Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

PolyHertz

So have all seen the new Ratchet and Clank trailer? The artists and programmers over at Insomniac are really knocking it out of the park this time around. The soft fur shader on the characters especially caught my attention, big thumbs up to whoever made it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p_gg9UW9k4

oglu

Maybe its real hair? 
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/realistic-hair-and-fur-with-unreal-engine-get-the-white-paper

poopipe

It looks like the same technique as the fur on planet zoo to me. 

Which makes sense,. It's easy to author, pretty performant, lights well and lods well. 
Unlike unreal's new hair stuff 😁

The main weakness is that it can't do long flowing hair - not an issue here though

PolyHertz

I hadn't seen it before, but yea Planet Zoo's fur doesn't look too far off.

Neox

i would also guess that the short fur is just shells. it's already in use for ages.

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/HairTechnique#Hair_Technique_Examples

in case of ratched and clank i would assume it isnt even soft but temproal antialsianing going on. if you look at second 0:08, his ear has a few artifacts, while in later shots with dof those are not visible at all

thomasp

Here's a closeup I found elsewhere:

I'm not familiar with Planet Zoo. Here it looks like at least a mix with cards to me but perhaps there are ways to get irregularity with shells, too?

poopipe

Yeah, where the eyebrow hairs overlap the face hair could be cards, but equally could be separate meshes using fins and shells

 getting the lighting to match between materials that are so different is seriously difficult so I suspect they'd have chosen the latter option. No way to be sure unless someone in the know pipes up though I guess

Neox - yes, the fin material will be alpha tested and TAA dithered to soften edges. It's basically the only way to avoid the sorting artefacts you get if you use an alpha blended material 

Neox

i thhhiiiiink here one can get an idea of a mix between shells and haircards. i think the longer hair might be actual hair like they did for miles morales but i guess this is not the case for the entire model and there is possibly also adifference between ingame and cinematic versions of the characters

something tht looks really odd to me is the integration of the mouth i am really having a hard time understanding what is happening here. it looks like it gets rendered on top of the fur, with a jagged alpha mask to blend it in

poopipe

The mouth is likely using a different material which would explain a hard boundary. I am a little confused by the upper lip if that's the case though. Possibly the shells overlapping the lip and also being scaled down along the normal at the same time? 

Neox

yeah but its odd, it is so soft/blurry there, while the outer silhouette is fair bit sharper

it almost looks like it rendered in its own pass and comped on top.

poopipe

could just be shonky DOF ..