"Uncanny" effect more resolution and details we put in a frame .

gnoop

I'd like to hear opinions on what I somehow  noticed  maybe not in every but many recent games  as a trend.       I mean not an exactly same "uncanny valley "  people discussed  decade ago  about Beowoolf and Polar express and imo  related mostly to animation  but rather more subtle, more  general thing a picture get after crossing certain resolution and  texture resolution threshold  we I believe recently crossed .   

   Before , around 2015 -20 , picture in games pretended to look realistic still  retain some  clever constructed  appearance , an artistic selection where and what details we should see , a certain focus to silhouettes and mid frequency details , trying to hide what  better should be hidden .   A 3d grass for example  kept certain  level of abstract  unspecific perception, the tree looked more like big mass of foliage.  In a word  its perception was still rather  bit stylized  even in games pretended to be photo-real.  Like how you see  it through slightly squinted eyes,  seeing things more as a whole  rather than every leaf.  It helped to hide all the drawbacks of rasterizing render , many things online render is incapable to do .  

Now I see a sort of honest and extremely procedural approach looking sort of very neat at the same time.  Everything  is  down almost to microbes  while lacking that clever touch , the selection ,  everything procedural with curvature masks based edges everywhere .  Every grass blade, every leaf    while  the grass blades still casting nothing to each other , no surface  micro self-shadowing which was OK in lesser resolution but now became increasingly eye catchy .    Same scene looks perfect in path tracing render probably  but typical on-line rasterized render makes it look sort of dry and "uncanny" art style wise.        I long  tried to find  what it resembles to me  till randomly find a well known "rainbow" portrait of Elizabeth 1.  Full of tiny details  done with perfectly same attention in a certain mastery manner  but yet having that uncanny dead feel.  

sacboi

" Same scene looks perfect in path tracing render probably  but typical on-line rasterized render makes it look sort of dry and "uncanny" art style wise.        I long  tried to find  what it resembles to me  till randomly find a well known "rainbow" portrait of Elizabeth 1.  Full of tiny details  done with perfectly same attention in a certain mastery manner  but yet having that uncanny dead feel."

Well don't forget "Good Queen Bess" was almost 70yo when that portrait was painted, attributed too Isaac Oliver, his specialty by the way was miniature portraiture which I suppose played a large part in terms of minute detail rendered by the artist. Also typically for it's period practically stuffed with allegorical nuance many 17th century high status portraits seem to depict, next to an obligatory youthful appearance. 

But yeah, all joking aside do think I get what you mean, certainly in my opinion an uncanny deadpan aspect creeping in there, not unlike sitting through Square Enix's FFSW cinema release back in 2001 and having to catch myself from saying aloud in a packed theatre "WTF am I watching"    

zetheros

art direction and attention to detail has been on the decline ever since it's been cool to fire senior developers with decades of accumulated knowledge in order to outsource and save money. 

Our tools are more advanced than ever before, but tools are still tools, and require the skill to use them effectively. This is partially why Unreal Engine has a reputation now for putting out unoptimized games. Lower skill floor means practically anyone can make a game, but doesn't mean anyone can make a *good* game. Mix that with an already fairly high base performance overhead, AI upscaling, nanite, lumen, and a bunch of other features you have to modify or disable...

gnoop

sacboi said:

But yeah, all joking aside do think I get what you mean, certainly in my opinion an uncanny deadpan aspect creeping in there, not unlike sitting through Square Enix's FFSW cinema release back in 2001 and having to catch myself from saying aloud in a packed theatre "WTF am I watching"    

Yeah that movie gave an odd impression for sure but I am talking more about  art style  the games pretended to be "photo real" starts to give you.  Certain detail fatigue you eyes are getting .   I blame too much of procedural approach and  increased sampling in PBR shaders.   Few years ago the shaders looked like what Substance Designer still  shows in its openGL preview / low settings in Painter .  Now it's like ultra settings  in Painter.  Everything became shinier  forcing us to compress the roughness around brighter part of the range .  I assume it's more physically correct probably  but  makes all the normal mapped  surfaces demonstrate  increased micro contrast with not that advanced GI +dynamic light usually in rasterizing renders.   The older (around 2018-20)  shaders gave  sort of milder , less eye-catchy look  and it allowed  to hide what rasterizing render is still incapable to do right.  

Not so tiny texel size of 2015-20 allowed to shift the focus more to mid frequency details  in motion .  With materials covering bigger physical space in game in each repeating tile .  Now picture looks super detailed  in static and turns into unspecific blurry mess  when camera moves . No more tiny details , mid -frequency details are lacking and all you see is blurry broad macro  maps  or vertex paint based  material mix + messy tiny spikes of foliage and grass loosing big shape. Well, in racing games at least.        I might exaggerate it a bit  but I see the trend.  

Another reason is that super neat  style i often see   even for something  worn.  Like worn   but somewhat neatly , not bold , not truly random and worn out . With cavity map characteristic  edges revealing themselves everywhere and repeating patterns  .  I blame Painter for that .  Maybe "neat" doesn't describe it precisely   but its what crossed  my mind. 

I  just try to explain myself why I like visuals in games  and I mean actual in game visuals of that time period  15-20  more.  Somehow milder , more atmosphere  and causing less eye fatigue or something . Its like  Portrait of madam X  by Sargent vs  Elithbeth1 portraits .  I know the  figurative art doesn't translate into game environments very well and maybe not a perfect example.  But I am talking more about the visual impression of the art.   A feel of that perfectly selected focus/choice  , a certain visual elegance   vs looking a bit naive fine sewing of everything.  An impression you rarely see  in an actual  photo or modern offline renderers  due to path tracers ability to shade/hide  things properly. 

Celosia

I feel the synthetic feel in games and 3D in general has two main causes:

- Lack of technical capacity of engine (or performance and time constraints when authoring)
Engines are very good at displaying an staggering amount of tris now, have better lighting solutions, high resolution textures and more. Yet as pointed out the blades of grass still don't affect each other. Objects exist mainly in a void, they don't deform upon contact, feeling hollow and weightless. Reflection and transmission and light bounces are still fairly lacking, it's like every element exists in its own context. We notice that lack of a shared atmosphere, the absence of weight, the hollowness of the meshes when they bump against each other as if they were made of overfilled balloons.

Technology marches on and I expect implementing those missing interactions should become cheaper in the future.

- Prioritization of texture details at the expense of everything else
Likely caused by either lack of time or knowledge. Every character has incredibly crisp pores but not all have a skull under facial fat and muscles. You can't tell there are areas with shallower tissue because everything is oddly smoothed out, without a hint of the harder structure getting closer to the surface under the soft tissue. Necks might still be pretty cylindrical, no trapezius in sight. And it goes on. A lot of attention goes into texturing medium and micro details, and props got better when people started to pay attention to edges and wear patterns so objects aren't all smoke-bombed and symmetric, but there's still a lack of care in transitioning from harder to softer regions in the same material, and other types of imperfections inherent from manufacturing (eg seams on plastic, variable thickness in inset details). It's time consuming work, and it requires the artist to know how to see the world when looking at it.

This gets compounded by loose control on hierarchy of details. There's a point a surface stops being detailed and becomes just busy-looking. If everything in the scene is as busy it feels simultaneously overwhelming and still not enough. IRL we can't absorb all details all at once at top resolution. Even photos and videos can't capture everything. So when you have a 3D at super crispy busy detailing levels, it feels off. Holding off on detailing, suggesting or omitting certain ones so there's a better flow so what's detailed both stands out and still feels part of the whole is a conscious artistic decision that isn't always taken when people are stuck in the "more details create superior results" mindset.

gnoop

Celosia said:

This gets compounded by loose control on hierarchy of details. There's a point a surface stops being detailed and becomes just busy-looking. If everything in the scene is as busy it feels simultaneously overwhelming and still not enough. IRL we can't absorb all details all at once at top resolution. Even photos and videos can't capture everything. So when you have a 3D at super crispy busy detailing levels, it feels off. Holding off on detailing, suggesting or omitting certain ones so there's a better flow so what's detailed both stands out and still feels part of the whole is a conscious artistic decision that isn't always taken when people are stuck in the "more details create superior results" mindset.

I am trying to figure out  is this "more details create superior results" is what players want really.  

 They  IMO often misinterpret their own impression.  Like all that talks  of lighting on games forums   while all the games have mostly same lighting for pretty a while already.   The difference is only what can accept dynamic shadows and how good GI is .       Still I randomly see same  opinion that  2015-2020 games looked better I much to my own surprise share.