer into it.
Link has 2874 tris, the mesh showed earlier from google3dsomething looks like the one i extracted. He uses 42 bones. with a total of 323 animations for the body (not all can be opened with an error that they use 5 instead of 42 bones, so its for some item he can use, say a bow or something like that. Also he uses 155 of facial animations.
i was surprised to see such wonky texture sized on him, a lot of those are not the classical power of 2 multiples of 16. Also i'm not sure what the vertex mask is used for, i can only assume it is for wind animation in some of the parts.
As you can see, the mystery about the iris is solved, they placed and animated the iris in shader.
Sorry for the noob question, how do you hack games like this and decompile the models and see the game in wireframe view and find the textures and such?
okay i found a tool to extract the files from windwaker and look closer into it.
Link has 2874 tris, the mesh showed earlier from google3dsomething looks like the one i extracted. He uses 42 bones. with a total of 323 animations for the body (not all can be opened with an error that they use 5 instead of 42 bones, so its for some item he can use, say a bow or something like that. Also he uses 155 of facial animations.
i was surprised to see such wonky texture sized on him, a lot of those are not the classical power of 2 multiples of 16. Also i'm not sure what the vertex mask is used for, i can only assume it is for wind animation in some of the parts.
As you can see, the mystery about the iris is solved, they placed and animated the iris in shader.
One mystery solved, but now a new one comes up about the vertex mask. I don't think it has anything to do with the wind, because it's also applied weirdly on his boots. It almost looks like it could be a vertex based AO, but its not applied in a way that shows that to be true.
i wonder how much of it is real atm. the geo and textures are the same, nothing is in movement, so they could easily just slap the old files in any 3d renderer with GI
Replies
Since the eyes are decals, I wonder how they got the pupils to move so smoothly. It doesn't seem like they're separate.
great write up. I played the hell out of this game, it's genius. Later read about the bits they cut and that did give a missing feeling to the game's progression. Was a bit awkward to play on a widescreen telly too, here's hoping they'll re-release on new hardware one day.
And about the letterboxing effect, it's my layman speculation but it might have to do with FOV because motion sickness could be a problem with narrower view.
If you wanted a moving eye with no moving parts, you could use the same technique, but render to a dynamic texture. But that's overkill, and no one would notice the difference unless you needed the eyes to move when the head was still.
About the "cute old-school HDR tone-mapping fake," I've always seen it as a digital camera artifact (when a digital camera is pointed towards a bright light source, the image darkens).
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=488290&page=1
I do believe the eye is part of his model. It seems the just shelled out a mesh from the head to make the eyes. The brows are also like this. I have no clue how they did the Eyeball itself. I think someone suggested the uv's moved the eyeball and I think I'll go with that.
how did you rip that model ?!
and yeah i also think the pupil texture is "clamped" and than moved via uvs
I didn't, I found it on google warehouse some time ago and downloaded it to figure out how the eyes were rendered above his hair.
I believe the eyes atop hair is pretty simple; put Link at the start of the draw order, draw face and hair, draw eyes with backface culling so they don't show through his head but no depth test so they draw over his hair. Everything else gets drawn after so if anything IS in front of his eyes they aren't seen through them.
FYI though even Shadow of the Colossus has IK (on the horse at least) so Uncharted was definitely not the first.
this is exactly how think its done
For those wondering about the iris itself, maybe this rip from Twilight Princess will help...
(I composed the images together so the alpha is lost)
The eye has a few separate polygons cut out of the face mesh (the eye part of the face is not actually used there), behind it is an identical mesh, offset so it doesn't clip, I believe that's where the eye itself goes, and the UVs would be animated to move the iris around. The eye area is relatively flat. I have model rips so I can load that up and show. I'm going to assume the greyscale textures handle some sort of gloss or glow.
.3ds file and textures for Zelda: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30439462/Zelda.7z
OOT outputs more or less the same texture result for the eyes.
Link has a normal, modern 3D eyes, but he and Midna's imp form are probably the only ones with that, they also have more articulation and screen time than everybody else.
I don't think Skyward will turn out to be done as craftily as this, judging from the designs in it. It's pretty but it has a clumsy and inexperienced feel to the graphics. I doubt as many tricks were up the sleeves of those who made it, is all.
Do you mean the color banding? I think that's a result of Nintendo's compression format, which takes advantage of the fact that Twilight Princess runs in the GameCube's 18-bit color mode (really a disadvantage in my opinion, as it makes the game look uglier than it should be) to lower the texture file size without reducing the apparent image quality. Besides, if the textures were 24-bit color, the extra colors wouldn't show because the game does not support 24-bit color.
I honestly think that Nintendo's compression system is horrible, because it sometimes introduces JPEG-type artifacts into textures (Zelda: Skyward Sword is an example.
These are the areas I'm talking about specifically.
I can see where they're coming from if the texture was displayed unlit (might as well match 1:1 with the output buffer's colour depth) but given on lit surfaces it's going to be scaled up and down I'd honestly want the extra colour depth to maintain clean gradients and such.
what are they in video game terms? are decals for the use of eyes used commonly in japanese/stylised games?
Here's my best guess, from working on the Wii:
Wii textures can be saved using a variant of S3 Texture Compression, similar to DXT1. This is a block-based scheme where all the pixels in each block get assigned a linear blend between two endpoint colours.
You've probably seen what happens when a sudden colour change happens across a block - the compressor chooses a compromise between the two extremes, making the colours super-muddy and the block edges glaringly obvious.
To reduce these artifacts, the Nintendo-supplied compressor finds areas where the colour doesn't matter (0 alpha), and fills them with a representative colour from the rest of the block before compressing. That way the unseen colour of the 0-alpha areas won't pollute the desired colours for the opaque texels.
I think the GameCube used the same tech. So, those squares you're seeing are probably S3TC blocks along the edge of an opaque piece, and either fully-transparent or otherwise not visible in the resulting render. (eg. outside of the model's UVs)
the model will look like this :
i was wondering how they managed to do that such trick... aside that, your thread is so interesting to read ! it will help me greatly for to make my game
Thanks that clears that up. I had suspected it might have something to do with DXT's blocks system, but I hadn't seen obvious DXT artifacts in any of the games I had on the Cube or Wii, so I thought they were using another format.
Yes, those areas are all totally alpha'ed out. Plus, most of the textures have only 1-bit alpha, only the "eyelids" have a soft alpha channel. Locally variable compression is a hella good thing, where can I get it?
I just play it on gamecube, and Link only has to shadowblobs linked to his feet, not such shadows as you show them here :O
I don't think that it has to do with DXT1 like compression, because these compression algorithm are always based on 4x4 blocks, which do not influence neighbor blocks. Therefore it would be senseless to fill complete blocks with some color, especially the wow texture have larger and uneven blocks.
I think that mipmapping is the reason. Mipmapping always consider 2x2 texel of the upper level, therefore it would explain to fill power of 2 blocks (2x2,4x4,8x8,16x16...) with a similar texture color to avoid muddy colors at lower mipmap levels and especially at seams.
Link has 2874 tris, the mesh showed earlier from google3dsomething looks like the one i extracted. He uses 42 bones. with a total of 323 animations for the body (not all can be opened with an error that they use 5 instead of 42 bones, so its for some item he can use, say a bow or something like that. Also he uses 155 of facial animations.
http://airborn-studios.com/nonpublic/Steffen/link.jpg
**ADMIN NINJA EDIT**
Removed hyperlink, due to site asking for login/password.
i was surprised to see such wonky texture sized on him, a lot of those are not the classical power of 2 multiples of 16. Also i'm not sure what the vertex mask is used for, i can only assume it is for wind animation in some of the parts.
As you can see, the mystery about the iris is solved, they placed and animated the iris in shader.
One mystery solved, but now a new one comes up about the vertex mask. I don't think it has anything to do with the wind, because it's also applied weirdly on his boots. It almost looks like it could be a vertex based AO, but its not applied in a way that shows that to be true.
I'm trying to download the file for taking a look but server is not working. http://minus.com/mjCoPOaox/
Could anyone upload it to another server?
Cheers!!
Could anyone be so kind as to setup a new link?
>>>>>>>>>>>>CLICK HERE J0 >>>>http://tcrf.net/Wind_Waker <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<