So much detail, so many intricacies, but most importantly, all of them just make deep sense.
I have been making games for 20 years, I have worked with amazing talented artists on huge AAA blockbusters like Bulletstorm or Gears of War, and you could say I am not easily impressed in the art department. You can find extra video in today’s post on our Tumblr. Take a look at this slideshow to better understand the process of turning a bunch of photos into an amazing game asset:
#The vanishing of ethan carter guide full
I’ll spare you the details about Lowe’s Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) algorithm, solving for camera intrinsic and extrinsic orientation parameters and other details of what that software does – all that matters is that you feed it with good photos taken around some object and you get the exact replica of that object, in 3D, in full color, with more detail than you could ever wish for. From there, the software connects the dots to create a 3d model, and projects pixels from photographs to create a texture. This results in a cloud of points in 3d space, representing real world object. Afterwards, a specialized software - we are using Photoscan from Agisoft - looks at these photos, and stares at them until it can finally match every discernible detail from one photo to same exact feature in other photos taken from different angles. We get up, go out there and shot photos, lots of photos. With photogrammetry, we no longer create worlds while isolated from the world, surrounded by walls and screens. But it’s not that somehow we have magically rewired our brains to be the ideal reality replicators… Assets are no longer simplistic approximations of reality – they are reality. In The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, you’ll see some of the most realistic environment pieces ever created for a video game.
But even then, quite often we look but do not see. Need to make a brick wall texture? Basically a bunch of bricks stuck together? Old-looking? Sure thing boss! If we’re diligent, we may even glance at a photo or two before we get cracking. We can be as quick as you to point out unrealistic looking asset in other games, but we rarely stop to think about our own work. The problem – if we put time and money constraints aside – is that more often than not the graphics artists’ brains don’t care about the conscious analysis of reality either. It’s not that technical limitations prohibit developers from creating things that feel right, not on modern PCs and consoles anyway. Take a look at this floor surface, does it seem right to you? I’m really proud of Bulletstorm - I directed all of environment artist’s efforts - but well, sometimes art was just as crazy as the game itself. Even if on the unconscious level, your brain points out to you all those perfectly tiling textures, all those evenly worn-out surfaces, those stains placed in all the wrong places – and whispers in your ear: LOL! However, your brain does take notice when things are not normal.
You could make sense of it all, but who cares? Your brain usually doesn’t – it’s real, it’s normal, nothing to get excited about.
#The vanishing of ethan carter guide Patch
The floor might be more worn out around the front door, or where your chair wheels constantly scrub a patch of the floor, and the outer wall might be darker from the side that gets hit by the rain more often, etc. If you really wanted it, you could probably make sense of it all. Some parts may be chipped off, some areas stained, on some parts mold or rust started to settle… Ok, maybe those last ones are not in your fancy neighborhood, but you get the point.Īnd it’s all not random either. Look how some edges are more worn out than others, how some parts seem smoother than others, how dirt and dust settled in certain areas. That brick wall or those floor tiles are not, contrary to popular belief, a textbook definition of tiling. You shouldn’t, but if you do – look closer. Look around you – do you see any tiling textures? Before I tell you all about how we created such photorealistic assets (and, maybe surprisingly, why we are not using them in fully photorealistic way in our game), let us think about what makes it look real. It is actual 3D model of a church from our game.
0 kommentar(er)
