I completely agree with Mojo here ... speed tree is a great tool if you HAVE to cut corners, but I've seen what ONE person can do when tasked with creating a forest in a short amount of time and I feel that if any company CAN they SHOULD keep it orginal. Comparing speed tree to max is rediculous, although I'm not sure Ben really meant that literally.
In a nutshell, all I am really trying to argue here is that old fashioned handcrafted tree goodness will almost always beat out speed tree in my book because I enjoy and respect originality. I spend a LOT of time just wandering around games studying the environment and when I see a speed tree it breaks the "fourth wall".
Go go magic fantasy forest - however the hell it was made. I'm still gonna trample it with my mythril (mithryl?) seven league boots of doom.......can't wait.
I'm with Mojo on this (especially his last statement, as it clearly states he doesn't look down on the use of speedtree specifically).
We're a community fo 3d artists, and i'm sure we all see what we do as an artform, despite the fact that the customer really couldn't care less. Now, Daz, i seem to remember you being somewhat annoyed by the constant mention of your supposed '3d-scanning' on james bond, because it made it seem as if you just pressed a few buttons, and presto, there's your 3d bond. If that's the case, then why can't you see what Mojo means? I agree with what the counter-party said as well, it's a tool, and if used well it can be good. But it's not art, and i predict we'll get sick of seeing fairly similar trees in many games before too long.
Now, let's kiss and make up!
I've got dibs on Per.
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yeah looks like speed tree and speedgrass , both of which i ocmpletely fucking hate, may as well get a program to auto generate your characters also you uncreative fucks!
if it turns out it is not speed tree then i apologize, but if it is, i still say LAZY FUCKS
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But the heads are procedural too!! http://www.facegen.com/
Thats what they use, i dont know where they got the bodies from but they have some nasty anatomy errors.
Seems like a wise way to go about it. Who wants to make every fucking leaf anyhow?
Tools like speedtree are making games more realistic, one day we may see the artist removed from creation of organic materials altogether, and placed more into the hands of the game designer. Sort of like a DNA and weathering for games.
Most of the stuff I do isn't human so this sort of thing wouldn't really help me. I see myself as a dreamer really, call me a 'Master Doodler'.
If this is the same art team from morrowind then this is a huge improvement over the crap graphics that game had, no matter how they accomplished it (though I havent see the animation yet). I'm more upset at the bloom and gameplay changes (minigames?) than little things that can be fixed in a patch. It's all just graphics anyway, call me when you can burn down the forest with a fireball.
All the painters from the 1800's are rolling over in thier graves because no one makes their own paint by grinding pigment into oil. Shame on you all! Go back to your roots and grind your own paint, wait for it to dry and scan it in. Don't use the "automated color picker" that is SOOooOoo lazy! =P
As games get more involved and the amount of trees bushes ect grows it totally makes sense to use something like speedtree. Sure taking time to make every tree unique and placing them "by hand" was do-able up until now, because there where only 5-20 trees in any given level, if that.
I would suggest using it with your studio's own set of custom tree/bush models to help keep a proprietary creative look. With games today starting to blur together in looks I think it is important that studio's try to set themselves apart from the pack. Using your own trees with a tree placement program isn't going kill that look. If anything it will give the Enviro Artist more time to make more stock trees.
Oh hold on, its automated and I'm an amature so I must loath it... nothing but hate for things that make life easier! fear, loathing... I hate you speedtree!!!!one
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If this is the same art team from morrowind then this is a huge improvement over the crap graphics that game had
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Weiser_Cain: Actually, I think you'll find that Morrowind had some of the best environment/world art around at the time, it's still awesome.
The city styles and attention to detail are excellent, likewise with the nature, everything fits together and looks "right". It was just the avatar character art (mainly the faces) that was fairly poor by comparison.
I'd certainly never say that Morrowind had "crap graphics", though. On the whole, it was remarkable for its time.
Bloom in the real world is a sign that I have to clean my glasses. It should never be applied to the full scene, only extremely bright surfaces (the kind that hurt your eyes when you look at them).
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Daz, i seem to remember you being somewhat annoyed by the constant mention of your supposed '3d-scanning' on james bond, because it made it seem as if you just pressed a few buttons, and presto, there's your 3d bond. If that's the case, then why can't you see what Mojo means?
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Read my last post mighty pea! I'm not 'disagreeing' with Mojo per se. I totally understand why he feels like he does about it. All I was really saying was that as artists I dont think we need to be quite as terrified of tools that could mean we spend less hours hunched in front of pc's. But Mojo can make all the trees he wants!
But anyway, your comparison is pretty unfair! In the case you cite, that's LITERALLY a case of me actually physically doing all the work from scratch by hand, and EA LYING to the press and taking that work away from me. Now THAT is something to get worked up about thanks very much!
Toomas, that's really interesting If that's true. There was definitely something generic and auto generated looking about the heads that I saw in the various videos.
EA has a dimensional travelling system. Once the bugs are ironed out they'll use it to travel back in time, replace Lincoln with Larry Probst and conquer the world under the Evil Alliance banner.
maybe im just bitching here but I just wanted to prove my point that they actually use the good old 'player-facing-sprites on a stick' technique you can see it pretty well in the 'chapter 2' video: http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/media_movies.htm
Also notice the renadomly appearing/disappearing trees in the background... yay for speedtree
Rhinokey's post with a globhal Search and replace applied.
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i think i'm being misunderstood on a lot of levels i am not saying that using power tools is a "bad" thing, it is just a lazy thing, it is a short cut to get around having carpenters make the houses themselves, power tools can deliver great results if you are looking for a normal realistic architecture, i personaly would not use it on any project that i had control over, unless it was an absolute neccesity in order to meet time or budget
what i am arguing here and everyone keeps overlooking, is when ben compaired it to being a tool just like handsaw and plane, because it is not a tool like those, it is not making your own art, it would not be propper to build out a bunch of houses with power tools and put it in your portfolio as houses you have made,
speed house can be an excellent way to cut corners if your studio or producers are either too lazy or stingy to allow time or money needed to make an entire game.
i think the oblivion shots look great, but i think they would look better with houses made by carpenters, if not better it would at least look difrent than other games made using power tools, it was easy to just look at this game and go "oh thats power tools" cause despite the tweaking and slider moving, "most" powertools look... like power tools,
i keep getting replies like i'm fighting against ways to slim down game design when under tight budget / time constraints, but what i am arguing against is the notion that making a house in power tools is art in the same manner as making a house with a handsaw and hammer.
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Sure the Yankee Carpenter can make a great artichoke finnial on a bannister, but if the deal is to make a strong house. Instead of worrying about individual trees, make trees in Speedtree, and worry about the ruins, an significan rock crag, and the over all composition of the forrest. The one thing about the Next Generation is how it is forcing the industry to work smarter, rather than harder.
Spoon_of_death: Riiight... because the Oblivion 3d rendering engine is entirely based around SpeedTree, so that MUST be what's causing those trees to disappear in the background!
I love tools...which is good news for some of you lonely folks posting here
Speedtree is great. Rather than paying an artist to figure out trees and build 10,000 of the over 2 years, you get him or her to build hills and pathways and babbling brooks and magic fairy glens.
You know what? These days we have tools that autostamp procedural dirt over characters/buildings/characters. all you dirt texturers - you days are fucking numbered. when I rule the world you'll be in the second bunch rounded up after the gingers.
...wanders off to contemplate bloom with the Great Oz.
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Bloom in the real world is a sign that I have to clean my glasses. It should never be applied to the full scene, only extremely bright surfaces (the kind that hurt your eyes when you look at them).
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See, I look at those scenes Hawken posted, and I rather like the bloom. You look at them and don't.
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If adding some automated trees and bloom effects makes the gamers like the game, then they did their job.
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I'll go ahead and spell out that I'm not against this application. If the game has no focus on artistic achievement, and the trees are simply there for the fact that the result would look terrible without them (like a racing game), then no problem. But no one who uses this application should ever claim or imply that they "made the trees", so that no one starts a thread saying "OMG you have mad design skills".
My concern would be how to take pride in one's work if anyone can do it. You're easily replaced. This is more of a business vs. pleasure argument. I'm of course assuming todays games should be designed by artist, which is inaccurate.
And I see bloom as this generation's lens flare. And if it doesn't add to gameplay, it shouldn't sell the game. Photographers photoshop bloom into images to fake atmostphere they couldn't achieve otherwise. It's a great visual effect if not abused. Same with normal and spec maps...turn it down a little. Or, whatever pays your bills. Can't change management.
fair enough, i was just playing devils advocate for a bit. I think speedtree is a great way to do stuff like this, but i can definately see the merit in doing them by hand as well. It's just not realistic to think it's always worth it.
I´d say even if speedtree used and bloom set to 6059593%, the art sucks anyway. I recently watched a vid again... It looks horrible. They even do noobish mistakes like completly monochrome stones. You can fix in less then 2 secs...
The characters are looking horrible. (yeah ben, they need big forearms). No stlye. bah!
This game lives from its great fanbase and the overall highly frequented genre of Fanatsy action-RPG.
From an artistic side of view. It sucks. My oppinion...
About speedtree: I think they could use it a LOT better, try to make moer variation, and mix in some custom stuff. But their art sucks anyway (sorry guys!).
it's the artist that makes a masterpiece .. not the instruments ...
a computer cant paint a masterpiece
a computer cant compose a meaningful piece of symphony
a computer surely cant be creative ...
a computer, can however reduce the amount of routine work a human being needs to do so he can focus on more important things.
If you enjoy populating a monotonous stretch of terrain with a forest then you have some serious issues.
Trees or rocks are pretty generic and this software can be used en-masse with great speed. This doesnt mean that environmental artist are out of a job, in fact i think that it really opens up their horizons, meaning they can dedicate their precious time really make important things pop. Instead of being tied down to a computer for hours on end just because you need to get this patch of forest finished...
Procedural content creation is the way of the future. It is a good thing too, because there aren't enough artists in the world to produce a believable environment for the game systems we will have 5 years from now.
Reality is created from a procedural system anyway. People don't complain that physics in games is procedural because it is perfect. Some time soon, procedural content creation will also produce perfect natural environments. Most of the fuctionality already exists. It is only a matter of time before someone puts it all together in one software package.
From what I understand you define not a tree by itself but a rule to create trees with a certain random variation? Is that any different than creating a set of morph targets to vary the appearances of characters as seen in most MMORPGs and that "Republic" game?
What a pointless disscussion. Getting down on speedtree is the same as getting mad at high end 3D artists for not creating and placing each strand of hair. I guess programing wind is a cop-out for hand done animation? Bone based animation is not real animation compaired to vertex animation?
At what point do you consider it good game art? When it looks good and works better than expected, thats when.
No one is all bent out of shape about auto-gen grass or hair? Why get bent about trees?
We have a really cool implimentation of speed tree in our engine where you just set the type of tree and set it to random and just keep cloning the tree in our editor and you'll get a unique tree each time, you can make a forest in like 5 minutes.
I cant imagine anyone who would actually want to model trees by hand, thats like the least fun posible thing to do in the world, except maybe modeling rocks. Or work on sports games....
speedtree seems like a great program for games like Oblivion, anything on unreal 3 engine, or whatever next-gen engine. If a company finds it easier to buy a piece of software that takes 1 click to make a tree and 6 more clicks to make it different from the other clicks, if it saves them time and money, it will work for them.
I created around 20 different trees for the duck hunting game by hand using Maya. I'd say it took me a total of 2 months making all those trees. They look good in torque, but their not amazing as speedtree. Speedtree seems like its more of convenience, because why have someone spend 2 months making 20 different trees than someone making 20 different trees in 2 weeks.(guessing, since i never used it)
As an artist, I look at speedtree as another tool of the trade. If speedtree hadn't of come along, I'm sure someone would of eventually written a plugin for any of the popular programs.
oblivion has one thing that other games dont have, fun gameplay that delivers what they say it will. Looks will get gamers to buy the game, and for most people it looks great! To us the guys who know what crap the art is (other than some of the monsters and some armor wich was not done by them). But we dont matter they do. They outnumber us 1000 to one so as long as the boxart looks intresting and the web shots show them overused features then they will buy it in droves. Its gameplay over art, and to me thats a win for them, because games with good art and bad gameplay get returned the next day.
Replies
In a nutshell, all I am really trying to argue here is that old fashioned handcrafted tree goodness will almost always beat out speed tree in my book because I enjoy and respect originality. I spend a LOT of time just wandering around games studying the environment and when I see a speed tree it breaks the "fourth wall".
This game will rule, I absolutely loved Morrowind and Im sure I will love this one as well.
/Palm
can't see the +2 wooden bracers for the trees
We're a community fo 3d artists, and i'm sure we all see what we do as an artform, despite the fact that the customer really couldn't care less. Now, Daz, i seem to remember you being somewhat annoyed by the constant mention of your supposed '3d-scanning' on james bond, because it made it seem as if you just pressed a few buttons, and presto, there's your 3d bond. If that's the case, then why can't you see what Mojo means? I agree with what the counter-party said as well, it's a tool, and if used well it can be good. But it's not art, and i predict we'll get sick of seeing fairly similar trees in many games before too long.
Now, let's kiss and make up!
I've got dibs on Per.
yeah looks like speed tree and speedgrass , both of which i ocmpletely fucking hate, may as well get a program to auto generate your characters also you uncreative fucks!
if it turns out it is not speed tree then i apologize, but if it is, i still say LAZY FUCKS
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But the heads are procedural too!!
http://www.facegen.com/
Thats what they use, i dont know where they got the bodies from but they have some nasty anatomy errors.
Seems like a wise way to go about it. Who wants to make every fucking leaf anyhow?
Tools like speedtree are making games more realistic, one day we may see the artist removed from creation of organic materials altogether, and placed more into the hands of the game designer. Sort of like a DNA and weathering for games.
"plant tree" Wooosh!
If this is the same art team from morrowind then this is a huge improvement over the crap graphics that game had, no matter how they accomplished it (though I havent see the animation yet). I'm more upset at the bloom and gameplay changes (minigames?) than little things that can be fixed in a patch. It's all just graphics anyway, call me when you can burn down the forest with a fireball.
As games get more involved and the amount of trees bushes ect grows it totally makes sense to use something like speedtree. Sure taking time to make every tree unique and placing them "by hand" was do-able up until now, because there where only 5-20 trees in any given level, if that.
I would suggest using it with your studio's own set of custom tree/bush models to help keep a proprietary creative look. With games today starting to blur together in looks I think it is important that studio's try to set themselves apart from the pack. Using your own trees with a tree placement program isn't going kill that look. If anything it will give the Enviro Artist more time to make more stock trees.
Oh hold on, its automated and I'm an amature so I must loath it... nothing but hate for things that make life easier! fear, loathing... I hate you speedtree!!!!one
Mojo volunteers to make all the trees! I'm telling.
If this is the same art team from morrowind then this is a huge improvement over the crap graphics that game had
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Weiser_Cain: Actually, I think you'll find that Morrowind had some of the best environment/world art around at the time, it's still awesome.
The city styles and attention to detail are excellent, likewise with the nature, everything fits together and looks "right". It was just the avatar character art (mainly the faces) that was fairly poor by comparison.
I'd certainly never say that Morrowind had "crap graphics", though. On the whole, it was remarkable for its time.
and that's saying something. add bloom. make gamers go "OMG!!!!"
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Isn't that the point, to make the GAMERS go OMG? Who cares what a bunch of artists and developers think, other than the artists and developers?
If adding some automated trees and bloom effects makes the gamers like the game, then they did their job.
I have more to say about this, but I'm going to bite my tongue.
This is the new green developers 'paint or photosource' misguided angst / brain malfunction isn't it ? heh
r.
Daz, i seem to remember you being somewhat annoyed by the constant mention of your supposed '3d-scanning' on james bond, because it made it seem as if you just pressed a few buttons, and presto, there's your 3d bond. If that's the case, then why can't you see what Mojo means?
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Read my last post mighty pea! I'm not 'disagreeing' with Mojo per se. I totally understand why he feels like he does about it. All I was really saying was that as artists I dont think we need to be quite as terrified of tools that could mean we spend less hours hunched in front of pc's. But Mojo can make all the trees he wants!
But anyway, your comparison is pretty unfair! In the case you cite, that's LITERALLY a case of me actually physically doing all the work from scratch by hand, and EA LYING to the press and taking that work away from me. Now THAT is something to get worked up about thanks very much!
Toomas, that's really interesting If that's true. There was definitely something generic and auto generated looking about the heads that I saw in the various videos.
Also notice the renadomly appearing/disappearing trees in the background... yay for speedtree
[ QUOTE ]
i think i'm being misunderstood on a lot of levels i am not saying that using power tools is a "bad" thing, it is just a lazy thing, it is a short cut to get around having carpenters make the houses themselves, power tools can deliver great results if you are looking for a normal realistic architecture, i personaly would not use it on any project that i had control over, unless it was an absolute neccesity in order to meet time or budget
what i am arguing here and everyone keeps overlooking, is when ben compaired it to being a tool just like handsaw and plane, because it is not a tool like those, it is not making your own art, it would not be propper to build out a bunch of houses with power tools and put it in your portfolio as houses you have made,
speed house can be an excellent way to cut corners if your studio or producers are either too lazy or stingy to allow time or money needed to make an entire game.
i think the oblivion shots look great, but i think they would look better with houses made by carpenters, if not better it would at least look difrent than other games made using power tools, it was easy to just look at this game and go "oh thats power tools" cause despite the tweaking and slider moving, "most" powertools look... like power tools,
i keep getting replies like i'm fighting against ways to slim down game design when under tight budget / time constraints, but what i am arguing against is the notion that making a house in power tools is art in the same manner as making a house with a handsaw and hammer.
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Sure the Yankee Carpenter can make a great artichoke finnial on a bannister, but if the deal is to make a strong house. Instead of worrying about individual trees, make trees in Speedtree, and worry about the ruins, an significan rock crag, and the over all composition of the forrest. The one thing about the Next Generation is how it is forcing the industry to work smarter, rather than harder.
Scott
Speedtree is great. Rather than paying an artist to figure out trees and build 10,000 of the over 2 years, you get him or her to build hills and pathways and babbling brooks and magic fairy glens.
You know what? These days we have tools that autostamp procedural dirt over characters/buildings/characters. all you dirt texturers - you days are fucking numbered. when I rule the world you'll be in the second bunch rounded up after the gingers.
...wanders off to contemplate bloom with the Great Oz.
Bloom in the real world is a sign that I have to clean my glasses. It should never be applied to the full scene, only extremely bright surfaces (the kind that hurt your eyes when you look at them).
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See, I look at those scenes Hawken posted, and I rather like the bloom. You look at them and don't.
Everybody has their opinions. Did the game sell?
If adding some automated trees and bloom effects makes the gamers like the game, then they did their job.
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I'll go ahead and spell out that I'm not against this application. If the game has no focus on artistic achievement, and the trees are simply there for the fact that the result would look terrible without them (like a racing game), then no problem. But no one who uses this application should ever claim or imply that they "made the trees", so that no one starts a thread saying "OMG you have mad design skills".
My concern would be how to take pride in one's work if anyone can do it. You're easily replaced. This is more of a business vs. pleasure argument. I'm of course assuming todays games should be designed by artist, which is inaccurate.
And I see bloom as this generation's lens flare. And if it doesn't add to gameplay, it shouldn't sell the game. Photographers photoshop bloom into images to fake atmostphere they couldn't achieve otherwise. It's a great visual effect if not abused. Same with normal and spec maps...turn it down a little. Or, whatever pays your bills. Can't change management.
Just my thoughts. No biggie.
*words*
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fair enough, i was just playing devils advocate for a bit. I think speedtree is a great way to do stuff like this, but i can definately see the merit in doing them by hand as well. It's just not realistic to think it's always worth it.
The characters are looking horrible. (yeah ben, they need big forearms). No stlye. bah!
This game lives from its great fanbase and the overall highly frequented genre of Fanatsy action-RPG.
From an artistic side of view. It sucks. My oppinion...
About speedtree: I think they could use it a LOT better, try to make moer variation, and mix in some custom stuff. But their art sucks anyway (sorry guys!).
a computer cant paint a masterpiece
a computer cant compose a meaningful piece of symphony
a computer surely cant be creative ...
a computer, can however reduce the amount of routine work a human being needs to do so he can focus on more important things.
If you enjoy populating a monotonous stretch of terrain with a forest then you have some serious issues.
Trees or rocks are pretty generic and this software can be used en-masse with great speed. This doesnt mean that environmental artist are out of a job, in fact i think that it really opens up their horizons, meaning they can dedicate their precious time really make important things pop. Instead of being tied down to a computer for hours on end just because you need to get this patch of forest finished...
Reality is created from a procedural system anyway. People don't complain that physics in games is procedural because it is perfect. Some time soon, procedural content creation will also produce perfect natural environments. Most of the fuctionality already exists. It is only a matter of time before someone puts it all together in one software package.
At what point do you consider it good game art? When it looks good and works better than expected, thats when.
No one is all bent out of shape about auto-gen grass or hair? Why get bent about trees?
I cant imagine anyone who would actually want to model trees by hand, thats like the least fun posible thing to do in the world, except maybe modeling rocks. Or work on sports games....
speedtree seems like a great program for games like Oblivion, anything on unreal 3 engine, or whatever next-gen engine. If a company finds it easier to buy a piece of software that takes 1 click to make a tree and 6 more clicks to make it different from the other clicks, if it saves them time and money, it will work for them.
I created around 20 different trees for the duck hunting game by hand using Maya. I'd say it took me a total of 2 months making all those trees. They look good in torque, but their not amazing as speedtree. Speedtree seems like its more of convenience, because why have someone spend 2 months making 20 different trees than someone making 20 different trees in 2 weeks.(guessing, since i never used it)
As an artist, I look at speedtree as another tool of the trade. If speedtree hadn't of come along, I'm sure someone would of eventually written a plugin for any of the popular programs.