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Crysis

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From Shacknews:
[ QUOTE ]
Electronic Arts sends along some Crysis media, showing off the upcoming sci-fi shooter from Far Cry developer Crytek. Over at FileShack you can find the high-def, direct-feed GDC 2006 trailer and locally we have a couple of screenshots.

[/ QUOTE ]
Check out some sweet pics starting here: http://www.shacknews.com/screens.x/crysis/Crysis/1/thumbs/032806_crysis_1.jpg
The leaves covering the forest floor caught my eye, plus the amazing pic of the Asian Woman's head rendering, does this mean that Crysis is ahead of Unreal3?
Im Vaklempt, discuss!

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  • nealb4me
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    nealb4me polycounter lvl 18
    From what I've seen so far this game appears to have a lot more substance than UT2004 with makeup. It really looks next gen, and seriously has my interest. I was playing Farcry online today and it's still a blast. I think this next game will repeat the success of Farcry in an even bigger way smile.gif
  • Prs-Phil
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    Prs-Phil polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah good call, looks very promising the whole thing.
    Check out the videos

    http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?fs=1&id=2509
  • Gmanx
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    Gmanx polycounter lvl 19
    Seen this in 'Edge'. There's a good write-up in there. Looks very impressive. Far Cry's jungle still looks (and runs) far better than anything else out there - including Oblivion.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]

    The leaves covering the forest floor caught my eye, plus the amazing pic of the Asian Woman's head rendering, does this mean that Crysis is ahead of Unreal3?
    Im Vaklempt, discuss!

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Not sure I'd agree that the womans head is amazing. It's a high res model but that's not a very good use of bump/normal map.

    The engine looks quite remarkable though. Realtime ambient occlusion is definitely something I've been waiting to see implemented in a game. But yeah, the fully unified lighting with soft edged shadows, and the motion blur, and the volumetric clouds. This is obviously very much on the bleeding edge. As said, the Far Cry engine is still amazing now, so this is without a doubt going to be pretty spectacular.
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    The physics of the plants etc that react to the player movement looks mighty fine too.
    Definilty a title to look forward too smile.gif
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    Aww dont they know that you are supposed to paint inside of the nosedrills black?
    And the texture looks rather dead too, i hate those "realistic" textures that seems to be the trend, everyone is so affraid to paint in some nice colors.
    BTW how come they say its SSS while to me it looks like a bloody bloom effect? SSS is supposed to bring out the red yet theirs doesent and because they are affraid to paint it into the texture now it looks like a corpse.
  • scanning_factor
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    scanning_factor polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]

    Realtime ambient occlusion is definitely something I've been waiting to see implemented in a game.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    NBA 2k6 for 360 had it. . .it was per vert, but it was there.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Toomas: Even without the red SSS should make it look like marble. I'm not sure what they are doing but it's clearly not SSS.
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah looks more like some sort of HDR lightning.
    Anyways... the face has a few flaws but with some polish it would look extremly good I think.
  • Joshua Stubbles
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    Joshua Stubbles polycounter lvl 19
    Well, I don't think it's bloom or hdr. It looks more like ambient occlusion or a radiosity bake. There's no color, just diffuse shading.

    The engine looks really impressive though. Can't wait to see more of it.
  • ScoobyDoofus
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    ScoobyDoofus polycounter lvl 19
    Wow, that looks pretty great. I want a First Person shooter/adventure/action game that looks that good, not just a run & gun game, like FarCry.
  • Eric Chadwick
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    Looks good, I wonder how they're doing the ambient occlusion? Probably per-vert (heheh punny). Probably just one light at a time. Looks to me like the crack-shadows are baked into the textures, then they lighten up the area when the light is not too occluded... or something.

    Nice foliage too.

    Curious how much of this will get chopped once they release a game.
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Per-vert lighting model, heheh. laugh.gif

    It does look very nice, from a technological standpoint. I just feel that the art team aren't quite as skilled or experienced as the Epic folks working on Gears of War and stuff.
  • McIlroy
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    McIlroy polycounter lvl 17
    [ QUOTE ]
    [ QUOTE ]

    The leaves covering the forest floor caught my eye, plus the amazing pic of the Asian Woman's head rendering, does this mean that Crysis is ahead of Unreal3?
    Im Vaklempt, discuss!

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Not sure I'd agree that the womans head is amazing. It's a high res model but that's not a very good use of bump/normal map.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Im not sure that she is normal mapped ! I found an image on Gamespot that seems to imply that there is no normal map . It would seem they just have a very dense mesh for a supposed real-time character anyways . It would also seem they are applying some kind of SSS technique . It seems to make a huge leap in quality when you see just the diffuse map and then the full SSS render . This truly is a Next-GEN engine and looks to me to surpass or at least stand toe to toe with UR 3.0 ,

    931665_20060328_screen005.jpg
  • FunkaDelicDass
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    FunkaDelicDass polycounter lvl 18
    It says right on that pic - Bump, Specular. They're using a normal map. Look at the artifacts around the nose and ears. All signs of PPL with an average normal map.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    McIlroy, in the laymans world, the words bump mapping and normal mapping are used almost interchangably. Normal mapping is after all Dot3 bump mapping. So when I saw the word 'bump' in the render above, that's why I used the term bump/normal.
    Regardless, it isn't very good use of bump or normal mapping since it does little to enhance the already very hi poly model, and in fact serves to somewhat pixellate the shading. Hence my conclusion that it wasn't the best use of the tech.
  • McIlroy
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    McIlroy polycounter lvl 17
    Daz I would imagine that image was released by Crytec just by the way it is set up ? Just from what I can see it seems to have an ordinary bump ( none-normal ) map laying on top of the base mesh . I see no added details beyond what I can see from the base mesh ? Though it does seems to have a regular bump map for making small surface details . I don't see how you are getting that it has any kind of normal map detail ? I personally think it looks really good for a none normal mapped head , though I don't think they needed to use so many tri's , although I would imagine if the head implies anything about the density of the models it's going to take one damn fast computer to run it !

    How many tri/polys do you think that head is ? Looks like at least several thousand ..maybe even around 5000.. shocked.gifconfused.gif
  • Weiser_Cain
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    Weiser_Cain polycounter lvl 18
    Unreal3 doesn't have SSS?
  • rawkstar
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    rawkstar polycounter lvl 18
    Crytek did model baked normals for FarCry's characters... i'd be very surprized if they went back to painting bump maps for this one.

    this to me looks like more of a cinematic type character, i'm sure the grunts u'll see in the game will be alot lower poly, there may also be an optimized version of this head in the game, theres all kinds of tricky things they can do. They may not be utilizing all of the normal map capabilities on this head (it is a chick, so i don't know how far u'd want to push the normal mapping anyway), but the end result looks really damn good and its definitely out there with the best of them, thats really all that matters really.

    every bump map is actually converted into a normal map inside most game engines.

    UE3 does have SSS.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    Daz I would imagine that image was released by Crytec just by the way it is set up ? Just from what I can see it seems to have an ordinary bump ( none-normal ) map laying on top of the base mesh . I see no added details beyond what I can see from the base mesh ? Though it does seems to have a regular bump map for making small surface details . I don't see how you are getting that it has any kind of normal map detail ?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    OK sorry man, but you are totally starting to confuse me now.
    Yes, of course that image was released by Crytek. Did I say otherwise?
    Added details beyond the base mesh? How about the lip surface details, inner ear detail and the strange scar/dent in the forehead?

    You're really totally missing my point though. Wether its EITHER colour normal OR greyscale bump (my guess is normal. Crytek simply used the word 'bump' here so that the layman understands. As I already explained, the words bump and normal are often used interchangeably), it's not really a very good use of it because it seems too low a resolution for the very high density mesh it is sitting on.
  • PaK
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    PaK polycounter lvl 18
    McIlroy, what are you talking about? I can tell from the direction of the shadow vs highlight of the dent in the head that this is a normal mapped detail. Investigate the mesh even in these renders and this is very obvious.

    My problem with all PPL engines is how spacific the lighting has to be to get a good skintone effect. Good lighting makes or breaks a scene but in reality real-life is way more forgiving. I understand the reasoning behind it but i want to see more clever rendering tricks to simulate AO cuz good lighters are hard to come by.

    -R
  • McIlroy
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    McIlroy polycounter lvl 17
    Ahh ok just miscommunication DAZ and now that I look closer at the inner ear that does look normal mapped smile.gif I think maybe Rockstar is right that it is a Cinematic build of the head ? Though it does seem a bit odd to show off a head in such a manner as to imply that it is the real-time character . I guess we'll have to wait and see when some real-time footage comes out that shows the chacaters up close .

    BTW - I was not trying to be argumenative. If I came off that way frown.gif
  • KRakarth
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    KRakarth polycounter lvl 18
    I love that jungle. Its fantastic.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    No not argumentative, I just didn't quite get ya smile.gif That's cool. And yeah, I'd be pretty surprised If that's the resolution of a 'grunt that you shoot in game' head. Still, they could employ a comprehensive LOD system I guess.
  • McIlroy
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    McIlroy polycounter lvl 17
    Your know ,if the top tier LOD did allow that level of mesh detail ,a good artist could probebly get pretty damn close to the look of the Final Fantasy movie characters . Or as close as you can get without Global Illumination and Real-Time Hair Simulation.

    I might just shoot off an e-mail and ask them ! I think it would be pretty exciting to make some mod chacaters with that sort of resolution laugh.gif
  • Weiser_Cain
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    Weiser_Cain polycounter lvl 18
    I'll buy the first game that has real-time hair and cloth simulation.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Simplified hair/cloth sims exist in many games.
  • Gmanx
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    Gmanx polycounter lvl 19
    Hair and fluids - that's the next-next gen.

    Crytek produced a normal map viewer for farcry called 'polybump previewer' so Daz is right that what they call a 'bump' map is a normal map.

    I imagine they'll use some fancy LOD system on those heads too. Scaling resources dynamically seems to be what they're really good at. It's their bag, baby.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Doesn't LODing normalmapped models cause issues?
  • McIlroy
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    McIlroy polycounter lvl 17
    [ QUOTE ]


    I imagine they'll use some fancy LOD system on those heads too. Scaling resources dynamically seems to be what they're really good at. It's their bag, baby.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Maybe they are actually utilizing real-time tessellation . I seen a PSP tech demo long time ago showing some amazing real-time tessellation though im not sure it's ever been put into effect in any games ? Could account for the massive density in the face . Maybe if you could make a tessellation map for the engine with hot spots the engine could easily reduce dense areas without losing the silloette ? I think I read something about that somewhere ?
  • Super
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    Super polycounter lvl 18
    The only thing that made me excited was the ambient stuff. The rest felt like stuff we've seen before. Nice as it is (and it is), I just watched the Project Offset stuff, and their demo shows off motion blur, etc. allot better.

    I sometimes feel that theres too much emphasis on the visuals surface rather what next-gen allows for animation and such. Just watched a video of Oblivion, what the hell is up with some of those animations? All those beautiful forests etc. and watching the horse completely destroys that immersion.
  • Eric Chadwick
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    Yeah, animation is a tough one, it's all about the talent. If you got it, all's good. But if you don't, it's so damn obvious to the human eye.

    Shadows of the Colossus had some IK for Agro the horse, where his back legs would bunch up if he was standing up against a slope. And that was on the old PS2. Always seems to happen with end-of-cycle hardware, once developers have enough time with the hdwr, have been able to create tools, then we see more/smarter tech usage.

    [ QUOTE ]
    Doesn't LODing normalmapped models cause issues?

    [/ QUOTE ] As I understand it, the normal maps should be re-normalized as they're mipped down, or we get over-darkening and/or a pixel mess. Not very difficult to do, either in a pre-process, or by the artists, but more likely the former.

    Crytek had their share of popping LODs in FarCry, I'm curious to see if they've implemented a smoother system.

    I think the auto-tesselation routines have been around for awhile, ATI had a plugin for 3ds Max that let you see it in the viewport. We'll probably see more of this in the near future, as the next level of hardware supports it more readily. We're starting to use it here, for some cool slicing/dicing tech, where the mesh is interactively cuttable/deformable, and we displace/tesselate around the wound. Just wish we had more time to develop it!
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Maybe they are actually utilizing real-time tessellation .

    No, realtime tesselation is pointless. It's only used on systems that can't store or send the geometry data fast enough (Radeons were bottlenecked by the AGP bandwidth, that's why Truform was introduced, the PSP has little RAM so tesselation would save RAM allocated to geometry). It won't make your (PC/next-gen) hardware draw more polygons than it can normally do so why not just use higher poly models that won't have any unnecessary polygons caused by dumb tesselation algorithms (and won't require quads for proper subdivision)?

    Edit (because you posted while I was typing): Eric: I meant that more with the changed mesh geometry, since the normalmap was generated assuming a specific mesh shape, would you get artifacts with a simplified mesh?

    And I don't think that dynamic mesh alterations are related to Truform-style tesselation, yes, they add polies to the mesh but they're doing more than just adding a subD pass. Truform is just realtime subD with a slightly different algorithm, that makes little sense even on next-gen hardware.
  • Fuse
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    Fuse polycounter lvl 18
    that is some dense mesh on the head, however hl2 characters had pretty dense meshes to accomodate all the lipsync, polycounts were in the thousands .. the regular grunts didnt come near that polycount..
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
  • Eric Chadwick
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    [ QUOTE ]
    I meant that more with the changed mesh geometry, since the normalmap was generated assuming a specific mesh shape, would you get artifacts with a simplified mesh?

    [/ QUOTE ] I don't think it matters enough to be noticeable.
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    Ubisoft?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Sadly not anymore, Crytek switched to EA.
    Or what was your question?
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    [ QUOTE ]
    Ubisoft?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Sadly not anymore, Crytek switched to EA.
    Or what was your question?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    CRAP!!!!
    Lots of Ubi PC games are so cheap here in Estonia, like 10-30eur, its kinda weird tho like POP2 was eur70 for PS2 and eur25 for PC laugh.gif
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    I'd rather go with EA on PC games, Ubisoft is worse when it comes to overzealous copy protection mechanisms.
  • Downsizer
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    Downsizer polycounter lvl 18
    As long as they dont 'black and white 2' the gameplay...

    The shots dont look as impressive as the first video they showed, as is the pattern with most next gens, including UT2k7. You can see obvious reductions in visual quality over time. FFS if you're going to get peoples hopes up, at least stick to your guns.
  • McIlroy
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    McIlroy polycounter lvl 17
    Wierd I thought it was even more impressive with the indoor lighting demo , motion blur , depth of field ...in the first video they have a truck crashing into a building that totally looked liked canned physiques ! I think if they want to show something really impressive that no other engine can do well it would seem . Get some really good AI going ..AI so smart it can actually beat really good players . Not just by being able to auto-aim better or being faster but being able to out think real humans . That would be impressive to me .
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Um, the big news of the day?

    http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=63647

    Publisher Ubisoft has announced that it has acquired the full set of IP rights relating to the Far Cry franchise, which was created by German studio Crytek, in a move which will allow the firm to continue developing games based on the property.
  • Joshua Stubbles
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    Joshua Stubbles polycounter lvl 19
    Just read that. But, that's only giving Ubisoft ownership to the FarCry version of their engine tech. So the new engine for Crysis is still Crytek's.
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah sounds like Crytek is just getting rid of some old IP they don't plan to take any further in the close future anyway (while getting a nice profit out of it).
  • nacire
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    nacire polycounter lvl 17
    The Far Cry IP seems a bit stale and milked to me, but I'm sure Ubisoft will do nice things with the CryEngine.
  • Joshua Stubbles
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    Joshua Stubbles polycounter lvl 19
    I found another shot of the Crysis heads. The asian woman's eyes look off to me though. Towards her nose, it looks like they didn't use enough polys for where the texture goes, so it's chunked off. Meh, they still look good.

    crysis-20060329002212361.jpg
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Aside from her eyes, though, those do look very good... I looove real-time depth of field smile.gif
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    mmmmm high detail real time heads...
  • John Warner
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    John Warner polycounter lvl 18
    cool how it looks like 200X more realistic with a slight blurr on it.. makes the polys fit the textures more.
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