Killzone 2: Behind the Bullet

glib

Anyone check this out yet? It's pretty nice to be able to see some breakdowns of those shots, but I do wish they were broken down a bit more (ie. a true lighting only, with no effects/particles). I also can't figure out whats going on with what they call 'shinyness'. Is it a glossmap? It doesn't appear to be straight specular, and it also seems to have a fresnel falloff at times. Is it a map or something being generated by the engine itself?

[edit] I hadn't finished listening to all the commentary. The senior programmer explains that it's a gloss map. I still think its more than a straight map though, as I'm definitely seeing some falloffs especially on helghast legs. I can't imagine these are painted into the maps like that to only work from a side angle.

I was also a little staggered to hear that they were pushing up to 100 million polys per shot, in-engine. My computer staggers under more than about 5 million in maya/max viewport.


Still, very interesting to see something like this released.

c0ldhands

Been playing with this techincal demo too, I find it amazing how they could pull so much attention into the whole clip. I agree too, the breakdown are not satisfying me at all, but i guess for other people out there that maybe dont even understand what a normal map is, then thats sci fi for them. What I personally found interesting is that, the models dont actually have so much normal details, I mean compared to GOW2 graphics, this is much cleaner, and for some reason I like it that way. Also realised that the lighthing and the depth field is the best strenght of the KZ2 engine. Overall its a fun cool thing to play with.

SHEPEIRO

theres alot of clever stuff going in this demo. the "shineness" thing looks to be more than pure spec, maybe nice spherical harmonics, which are not really that expensive to do in a constrained env. like this.

what really interested me was the micro-detail stuff and how that could be used in large env's.
esp how much you would have to not draw to allow such a technique globally.

glib

SHEPEIRO wrote: »

what really interested me was the micro-detail stuff and how that could be used in large env's.
esp how much you would have to not draw to allow such a technique globally.

I just took that to be a reference to a detail normal map like the epic guys, maybe with the lerp affected by camera distance? Do you think they meant something more than that?

SHEPEIRO

yep i thin it was similiar tech just used to better effect than ive seen befor, probably due to all the extra memory they had they could put more than just a generic bump which most seam to have done so far.

IM very interested to see what different techs are coming about for NEXT GEN, or more to the point how existing ones could be extended