Article: Game Art Art
interpolator
Hi friends! Not sure if i'm correct here, but my issue is heavily technical - but of course about game art. Anyway this is pure self-advertisment. I write an articles about...
It goes about crazy ideas or awesome tech fakes which made an cool effect. I write about this in my blog and collected everyting i can remember. Feel free to comment about my stuff, explain what i didn't understood or tell me about what stuff impressed you.
01 Fallout 3 - Edges
02 Teleglitch - Viewcones
03 Teleglitch - RGB Flickering
04 Diablo 3 - 2.5D Trees
05 Warcraft 3 - Billboards
06 Divine Divinity - 2D Reflexion
07 Cell Shading
08 Deus Ex - Occlusion
09 Deus Ex 3 - Folds
10 Deus Ex - Scan Lines
11 World of Warcraft - Balloon
12 Assassins Creed 3 - Windows
13 Assassins Creed 3 - LoD Blending
14 Kid Icarus - Tricks
15 Left 4 Dead - Puke
16 Sacred 2 - Crystal Reflexion
17 Sacred 2 - Pulse Shader
18 Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Smoke Column
19 Battlefield 2 - Flag Pole
20 Sacred 2 - Burning Map
21 Assassins Creed 3 - Bouncing Light
22 Airborn - Trees
23 1943- Retro Shadows
24 Metal Gear Rising - Slicing
25 Dead Space 3 - Diffuse Reflections
26 Homeworld 2 - Backgrounds
26.2 Homeworld 2 - Backgrounds.Tech
27 Diablo 3 - Resource Bubbles
28 007 Legends - The World
29 Homeworld 2 - Engines
30 Homeworld 2 - Hyperspace
31 Bioshock - Glossiness
32 Starcraft 2 - Localization
33 Doom 3 - Volumetric Glow
34 Doom 3 - HDUI
35 Scribble Cel
36 Lego Batman - Crawler
37 Dungeon Keeper 2 - Walls
38 Lego - Studs
39 1nsane Carpet 2 - Repetitive Worlds
40 The Binding of Isaac - Composition
41 Company of Heroes - Shaded Smoke
42 Company of Heroes - Flamethrower
43 World of Torch Siege - Blended Trunks
44 Oblivion Territory – Tree vs Palm
45 Handmade Normal Map
46 Tomb Raider - Laras Hot Secrets
47 Don’t starve, Diablo – Parallax 7
48 Windows - AC/Row/Infinite
49 Render Hell 2.0
50 Zelda Wind Waker - Hyrule Travel Guide
51 Rei Ayanami – Inner eyes
52 Sacred 2 – Fake Mirror
53 X:Rebirth – Geometric Lensflares
54 Fallout 4 - Wasteland Eyes
55 What is Color Banding? And what is it not?
56 Fallout 4 - The Mushroom Case
57 Diablo III - The sacred spiderweb
58 Alpha1 - My Top 5 usescases
59 Blubb! - Fish Tanks in Games
60 Diablo III - Wings of Angels
61 Dark Maus - Top Down Trees
62 Alien vs Wolfenstein – Cutting Torch
63 The Joy of VFX – Pin Table
64 Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag – Waterplane
"Fakes & Tricks of games which impressed me"
It goes about crazy ideas or awesome tech fakes which made an cool effect. I write about this in my blog and collected everyting i can remember. Feel free to comment about my stuff, explain what i didn't understood or tell me about what stuff impressed you.
01 Fallout 3 - Edges
02 Teleglitch - Viewcones
03 Teleglitch - RGB Flickering
04 Diablo 3 - 2.5D Trees
05 Warcraft 3 - Billboards
06 Divine Divinity - 2D Reflexion
07 Cell Shading
08 Deus Ex - Occlusion
09 Deus Ex 3 - Folds
10 Deus Ex - Scan Lines
11 World of Warcraft - Balloon
12 Assassins Creed 3 - Windows
13 Assassins Creed 3 - LoD Blending
14 Kid Icarus - Tricks
15 Left 4 Dead - Puke
16 Sacred 2 - Crystal Reflexion
17 Sacred 2 - Pulse Shader
18 Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Smoke Column
19 Battlefield 2 - Flag Pole
20 Sacred 2 - Burning Map
21 Assassins Creed 3 - Bouncing Light
22 Airborn - Trees
23 1943- Retro Shadows
24 Metal Gear Rising - Slicing
25 Dead Space 3 - Diffuse Reflections
26 Homeworld 2 - Backgrounds
26.2 Homeworld 2 - Backgrounds.Tech
27 Diablo 3 - Resource Bubbles
28 007 Legends - The World
29 Homeworld 2 - Engines
30 Homeworld 2 - Hyperspace
31 Bioshock - Glossiness
32 Starcraft 2 - Localization
33 Doom 3 - Volumetric Glow
34 Doom 3 - HDUI
35 Scribble Cel
36 Lego Batman - Crawler
37 Dungeon Keeper 2 - Walls
38 Lego - Studs
39 1nsane Carpet 2 - Repetitive Worlds
40 The Binding of Isaac - Composition
41 Company of Heroes - Shaded Smoke
42 Company of Heroes - Flamethrower
43 World of Torch Siege - Blended Trunks
44 Oblivion Territory – Tree vs Palm
45 Handmade Normal Map
46 Tomb Raider - Laras Hot Secrets
47 Don’t starve, Diablo – Parallax 7
48 Windows - AC/Row/Infinite
49 Render Hell 2.0
50 Zelda Wind Waker - Hyrule Travel Guide
51 Rei Ayanami – Inner eyes
52 Sacred 2 – Fake Mirror
53 X:Rebirth – Geometric Lensflares
54 Fallout 4 - Wasteland Eyes
55 What is Color Banding? And what is it not?
56 Fallout 4 - The Mushroom Case
57 Diablo III - The sacred spiderweb
58 Alpha1 - My Top 5 usescases
59 Blubb! - Fish Tanks in Games
60 Diablo III - Wings of Angels
61 Dark Maus - Top Down Trees
62 Alien vs Wolfenstein – Cutting Torch
63 The Joy of VFX – Pin Table
64 Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag – Waterplane
To give you some hints whats that all about, here some of the pictures i made for the article:
Replies
Have subscribed on this topic since you started, so I want to show my support
Thank you! Means a lot to me. Feel free to post you tech results here. It's always good to not only have the trick seen but also explained & tested.
#19 Battlefield 2 - Flag Pole
For me it has the opposite effect. Knowing there is no moving rope that collides with the pole, but having a sound for it, disconnects me from the illusion.
Here's a tiny trick I use for my eyes in characters. =]
http://youtu.be/ExTObvcmyeY
Yes you're right, but it's important to know, that in the game you don't really look at the pole like i did in the movie. In the game you lay besides the flag, looking like an eagly for enemies
Oh nice eyes. But the video isn't too self explaining to me. But i would love to hear about it in some words.
"Right model. Default sphere and vertex normals. No refraction of the iris.
Left model. Edited sphere, for fake "refraction", default vertex normals. Note that the specular doesn't look very good.
Middle model. Edited sphere for fake refractions with edited vertex normals. Specular looks good now. And looks like some refraction is going on with the iris.
The edited vertex normals can be done in multiple ways. Either hand edit the vertex normal direction yourself. Transfer vertex normals from the original sphere. Or "bake"/transfer vertex normals from a highpoly model. The last method is what has been used in this example. Note that the iris area seems to have a slight bump compared to the default sphere on the right.
This is basically a very cheap way to fake slightly more realistic low poly eyes."
NEU
#20 Sacred 2 - Burning Map
#21 Assassins Creed 3 - Bouncing Light
UPDATE
Added a GIF showing Diablo 2 "view cones".
#2 Teleglitch - Viewcones
I've added some great links to the article which where mentioned in the comments.
#21 Assassins Creed 3 - Bouncing Light
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#22 Airborn - Trees
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=assassin's+creed+3+timelapse
Also good for other games with dynamic time-of-day lighting. Red Dead Redemption or example
[ame="
Thank you for the awesome articles!
I could hug it.
Super interesting man, I love these things XD
Thank you for the hint! I'll do that! Wow, Red Dead looks soo awesome!
Oh btw, i saw that this article in the wiki is fom you. You're my hero
D4V1DC
Yeah man, i'm so glad that i have the possibility to ask some guys. Without that most of this articles wouldn't contain any explanation. I'm happy that you like it!
Kyuuu
Yes it was the same for me. I saw a lot of trees already but the airborn tree took my attention.
moof
Hehe hug a tree, that sounds weird
Anyway, yeah, its basically the same thing, only the "base" mesh is the floor instead of the deformed sphere.
There is a explanation and a script in the article BUT it's for Max. I don't know if there is something similiar in Maya...
arrangemonk
On which article are you refering?
bb0x
Correct. In the polycount site i linked is a link to a polish article (with a link to the google translated version) and this goes about gras. And it looks awesome!
Thx, man
Nice! Feel free to drop the script in here for all other Maya users. If you allow i can also add it to the article
Ah ok
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#23 1943- Retro Shadows
This is the new article. It's small but i hope you enjoy it anyway. I'm working on a bigger one, but this takes time.
Thanks man! Glad you enjoy the content.
there also was that video with the use of a parallax corrected cubemaps for reflections
and manually accessing the mipmap level of the cubemap simmulates diffusion of the reflection.
(that one [ame="
im wondering if one could completely light a scene that way.(not just the ground)
but for testing that i would require access for cubemap mip levels, but the tool of my choise (shaderfx) doesnt support that, and i have to write custom shader code (this sort of answers my own questeion to some point)
Hehe yeah! And building weird tracks with the editor was also awesome!
WarrenM
Hm i think it wasn't a bug. But of course i don't know the makers
arrangemonk
I'm not sure but i think it should be possible to "lit" every surface with this cubemap. Maybe you sould try out the UDK?
The 'Gorgeous' update for NS2 (Natural Selection 2, on the Spark Engine) yesterday, added a system for reflections that lights the mojority of their levels with many box/sphericaly-projected cubemaps. They probably got at least 50 cubemaps for each level, but it works out since their levels are built with short sight-lines and lots of 90/45 degree corners and occluders. Its not quite as parallax correct as these, but it does line up most of the time.
I think their among the first to use such a system.
since before they didnt have reflections or cubes at all
http://www.mapcore.org/content/features/_/articles/technical-breakdown-assassins-creed-ii-r24
There are also a ton of game art tricks in these whitepapers, worth a look if you're interested in behind-the-scenes info.
http://wiki.polycount.net/CategoryWhitepapers
I mean it in the sense that, all lighting is reflections. In NS2, it's my understanding that they used these as deferred cubemaps (kind of like in Cryengine 3) which means they'll apply to everything in the proximity of the nearest 'lighting probe.'
Sounds interesting. Hm maybe i should check out this game. Already heard that it's really good
Eric Chadwick
If you wouldn't be a guy, i'd kiss you. Ahhhh anyway, i'll kiss you for that
Froyok
Don't worry, i love to share any information and anyone shall feel free to drop useful information here. Wow this article looks awesome! Have to read it! The ACreed graphic was stunning since the first game!
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#24 Metal Gear Rising - Slicing
unity has the exat same lighting solution integrated by now, called "beast", or "turtle" for maya, its all just prebaked lightmaps with lots of colorbounces
Thank you for the warm words
Awesome slide, thank you and a thank you to Neox.
You're doing an awesome job, I just love reading how developers did all these crazy things with someone doing a good job explaining them in a easy way to understand.
Good to hear that this stuff is understandable. Because this is what i try because it annoys me when stuff is explained too complicated especially when i try to read an article at wikipedia and only see numbers and formulars
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#25 Dead Space 3 - Diffuse Reflections
http://www.crytek.com/cryengine/presentations
Secrets of CryENGINE 3 Graphics Technology
Thanks for posting this! I added this information to the article. But i'm not sure, because does the Crytek reflection take this unsharpness depending on the angle into account?
AtticusMars
Glad to hear! Don't hessitate to give also some feedback if there's stuff you don't like.
I wrote a small article for beginners to get started. This isn't like the graphic stuff before, but maybe it helps someone to get the first impulse. Would love to hear your opinion.
Simons 6-Sided Impulse Method
Thank you! I hope i can get my fingers on a PS2 sometime because there are soo many great games available on this console.
NEU - Homeworld 2 Backgrounds
#26 Homeworld 2 - Backgrounds
and... now i want to play homeworld :poly117: