Graphics for the Wii
Hello polycount(ers)!
I'm interested in knowing a bit more about typical graphics specs for Wii and I thought this would be a good place to ask. I realize a lot of this is game specific but if anyone could give me just a rough idea that'd be great. Stuff like this:
1: Typical tri count for a "secondary" character, let's say an NPC/Enemy in Twilight Princess, or perhaps a player character in SSBB or Mario Kart? (As opposed to, like, Link or Lara Croft which both I assume are a bit high for what we're doing - although their tri count would be interesting to know as well)
2: What maps are used? Diffuse only? Diffuse and spec? Does Wii do normal mapping at all? Can't recall having seen any Wii games with normal maps but then again I haven't played them all. And what size would they (textures) typically be? For one character, that is.
3: Lighting.. I'm guessing most games use little in the way of dynamic light, but perhaps that's more because of a lack of need than hardware limitations? Any examples would be great.
4: Also, anything on rigging would be interesting (though I suppose this is even more engine dependent)
And if anyone has any links or know where I can look at wires etc. from Wii games that'd be awesome, of course.
Thanks in advance!
I'm interested in knowing a bit more about typical graphics specs for Wii and I thought this would be a good place to ask. I realize a lot of this is game specific but if anyone could give me just a rough idea that'd be great. Stuff like this:
1: Typical tri count for a "secondary" character, let's say an NPC/Enemy in Twilight Princess, or perhaps a player character in SSBB or Mario Kart? (As opposed to, like, Link or Lara Croft which both I assume are a bit high for what we're doing - although their tri count would be interesting to know as well)
2: What maps are used? Diffuse only? Diffuse and spec? Does Wii do normal mapping at all? Can't recall having seen any Wii games with normal maps but then again I haven't played them all. And what size would they (textures) typically be? For one character, that is.
3: Lighting.. I'm guessing most games use little in the way of dynamic light, but perhaps that's more because of a lack of need than hardware limitations? Any examples would be great.
4: Also, anything on rigging would be interesting (though I suppose this is even more engine dependent)
And if anyone has any links or know where I can look at wires etc. from Wii games that'd be awesome, of course.
Thanks in advance!
Replies
2. For Wii its diffuse, Spec and some standard bump maps. Normal maps arnt really used on Wii.The characters use a few 256x256 textures in general.
Not to sure about lighting or rigging. Its worth bearing in mind that a lot of Wii graphics are very similar to Gamecube spec. RE4 has very good models and lighting. Leon in RE4 is around 10,000 tris - there are a few wireframes on the net.
the wii shader is working quite different to normal pc shader style. normal(just world space is supported), bump or specs are used very rare in present wii games. and they draw quite some performance when used heavily.
for example mario uses no global lightning at all. most stuff is done with envballs on a per model base.
rigging/bones are not very different from any other platform.
basically if you want to model for wii games, stick with gamecube or xbox specs and add a little if needed.
is this 100% true? I'm no technical whiz so pardon me if I've got this wrong, but our programmers said wii doesn't support hardware skinning, and we did it in software which is less efficient- so we had to be very careful about number of verts skinned per bone (and bone count). I assume this is the reason some games basically have no skinning and segment their models at the joints (big beach I think, and wii sports for example)
amirite?
PS: we found poly pushing to be pretty good on the WII, the weak spot was the texture res
we bind our present main characters with three influences and use about 70 bones. works well. still i think there is room for optimization as the res on wii is not very high, so no bones are needed for, i.e. every finger or joint.
poly pushing is alright. but if you're whole level is viewable and stored in memory, you need to do optimize and care for your tris.
texture can be a problem when using many stages for many big objects , like rim, normal or emboss mapping, etc..(stages could be called render passes for easy understanding..)
texture resolution hasn't given us any problems yet. we often wonder why so many games have such blury and lowres textures.
under the line it is of course a matter of your engine and the way you use your resources. but not an excuse for ugly games.
And yes, Link is actually 6900 tris. Most of the other characters are a lot lower though.