Normal maps, Engines and dull colour palettes!
polycounter lvl 17
This is not my blog.
But I wanted to write down some thoughts about the advent of the normal maps and see what you guys think. ( old discussion i know, but i think its time for some reflection on this!! )
Case in Point, Old school versus New school.
I'm talking, quake versus doom 3.
I'm talking, World of Warcraft versus Aion.
The angle I’m taking is, 'normal maps' have brought about this whole new generation of 'artists' that are what I'll call for the sake of this post, digital sculptors, AND engines that really, truly with all the fancy shader business going on, all really look the same.
The way I see it is, normal maps are simply another way to achieve the exact same result being achieved years ago by the traditional guys who painted hue, value, saturation, lighting and shadows straight into the textures. Of course minus all the realtime 'realistic' hoo haaa.
I understand the main reason behind the move was to make things more dynamic, more 'realistic'. IE Having lighting and shadows that describe form dynamically ( and these days hues, saturation and temperature as well ) in a more realistic way.
But by going this realistic / technical route, an artist only really needs to worry about one of the foundations of art, Value, and rely on fancy shaders and great engines to fill in a lot of the other facets for you. Textures ? It takes a few months and some useful tips and tricks to really get into the swing of manipulating photos to get some good results that work with your shaders. That could fit right in with MOST games out there. It’s all in the tools!
I believe 'digital sculpting' allows an artist a much quicker way to become an 'artist'
Given that we remove the understanding of anatomy ( a large piece of artistry i know but bare with me ) Value is black, white and everything in between, and when your digital sculpting, your describing form by pushing and pulling digital matter thus exercising your understanding of value, and storing that understanding into a normal map, later to be used to describe your understanding of form, in a realtime, dynamic way.
Simply put for example, The better your understanding of value, the better the forms of your human face sculpt will look and vice versa.
How this differs drastically from the oldschool guys is that by handpainting everything, you needed understanding of hue, Saturation, Value, Temperature, Lighting, Shadows, and if you lacked some of this understanding, your textures look like shit.
There’s always exceptions I know, but generally speaking this is what I see:
I've noticed a trend - and that is a lot of the traditional guys who paint sick handpainted stuff, have moved into this digital sculpting age and excelled majorly! Their sculpts kick major ass. OR they are hindered by the tool itself, a technical barrier if you will, but once they overcome that they’re off! Fairly flexible artist we got here!
I’ve also noticed that the reverse is often true, the artists that’s started as a digital sculptor and photo manipulator, is not a very good hand painter, and in fact has a lot of difficulty trying to do traditional 2D stuff, kind of pigeonholed.
Or if the artist is just a little too weak in the sculpting department, their traditional skills are probably weak too.
Fortunately, the kind of artwork we see in a massive chunk of the mainstream AAA games these days caters for the digital sculptor who doesnt really need to know how to handpaint anything.
Fuck this is long, but I’m almost done.
So how this ties in with my spiel about normal maps is, using them, allows the artist to describe a smoother form with fewer polygons, but essentially leaves technology ( shader, and renderer ie engine etc ) to determine how lighting and shadows, interacts with that form.
The shaders, the engines all get more complex and get more and more realistic, driving the frame rates lower and lower and the need for BEAST computers to run them, higher and higher.
All the while the individual artistic knowledge and ability gets slowly phased out and replaced with the ability to tweak values and move sliders, and we end up with 90% of screenshot histograms from games, giving pretty much the same data!!!
Don’t you think that’s retarded ?
I have to say MASSIVE props to the world of warcrafts, the diablo3's , the torchlight's, the warhammers, and many more, and of course ANYONE and any developer who still put raw artistic brilliance at the forefront, and utilize technology in a way that doesn’t smother / dictate or remove foundational practices for artists, but instead enhances it.
Finally: Heres a pic I just made up containing random google images of a massive list of normal mapped games, some that have just come out, mass effect 2, fallout, bioshock 2 and some hand painted examples in there as well. I didn’t spend time fumbling through google picking out images specifically, I mostly grabbed the first in game screenshot from google images that I found. Whilst I love, and play most of these games, I cant help but feel they all really look the same.
Now I don’t know about you, but the hand painted ones surely stick out, and they look much more vibrant, interesting and artistic to me.
Why is it that we don’t have more of these kinds of games and less of the brown and green games?
What’s happened to the artist having direct control of what’s on the screen, rather than being pigeonholed into using essentially universal tools that all end up generating the same overall look?
Interested to know what you guys think ... *dons flame retardant suit*
EDIT: TL;DR : Why did the advent of the normal map bring with it, an almost global change to dark green and brown with glowy bits colour palette?? Why has the oldschool been pushed to the back in favour of the realistic?!
EDIT x 2: I am one of these digital sculptours I'm talking about above, and wonder if somehow because of my history in normal mapped pipelines that I've missed a big part of traditional foundation stuff that I SHOULD have focussed on learning concurrently - to better round out my skills! I'm also attributing the brown and green bomb thats happened is mostly due to the fact that perhaps the engines and tools out there that are available to all are more or less left as is for a good 90% of the developers that use them. Due to time constraints, knowledge and various other factors!
But I wanted to write down some thoughts about the advent of the normal maps and see what you guys think. ( old discussion i know, but i think its time for some reflection on this!! )
Case in Point, Old school versus New school.
I'm talking, quake versus doom 3.
I'm talking, World of Warcraft versus Aion.
The angle I’m taking is, 'normal maps' have brought about this whole new generation of 'artists' that are what I'll call for the sake of this post, digital sculptors, AND engines that really, truly with all the fancy shader business going on, all really look the same.
The way I see it is, normal maps are simply another way to achieve the exact same result being achieved years ago by the traditional guys who painted hue, value, saturation, lighting and shadows straight into the textures. Of course minus all the realtime 'realistic' hoo haaa.
I understand the main reason behind the move was to make things more dynamic, more 'realistic'. IE Having lighting and shadows that describe form dynamically ( and these days hues, saturation and temperature as well ) in a more realistic way.
But by going this realistic / technical route, an artist only really needs to worry about one of the foundations of art, Value, and rely on fancy shaders and great engines to fill in a lot of the other facets for you. Textures ? It takes a few months and some useful tips and tricks to really get into the swing of manipulating photos to get some good results that work with your shaders. That could fit right in with MOST games out there. It’s all in the tools!
I believe 'digital sculpting' allows an artist a much quicker way to become an 'artist'
Given that we remove the understanding of anatomy ( a large piece of artistry i know but bare with me ) Value is black, white and everything in between, and when your digital sculpting, your describing form by pushing and pulling digital matter thus exercising your understanding of value, and storing that understanding into a normal map, later to be used to describe your understanding of form, in a realtime, dynamic way.
Simply put for example, The better your understanding of value, the better the forms of your human face sculpt will look and vice versa.
How this differs drastically from the oldschool guys is that by handpainting everything, you needed understanding of hue, Saturation, Value, Temperature, Lighting, Shadows, and if you lacked some of this understanding, your textures look like shit.
There’s always exceptions I know, but generally speaking this is what I see:
I've noticed a trend - and that is a lot of the traditional guys who paint sick handpainted stuff, have moved into this digital sculpting age and excelled majorly! Their sculpts kick major ass. OR they are hindered by the tool itself, a technical barrier if you will, but once they overcome that they’re off! Fairly flexible artist we got here!
I’ve also noticed that the reverse is often true, the artists that’s started as a digital sculptor and photo manipulator, is not a very good hand painter, and in fact has a lot of difficulty trying to do traditional 2D stuff, kind of pigeonholed.
Or if the artist is just a little too weak in the sculpting department, their traditional skills are probably weak too.
Fortunately, the kind of artwork we see in a massive chunk of the mainstream AAA games these days caters for the digital sculptor who doesnt really need to know how to handpaint anything.
Fuck this is long, but I’m almost done.
So how this ties in with my spiel about normal maps is, using them, allows the artist to describe a smoother form with fewer polygons, but essentially leaves technology ( shader, and renderer ie engine etc ) to determine how lighting and shadows, interacts with that form.
The shaders, the engines all get more complex and get more and more realistic, driving the frame rates lower and lower and the need for BEAST computers to run them, higher and higher.
All the while the individual artistic knowledge and ability gets slowly phased out and replaced with the ability to tweak values and move sliders, and we end up with 90% of screenshot histograms from games, giving pretty much the same data!!!
Don’t you think that’s retarded ?
I have to say MASSIVE props to the world of warcrafts, the diablo3's , the torchlight's, the warhammers, and many more, and of course ANYONE and any developer who still put raw artistic brilliance at the forefront, and utilize technology in a way that doesn’t smother / dictate or remove foundational practices for artists, but instead enhances it.
Finally: Heres a pic I just made up containing random google images of a massive list of normal mapped games, some that have just come out, mass effect 2, fallout, bioshock 2 and some hand painted examples in there as well. I didn’t spend time fumbling through google picking out images specifically, I mostly grabbed the first in game screenshot from google images that I found. Whilst I love, and play most of these games, I cant help but feel they all really look the same.
Now I don’t know about you, but the hand painted ones surely stick out, and they look much more vibrant, interesting and artistic to me.
Why is it that we don’t have more of these kinds of games and less of the brown and green games?
What’s happened to the artist having direct control of what’s on the screen, rather than being pigeonholed into using essentially universal tools that all end up generating the same overall look?
Interested to know what you guys think ... *dons flame retardant suit*
EDIT: TL;DR : Why did the advent of the normal map bring with it, an almost global change to dark green and brown with glowy bits colour palette?? Why has the oldschool been pushed to the back in favour of the realistic?!
EDIT x 2: I am one of these digital sculptours I'm talking about above, and wonder if somehow because of my history in normal mapped pipelines that I've missed a big part of traditional foundation stuff that I SHOULD have focussed on learning concurrently - to better round out my skills! I'm also attributing the brown and green bomb thats happened is mostly due to the fact that perhaps the engines and tools out there that are available to all are more or less left as is for a good 90% of the developers that use them. Due to time constraints, knowledge and various other factors!
Replies
because that's what the current trend is?
because it's much cheaper to hire a bunch of zbrush guys who never came close to fine arts and have no idea how colour theory is applied to art?
I do agree with you and I miss most of ps2-generation goodness, but they didn't abandon hand-painting, it just moved to NDS/wii/ocassional current gen titles.
Still, I was under impression that last two years were kinda refreshing from OMG SHIT IT AWESOME GRAY AND BROWN, compared to, say, 2006 - 2007.
(lol I didn't read your whole post at once, so I'm doubling some of your points )
So... I'm not sure if this about normal mapping vs hand painting, or sculpting vs painting, or about artistic skills and how normal mapping helps cover for people that don't understand drawing or painting.
I kinda agree all you need to know for normal mapped work is the diffuse color of objects, but in more hand painted work, you have to understand how to fake 3D detail, use warm and color colors to fake global lighting, how to fake reflections with earthy and sky colors, you need more of a painting background.
But I really love how normal mapping allows for dynamic lighting. You can't lighting a low poly model painted for an outdoor scene from below.
Some games embrace this and try to make something unique with all this. Take Team Fortress 2 for instance. They made some really cool stuff all thanks to where we're at today.
I don't see this issue as boring at all, on the contrary I'm really excited about all the cool stuff you can do. I personally want to learn more about rendering, lighting, shaders, post processing, etc. so that I can explore it and make something unique with it.
When you take oldschoolers (traditional texture painters) and transition them to nextgen, there is two categories : A - the ones trying to handpaint their diffuse maps ANYWAYS, ending up with a shitty 'dirty makeup' look because it doesn't match the normals ; and B - the ones using their previous art theory knowhow to get the most out of nextgen!
(usually these guys start by being A then quickly become B ! So thats all good in the end!)
Also - knowing traditional art helps ALOT when it comes to defining the look of shaders for a game. Graphics programmers might be adding tons of bells and whistles, but if an artist manages to explain them a striking (even if unrealistic) way that color behaves on certain objects, they might cry a little at first but then they become very willing to try new things they would have never thought about.
To take the TF2 example again - the look and feel was obviously designed by traditional artists fans of Leyendecker, and then very smartly implemented by techies. I am completely sure that if artists had been less involved the game shaders wouldnt look that good. The cool thing that I noticed tho, is that many tool/shader guys are former animators so some of them have a good eye for color and good shading (not ALL of them do however.)
So yeah handpainting rules! As an end result, but as an art foundation too!
However, some games just don't lend themselves to a stylized world. Modern Warfare for instance would be completley ridiculous if it was. It just doesn't fit. Likewise something like Bioshock (which I think had a great art direction, despite specular being overdone on a lot of stuff) wouldn't look great all bright and colorful... it should be dark and brooding.
I mean the main benefit of normal maps is that it saves a SHIT ton of time, and reacts real-time to lighting. And we all know time = money.
My belief is that to be good in this profession you just need to know the tools, like you said. Personally I feel like most "artists" I come across who are weak in the traditional art department are usually subpar in the 3D realm of things too.
To be truly great I think you need to have that eye for detail, form, color etc.
But like I said, a lot of games don't lend themselves to a stylized world... and as much as we as artists might prefer it that way, ultimately it's the consumer who drives the business. You have to think about who you're marketing too.
Is it a FPS targetting boys ages 16-24, well then you're probably not going to be working on something really stylized. Then you go tell your team it's time to crank out Xnormal and go to work!
What ?
lol xD
What it boils down to is; You cant polish a turd. If its a sub par model with shit textures and no art direction, then no amount of "fancy shaders" and "post processes" can make it look any better.
I'm not actually targeting that at the games; but mainly at people who are struggling to learn and who are hung up on the wrong thing, then wondering why its not looking as good.
I remember JackZhang on zbrush saying to someone
ZacD: Its about how the advent of the normal map really didnt do alot for the development of the individual artist, if anything it provided a shortcut. I completely disagree with you about the fact that hand painted model cannot be lit dynamically... huh ? of course it can! Actually you hit on exactly one of the main points of the post by saying that.
We can light this guy from below, from the side, wherever we want to, it will still look damned cool... no ????
Kodde: Me too man, I'm definately excited about the unexplored potential of the technology, but im absolutely 100% PRO allowing more TF2's to be explored and giving the absolute control of the screenspace to the artist.
pior: Dude such a good point about the further splitting up the oldschoolers your exactly right!!
Ive honestly found it very tough in my career so far to persuade tech guys to explore some more artistic approaches rather than going with the default diffuse / normal / spec default, which lets face it is the mainstay of pretty much every 'next gen' engine out there today.
vcortis: Im with pior, I also have to say what to your normal maps comment... dude..wAT ?
Also i would challenge the fact that modern warfare needs to be set in an, uber real setting, sure it could be more fantastical and given a complete palette overhaul, i dont see any reason why it couldnt be ??
They are trying to create a ' this is what it would actually be, look, sound, feel like being there ' kind of experience. Which ( dont get me wrong ) is an art in and of itself that i completely respect... but saying it wouldnt work if it looked different... im not so sure ive seen enough evidence that this is the case.... Killer 7 ? GoldenEye ? Not ultrarealistic at all... fucking awesome explorations in art styles and greeeat games to boot!
Normals save a shit ton of time in one of the standard "grey/brown/green" games you were talking about. Not so specifically with characters or unique items, but with generic props and materials.
In that any joe schmo can take a picture of wood, bring it into photoshop, tweak it a bit, create a diffuse, spec, and normal map (in xnormal) in 5 minutes apply it and it'll match most of what we see in current games.
I'm not saying it'll look great, by all means I'm saying the exact opposite. If crap goes in crap comes out, but just pointing out how effortlessly things can be made and still pass as acceptable because it's the "current" style. Current style, might be largely do in fact to cut costs because it's easier to hire somebody who can create that stuff, and fast. Kind of trying to reinforce your point, but obviously should've explained myself better.
On the flip side, take something like the Warhammer online photo you posted. The Wood on the structure in the back was maticulously hand painted and has a great style and look to it adding flavor to that world.
Definitely not something done in 5 minutes.
As far as MW goes, again I think we need to look at our target audience. What they've come to expect out of that sort of franchise and genre.
I'm not saying it couldn't work the other way, but I do think it would not be as widely accepted for the type of game it is trying to be.
And alas, I'm off to bed it's 6:30 in the morning and I've been up all night working on 3d...
The only reason Goldeneye wasn't "ultra realistic" was because you couldn't do that on the N64...
I don't really get this whole thing, it seems like you're saying "sculpting is easier than painting"? That's probably true, since sculpting is about understanding volume, form, structure and anatomy, while painting is about knowing all that stuff and how to replicate it in 2d.
Great art is still great art.
Plus, I'm not really sure why you think "oldschool = vibrant", just look at Goldeneye there, and then you've got Quake, Quake 2, all the old-school FPS games really - they were all very grey/brown/bland palette-wise.
The only thing that should be determining a game's palette is the art direction - I guess "gritty realism" is the in thing at the moment so a lot of art direction takes on a filmic look in order to be more immersive. There have been games since the dawn of the industry that looked bland, it's not something related to the technology being used. Look at games like Mirrors Edge - normal-mapped and colourful.
No, artists are being given freedom. With newer and faster hardware we have huge amounts more possibility when it comes to creating a unique look. Back in the day pretty much all you had was a few polygons and a 128x128 texture, so you had to paint something good otherwise nobody would even know what it was they were looking at!
Frame rates are not getting lower, the technology is scaling with the hardware. Granted some people or engines may lag behind or blaze a trail, but on average this can only be a good thing.
I'd much rather have the ability to define a custom shader with rim lighting, vertex colouring, spherical harmonics and reflection maps to make my stuff look awesome than be limited to having 600 triangles and a 256x256 diffuse map. Sure, I could model and texture the latter way faster, but would it look better? Of course not, unless your vision is clouded by nostalgia!
This is rubbish! Artistic knowledge is not being "phased out". If anything, it's becoming more necessary! 10 years ago you didn't need to know anatomy at all in order to make a decent-looking (for the time) game character, since all you could do was shove a few boxes together to represent torso, arms, legs and head, and slap a texture on it. Back in the day everyone got musculature totally wrong when they were texturing because there's only so much you can do make a 5-sided cylinder look like a human arm. Nowadays if you tried that you'd be laughed out of the room, you have to know anatomy at least passably in order to even begin constructing a humanoid for today's games, otherwise everyone and their mother will call you out on having the biceps in the wrong place or the deltoids being a weird shape.
Basically I think you're looking at this whole thing from the wrong perspective. You seem to be complaining that because technology has got better and we have more freedom, people are choosing to make blander stuff. I don't think this is true at all. Sure, the big games are doing that, because that's what sells right now, but the fact that we have so much more artistic freedom and room for experimentation is a huge boon to the game artist. Plus, advancing hardware means we can now carry a mobile phone which can push more polys than a PC back in 1995, which opens up a huge new market for a clever artist to push their more unique and original ideas out to masses of people.
TL;DR: Think positive.
Btw, I'm sure lots of modern games are influenced by almost monochrome, brown/green grading which is/was quite popular in film.
e.g.
http://www.moviewallpaper.net/wpp/Matt_Damon_in_The_Bourne_Ultimatum_Wallpaper_11_800.jpg
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/496/largewatchmenbluray9.jpg
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3823/largeknowingbluray5.jpg
Of course it's hard to deviate from desaturated, gritty look when you're making modern military shooter.
Other than that, I can think of several games utilising modern technology which are pretty stylized. E.g. Brink, Mirror's Edge, Team Fortress, Borderlands. I'm sure we'll see lot more stylization and different looks in new games in no time.
I've noticed it on the GameArtisans mini competitions. With low specs, the good people will opt for a pure diffuse, while the weaker artists think that normal mapping makes everything better. There are times pure diffuse painting will give better results for everyone.
On to the games, then, I wouldn't say that old school is by definition better than next-gen. Doom looks as bleh as Doom3 to me. It is true that hand painted games tend to have more vibrant styles these days, but I wouldn't blame that on the technology. Mirror's Edge is absolutely gorgeous and, in part, that's made possible because of some fancy light maps. (Here and here are some screenshot from other levels than the bright white rooftops. That's some lovely use of colour if you ask me.)
Also take a look at these comparisons (from Xoliul's blog). The new lighting system, IMO, does more to make environments look good than well painted textures. In fact, I think UDK levels are prettier in Lighting Only mode, though that may be because Epic doesn't seem to be familiar with the concept of restraint).
So in conclusion, it's not the technology that matters much in the end, but the art direction. And yes, art direction on most games these days is indeed awful and bland.
You're saying that normal mapping has taken a lot of work out of the texture workflow because it 'automatically' creates the shadows/highlights/detail on a model.
While this is true, I was under the impression that a normal map also allows the impression of a much higher res geometry on a polycount actually much lower.
You can still have awesome textures AND normal maps. Look at Killzone 2, Darksiders... FFXIII to name a few. Yes you could take away the normal maps from those games and the textures still look cool, but they look even more impressive when the NM's are on, not because they make the texture look better, but because they give the impression of a higher level of detail.
Also, you could add normal mapping to the hand painted games you mentioned and it would look even better, if Blizzard started putting normal maps on WoW assets/characters, then we'd still have the awesome painted style, but things like armor detail, or anatomical details would appear more realistic, which despite it's stylized look, would probably look pretty good.
If you're just saying the development of normal maps has allowed lazy artists to produce better looking work with less skill, then maybe true, but who cares, why restrict good looking game art to the elite? There were still just as many 'bad' textures back when normal mapping was unheard of, at least now we have more good looking art, who cares if the artist isn't the Van Gogh of texture painting.
Okay you got me with golden eye, I confess. But the main point is, that everything seems to have scaled with the technology, but the traditional art skills have been let out to pasture. Theres been very few games pop up of late such as TF2 that actually do something thats anything exploratory and original with all this technology. Though i do have to say this IS looking up, with a few crackers on the horizon, brink to name one.
This is a good example of what im talking about - it sticks out in everyones mind. To sum up, its getting old to see real and gritty... isnt it ? I mean as an artist yourself arent you tired of looking at Soldiers done in gritty realism set in a post apocalyptic world thats dark and gritty, with extra grit for realism?
Whilst i agree with the fact that the freedom is there, VERY few take it / use it. VERY VERY few. You could probably count on one or two hands the number of games released recently that are 'next gen' with striking artistic palettes, that do not fall into the bland normal mapped style that im talking about.
Disagree with regards to the framerates, of course they are man come on, there will always be the engines and developers who create stuff trying to immitate everything as reaslistic as possible requiring a neverending evolution of your computer hardware maximum to keep up in order to see the game in all its developed glory, im not sure why you think this isnt the case ?!?!?! What i'm trying to say is, is it really all worth it? Seeing stuff like TF2 and Mirrors Edge makes me say YES all this technology is DEFINATELY worth it!!! No offense to the project offset guys, but all the tech demos look so awesome, but really, it looks fairly similar to most other fantasy styled games out there, AND I'm probably going to need a monster machine to run it.
Fundamental Artistic Knowledge IS being phased out man, come on!!! hahaha!!! I mentioned originally that I didnt include mastery of anatomy because I know this is a huge part of it and totally relevant, but I'm more talking about colour theory, and its application and relevance to the individual artist and his or her direct application of that skill into texture maps, or technology.
We have so few examples of this direct application stuff being used to drive the whole artistic feel of a game, toward something that ISNT the 'norm' that I think it simply seems that it must be much less of a requirement now.
Nostalgia or not, I'm walking talking proof of this, my hand paint skills are average at best, but my photo manip skills have been enough to wing my way through a fair few freelance contracts and games here and there.
Praise the lord! I couldnt have put it any better thats exactly what im saying - Im not sure how to back this up other than to load up on screenshots of games that have come out recently - you seriously dont believe they all look relatively the same bar very few ?
Engine doesn't have to govern final look of game, Airborn uses Unreal Engine 3 and has pretty unique look.
EDIT: The Airbourne mod!!!! Thats a perfect example of an awesome exploration, I cheer when I see tech and art skill being used in this way!!!
Zwebbie: I agree with pretty much everything you said, especially the part about most of the games having bland art direction
Exactly the same thing...
Killzone 2 ? looks astounding. so does gears of war 2, call of duty modern warfare... Darksiders now theres an example of something a bit different, Its an exploration into the collaboration of hand painterly art and normal mapped stuff, but im not certain it actually improoved the art or covered up the brilliance of the hand painted stuff.... detail brought out by normal maps is not equal to awesome art...
You are still remembering just a small chunk of the old games that have good colour theory, and it was still a minority, just as it is in todays games.
Colourful doesnt mean good colour theory, just as desaturated doesnt mean bad colour theory.
Nonsense. Find me a film like the Bourne Identity that matches the colour palette used in Viva Pinata.
Your question doesn't make any sense. They are completely different things that require completely different colour palettes to set the appropriate mood.
Sorry but that' just not true whatsoever.
Yes normal mapping will give the impression of extra geometry, and light will catch edges, shadows will indeed be cast on nooks/crannies, but to make it look any good, you've still gotta add some value in the diffuse, and more often than not, that is more than just slapping an AO on it.
Even more so in painterly stlye.
Take a crate for example, bake a highly detailed crate, planks and nails and all, onto a 6 sided cube.
You're gonna get the look of planks, the nails protruding, and your logic suggests that all that's needed is to paint a big wood style texture and whack it onto the normal map... done.
Bullshit.
If you stop there that's gonna suck hard, you still gotta paint some shadow in with different value (not just AO), put some highlights on to accentuate the normal map.
Dude, im not talkin 80's here... Picking out colours that stood out from each other?? RIGGGHTTT...
I can really see thats all it took him to come up with the skills to paint textures like this.....
The context or subject matter is not in question, just the final look of what were seeing. But if i cant make that clear, then I dont know what else to say haha!
Your saying The bourne identity game couldnt have been made using a colour palette similar to the poster ? INstead we have:
Just take my consoles away now, I can't bear to see what DX11 and it's evil tesselation is gonna do...
We won't even have to make models anymore... just put a cube in the engine and you got whatever asset you want.
Also, comparing an entire game's visual style to a single poster is silly. It's got 2 colours in the background and a contrasty guy. You're never going to be able to make every level and character match that theme.
Well, it's hard to. If it's handpainted, then it's heavily stylized, if it's heavily stylized, then it makes no sense to limit pallete to 3 tones of green, unless it's some sort of special case.
Agan, it' has more to do with artdirection and game subject. Military shooters done back in time when there were no normalmaps were pretty desaturated and dirty too.
e.g.
http://www.imagengratis.org/images/spear098.jpg
http://gallery.christopher-kunz.de/d/9116-2/aad.jpg
Btw, new Prince of Persia has nice mix of normalmaps, handpainted and photosourced textures.
I do agree that it would be cooler to see more games experiment with different looks, but I don't think technology is to blame.
It all comes down to the art direction, and the art direction will match the requirements for the mood of the game.
Of course realistic military shooters are going to be dirty and desaturated, and of course family-friendly games like Buzz or Viva Pinata will be bright and stylised.
Viva Pinata is actually a pretty good example of tech used well, too - you could never have done the crazy hair stuff back in the day, and hand painting that would look crap - it required the technology in order to develop its distinctive style.
And for lack of finding a game that I could use, because there just arent very many out there,why not compare the palette of the film poster and the game of the film itself? instead of the art direction going the route of the promotional poster, and movie which does convey a strong mood, and is quite contrasty and striking, we fall back into the realm of normality...
This brings me full circle, back to the fact that im taking a shot in the dark and pndering/ asking, do you think the reason for these kind of results, is based on technology. Ie, Its whats there, dont break it, just go with it?
EDIT : Sorry im doing my best to keep up with the posts...
In fact I would argue that in fact it's because of advancements in technology that it's now easier to tell the difference between a game with great art direction and a game with crappy art direction, therefore you're going to see a lot of examples of games with crappy art direction.
In the past, you were more limited, therefore the range of visual styles wasn't that varied given the constraints the artists had to work within.
Actually, some of the examples you give aren't even bad art direction, they're just art direction that you don't find as interesting.
edit: another good example that came out recently, there's Darksiders - very colourful and stylised, but used a lot of highpoly source assets and everything is normal-mapped: http://babamastnath.com/images/Darksiders_01.jpg
Also check out the Soul Calibur series, they've not changed in style (if anything they get MORE colourful more recently) but now they have specular and normalmaps on everything.
Im unfortunately not of the era of the hand painters, so im not trying to defend my turf at all! rather a bystander trying to understand the situation based on what I see.
It would be enlightening to hear from some of the guys that have come from that era into today and whether or not they think tech has smothered or propelled their ability to express what they want to, and whether or not its helped, hindered there traditional skills.
I think you can apply the same stylistic choices artists used to make to the new shaders/maps and come up with some amazing art that isn't realistic but upholds the old style guides. You might not paint the spec highlight into the diffuse but you'll make sure that it gets properly masked/painted into the spec map.
I think it comes from strong flexible workers and very strong art direction.
I think its easier to enforce a real world style guide where you wash out all the colors using post fx, than it is to try and get half a dozen talented artists to match a particular style. Also blazing a new style is risky...
Looking back on my old stuff I think I could have made a much more awesome result if I'd been allowed to work with the tech available today.
For example this guy was all handpainted, but I reckon with fur shaders, highpoly and ZBrush I could re-make this guy now and he would have 10x more impact. The colour scheme and design is completely tech-agnostic... if anything, these days I'd wanna punch up the saturation on a lot of that texture.
And what about this girl? Not an amazing model/texture, I know, but it is zbrushed and normal-mapped and again that has nothing to do with the colour scheme, saturation or style.
In fact, check out Josh Singh and Steffen "Neox" Unger's work - they've done awesome stylised things using ZBrush and normal-mapping that are vibrant and original, and you would have had a hard time making them look that good using just "old school" techniques.
A good artist will always produce good art no matter what medium they're working in. I'm not claiming to be a great artist, in fact I know there are hundreds of people on these boards alone who crank out stuff way more awesome than mine (you're one of them, Hazardous!), but I'm a technical artist by trade now and I've been creating art for computer games since I was 14, so I hope I have a fairly well-rounded view when it comes to art styles and games technology.
Certainly while you are right that there have been a swathe of very "bland looking" games recently, I think you will find if you look back with a less selective view, you will find hundreds of similarly bland games back in the old-school days, and nowadays we have so many more options when it comes to tools we can use to create more interesting art.
I think it's just a fact of the moment that so much of the industry is driven by mass-market demand and big studios pushing franchises, and most of those (with a few notable exceptions) are "realism" oriented which means they try to make it more gritty by pushing back the saturation.
There will always be more original games with fresh art styles and unfortunately they just don't tend to sell as well right now, apparently.
With regards to "artistry" not being so much of a requirement any more, I really don't believe that. In order to create great art, you have to be a great artist. Back in the day when everything was simple gouraud-shaded diffuse textures, all you really needed to know to make an environment texture was "surfaces pointing upwards are lighter than surfaces pointing down" since you were so limited by resolution constraints that you couldn't get any real interesting detail into the textures without making it noisy or obviously tiling. So a lot of old-school games actually had really simple textures that most texture artists today could crank out in 10 minutes.
For example, back in the day, you could just slap two boxes together with a cylinder on the end, paint it black & grey, and you'd have a passable gun model.
Nowadays if the artist doesn't really understand the construction of the thing he's making, then it'll end up looking weird or just not working right. The more detail that gets put into art, the more the artist has to know in order create a believable version.
This even applies to fantasy/sci-fi designs, you have to make something look functional or believable even if it's completely made up, otherwise nobody will "buy it". There's a pretty heavy element of artistry in that.
I get where your coming from now, its refreshing to find good decent argumentative conversation, as opposed to just dialing up the length of the spray on the flamethrower.
HAHA your little tarsier is still in my inspiration folder! its an awesome case in point, in fact alot of your work falls outside the category of what im trying to poke holes in, but its refreshing to hear you say that you think tech hasnt held you back, but propelled you forward.
I guess it is highly oppinionated, but I've simply got a severe hankering to see entire games that look more like some of the art that are produced by the blokes that frequent this place, like those you mentioned and more.
I see wips all over the place and think god damnit why cant we see MORE entire games / art directions that fit in with this. Maybe im impatient and its all about to change. I HOPE SO!
I think a part of me was thinking that once upon a time a character artist for games was more akin to a traditional artist, where knowledge of foundations would benefit hugely in extracting the most out of those 256 / 512 textures, with handpainted lighting and shadows. And over time the gap has really widened, to the point where that knowledge isnt applied in the same manner anymore. Still undoubtadly valuable knowledge, but ones ( or a group of artist's ) understanding of it is rarely on display, that ISNT tweaked or touched / by post process effects and shaders.
Im just not convinced that this guy could look any cooler with shaders and normal maps nor your tarsier either for that matter its awesome right how it is!! :
Sorry b1ll i had too!! :P
Wow that was a nice example. And that's right, that look is determined by art design. The only thing that would even come close to telling me that was a UE3 game was the lighting...and that wouldn't tell me a thing on first glance. Same for Borderlands. So you patted my point in the back while kicking it in the face. Double win!
I think everything else I was going to post was more blog worthy. Lol
Most of the lighting info is from above, look at the sky reflections on the armor, all the nuts and bolts, how the lighting is landing on his face, all the painted in lighting info is from when he's lit above, if you want to through that character into a lava level where lava is the main light source, then there needs to be painting painted onto the armor, the bolts, and the face.
1. The art style depends on what type of game you're trying to make and who you're marketing it to.
2. It depends on the art direction the team wants to go.
3. Technology has the ability to largely improve graphics
4. If you're a crappy artist it doesn't matter, your art is going to look like crap
Does that pretty much sum it up?
everything that was already apparent to people yeah
really don't get this thread
I Fixed your post VCortis, now Hazardous approves.
o.O
Also, that warhammer or orc thing screenshot, whatever it is, looks pretty shite overall. Sure, it has bright vibrant colors, but the lighting, flatness of textures, lack of any real material definition, terrible blurry inconsistant pixel density in the environment, etc etc etc make this a pretty horrible shot to try and use to prove *any* sort of point. I feel there is a whole lot of nostalgia pumped into this thread, but not much actual substance.
Full of GRIT, COLOR, and IMMENSE STYLE. I'm sure the universe will collapse now, because this is an impossibility in this day and age of normal maps!
Now the funny thing, this is far more colorful, stylistic and artistic than most every shooter in the past 15 years.
forums are a community - consider this question:
Am I enriching or making the community a better place?
This is all opinion and no substance - move it to General Discussion.
I do love the bright, super real, arcade look. I have no idea how significant normal maps are, I think it's more just a trend in graphical style.
With current gen hardware, we can achieve realism that simply wasn't possible with the N64 or even PS2. So naturally people take advantage of that, which could possibly lead to a perceived lack of creativity - ie things all look similarly realistic etc.
I really would like to see more Outruns 2s, Okami's etc, but I can't deny I find games like GTA 4 stunning. Less creative vision, but downright incredible attention to detail, and making a virtual world as convinving/realistic as that is highly impressive.
Discussing the virtues of shaders that are designed to help with dynamics, while discussing still images makes for a little bit of a one sided argument.
I totally agree with you that this level of art stand very much on its own and doesn't need the extra maps but I think its a bit of a mistake to forsake them.
I guess "Use as directed. Consult your AD before exceeding the maximum allowable dosage".
To all of you who seem to think I blamed normal maps for everything, you couldnt be more wrong. I was merely throwing down the gauntlet to get some oppinions, i asked HERE specifically because this place has pretty much the biggest history of oldschoolers.
Obviously though you dont think theres any link between the general blandness of most games, and the technology - to which i threw down the point, but isnt this due to the tech being there, out of the box and ready to go - ie unreal engine 3, and most developers WOULD rather leave as it than tweak the hell out of it and delve into the something new and fresh ala airborne mod.
If thats the case yeah! pretty much sums everything up. Im satisifed! Thanks!
Vig: I honestly thought there might be a staunch defending of the only hand painted style art from this board!
I was totally wrong
Nobody needs to "defend" any side of this supposed argument, because it's a non-issue. If the next game I work on calls for vibrant hand-painted diffuse-only work, then that's what I'll do. If it's a gritty normal-mapped realism game then I'll be sculpting, doing hard surface work and baking normals.
If people aren't able to adapt to requirements then I don't think they're really a well-rounded artist, from a production point of view.
(I'm leaving fine art out of this because that would be a whole different thread).
I feel like I should respond to your point that as technology goes along the skill level required drops. To me, this is crazy. I started doing 3d in 2007. My peers and I were basically thrown into the deep end of the pool having to start out being expected to create current gen style characters/environments. We had to learn modeling, texturing, anatomy, colour theory, composition, sculpting, the tech, and all of the other artistic knowledge all at once. At times I found myself wishing I had gotten into it earlier as there would be far less to have to work with and improve at. At that time I had already been painting and using Photoshop for 3 or 4 years, so continuing with those wouldn't have been a great change for me.
Hand painting is an amazing skill and it's certainly not something easy or that anyone can do, but it is just one skill-set with a lot of artistic knowledge and understanding behind it. However, that same same level of understanding is required for both hand painting and normal mapping workflows; except with the normal mapping workflow additional skill-sets are required; for example, sculpting. Sculpting is a huge part of current game art and you have seemed to make light of it so far. For current gen you have to be a great sculptor (which requires its own knowledge and skills) then be expected to be competent with texturing (hand painted or not) and know how to make best use of all the tech. This is a lot more demanding than it seems like diffuse only is.
I have worked in both, as I love hand painted textures and that oldschool style, and I have to say... I find it much more difficult to do current gen models.
TL;DR: I find the opposite. As the tech improves, it introduces new required skill-sets for the artist to learn and be proficient in. Which in turn requires artists to learn and be skilled in many more areas.