Questions about presentation

zombie420

What's the best way to present 3D environments? There are the typical beauty shots, and individual assets, but what about things like shaders? Do we even bother presenting those and if so, how? Because within UDK, any shader worth presenting doesn't make any sense when zoomed out.

And what other stuff should I showcase?

SlyRipper

As far as I've seen some environment shots mostly the beauty shots count. So you basically want to show the best parts of your environment, like some awesome waterfalls you created, or a cool looking ruin with crazy light effects, or whatever. As I remember correct none of them showed any shaders or something like that. But you could add some technical images like a wireframe over some parts (but mostly falls into the asset part) to show your clean workflow.

Mostly I just saw cool looking environments as total with some positions or places that the creator think were the best. Sometimes there were also a video from a fly-by (or how it's called) to show some environment in action (waterfalls, plants, light particles, fire, etc).

Basically you just show beauty instead of technical stuff. Hope this helps a bit

aajohnny

It's tough to show complex shaders like you mentioned. I would find a way to break it up and present it, I am pretty sure there are some screen capturing tools out there that can take a scrolling page image (could be wrong though) IMO technical stuff is worth showing.

Novian

zombie420: What about a "static" image (i.e the camera isn't moving but perhaps some lights or particles are) with some PiP (Picture in Picture) boxes showing either a fly through or turn around of some of the more interesting elements? This way you get sort of the best of all worlds. I'd even say image map it so that if I click on one of the PiP boxes that one becomes the main image and others fill in the PiP.

Just my two cents. It's a great question either way.

Cheers~

SlyRipper

Hmm with last comment I think it would also be awesome to create a little teaser video of you environment level. Based on the CryEngine Tech Demo (the one with the frog, waterfall, etc.). They show the environment, then closeup and then some techincal aspects like the used tesselation stuff, etc. This looks awesome in total, but would take some effort to create :P

zombie420

That's good insight, guys. Thanks! I'm trying to get my ducks in a row for GDC next week so time is pretty limited when considering all the stuff I need to finalize for it. I might just take a whole lot of screens of my shaders and sew them together in pshop for now. But I'd def like to show off some technical stuff with suggestions you guys listed.