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GameXplain: A Generational Leap! Animal Crossing: New Horizons Early Graphics Tech Analysis (Reveal Trailer)
- Thread starter LuigiV
- Start date
I'm actually one of those that would prefer rendered mouths, because Kapp'n singing felt too weird on the 3ds. But I'm fine with an slight socket, like the deers have.
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The video was amazing! Made me want to learn a bit more about how lighting affects materials for my own artworks.
Great video!
Please make a Luigi's Mansion 3 tech analysis video!
Hopefully in the lean months for information on new games you can start a retro tech series. I'd be very interested in a Mario Kart 7 vs 8 / Splatoon vs Splatoon 2 / Mario 3D World vs Mario Odyssey and general BotW / Mario v Rabbids videos!
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the feedback, everyone!
As a tech artist and programmer, there are all sorts of things I can think of to increase the fidelity of the graphics, even with this art style, but those additions wouldn't necessarily be appreciable to the average person, so it's not something I'm complaining about. Global illumination is probably the one thing missing that I kinda wish was in the game. The real-time TOD probably prevented that from happening (maybe there isn't enough computational budget to squeeze in real-time GI).
No, the specular model is actually anisotropic (does not only reflect in the opposite direction of the light source, but in many different directions), which is not possible with a specular map based on phong reflection. There is still a specular map, but it has to reference tangent space in order to produce the results that you see. Color ramp could work for highlight shifts, but the subtle variances between strands makes it pretty clear it's a bit more complicated than that.
Yeah, geometry got a big boost. Directional shadows on everything, realistic hemisphere to environment lighting, and atmospheric scattering are also huge upgrades.
As a tech artist and programmer, there are all sorts of things I can think of to increase the fidelity of the graphics, even with this art style, but those additions wouldn't necessarily be appreciable to the average person, so it's not something I'm complaining about. Global illumination is probably the one thing missing that I kinda wish was in the game. The real-time TOD probably prevented that from happening (maybe there isn't enough computational budget to squeeze in real-time GI).
No, the specular model is actually anisotropic (does not only reflect in the opposite direction of the light source, but in many different directions), which is not possible with a specular map based on phong reflection. There is still a specular map, but it has to reference tangent space in order to produce the results that you see. Color ramp could work for highlight shifts, but the subtle variances between strands makes it pretty clear it's a bit more complicated than that.
Yeah, geometry got a big boost. Directional shadows on everything, realistic hemisphere to environment lighting, and atmospheric scattering are also huge upgrades.
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I would probably have to see an example of it to give a fully informed opinion of it, are you also thinking that with rendered mouths they would do away with the... I don't know how to describe it but with the 2D mouths they don't necessarily animate fluidly, they just jump from one static shape to the next. Would you prefer them to keep that limited animation but with rendered mouths, or would you want them to fully animate the mouths in addition to rendering them? (within reason, I mean, they do speak gibberish after all)
Oh! Yeah I was painting with very broad strokes with my comments, I totally believe there are lots of little things they could do with effects (the hair highlight for example) that could make it even nicer, I just meant in response to saying the game is ugly and as you said those types of things would probably go unnoticed by most people.
I wasn't really criticizing your post so much as I was being pedantic. I agree with you that there are very few noticeable improvements they could make to the game while still retaining the same art style.
I might be wrong here but from the zoomed in shots, it seems like this is the first time a Nintendo game is using some kind of temporal AA? Looks very clean.
Just to be clear, I mean this mostly for extreme cases like this one:
The mouths are very important to mess them up, of course. I love when K.K. shows his grin or whistles while singing, for example, so it would be weird to loose that. But looking at the game so far, I think they know well not to alter the designs too much. In case they went with full 3D though, they can totally just use fixed mouth positions and change them drastically to give the same impression as before, if they wanted so. I think they'll know better what fits the game or not in the end.
I only understand about 15% of what he's saying, but I could still listen to brainchild talk about tech in games all day long. Mesmerizing.
Thanks!
I don't do pixel counts and image quality analyses on compressed video, but when I get direct-feed that isn't super compressed, I'll take a look at the image quality in detail.
As for other Nintendo games, Yoshi's Crafted World uses UE4's temporal upscaling to improve its image quality, but sometimes the artifacts are pretty bad.
You're too kind!
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It's the first console AC in 12 years. I'd hope it would be a gen leap.
My most anticipated game of 2020
My most anticipated game of 2020
Just watched the video, really well done and has me excited to see what they can improve in eight months.
Could GameXplain put all your Tech Analysis videos into a playlist together? I want a one-stop shop for all the brainchild content. :)
The new AC is looking great so far, really can't wait to see more of the game (and wished March 2020 wasn't so far away...)
You should try to compare the LM3 E3 build to what we were first shown last year. Feels like the game got a huge graphical upgrade in terms of polish
Isn't it already better looking than Animal Crossing Plaza?
OP
OP
Yes, yes it is.
Plaza does look nice but character models are pretty much identical to New Leaf (they possibly have sharper textures but otherwise have the same geometry and indistinct materials) and the lighting/shader model is clearly a gen behind New Horizons.
Yessssssssss thank you for this brainchild. I love your videos so much! I was actually stunned at how good this game looked. Gonna be a long wait until March :<
The more realized visuals are what made me decide this will probably be my first AC game!
Looks slick!
Looks slick!
Looks incredible, and also really makes me understand even less what happened to new Pokémon.
Amazing video, as always.
Amazing video, as always.
From reading up on it, it still uses a normal map like texture. The colour shift is embedded in there, the shader interprets the variation and direction based on the texture colour. So there's no colour ramp needed. Wonder if they use it on brushed metal as well.
Generally speaking I am happy with how they evolved the style. PBR is an insanely powerful workflow, even if used for highly stylized stuff. Hopefully they find a way to implement Sub surf scattering on skin, fur, cloth and leaves.
Love these videos - very relaxed and comprehensive.
You mentioned an Animal Crossing Engine in the video. I was wondering if there is such a thing, and to what extent Nintendo uses different engines for different series of games. Seems like it would be wasteful to create a new engine for every game series.
They don't market their engines like third parties do so it might be hard to find out.
You mentioned an Animal Crossing Engine in the video. I was wondering if there is such a thing, and to what extent Nintendo uses different engines for different series of games. Seems like it would be wasteful to create a new engine for every game series.
They don't market their engines like third parties do so it might be hard to find out.
Thanks again, everyone!
It's called a tangent-space normal map, which is what I mentioned in the video. I even describe the hair strands as being part of the TS normal in the video instead of them being 3D modeled. I take it you missed that part?
And the anisotropy itself doesn't have anything to do with color, but the UV coordinates of the normal map (in tangent-space) that tell the renderer how one part of the normal is oriented relative to the other parts of the normal. This is a mathematical algorithm. Without it, you'd have a sphere-like reflection of the sun moving on top of the villagers' hair as if they were plastic balls.
Instead, there's a specular highlight for each strand of hair, reflected in its own direction, independent of the other strands. That's the definition of anisotropic highlights on hair. They're all still part of a single tangent space normal, but it works completely different than a regular normal.
Not quite. Incident light from the environment lighting also influences the hue of the color shift, which is why the secondary highlight in the video example is purple at night and yellow in daylight.
Also of note is how the anisotropic highlights are unique to each villager's head, based on the detail of the tangent space normal maps (not every head will show the standard ring).
This anisotropy is very evident here, looking at the difference in highlights on all the heads with respect to the direction of the light source (the sun).
It's called a tangent-space normal map, which is what I mentioned in the video. I even describe the hair strands as being part of the TS normal in the video instead of them being 3D modeled. I take it you missed that part?
And the anisotropy itself doesn't have anything to do with color, but the UV coordinates of the normal map (in tangent-space) that tell the renderer how one part of the normal is oriented relative to the other parts of the normal. This is a mathematical algorithm. Without it, you'd have a sphere-like reflection of the sun moving on top of the villagers' hair as if they were plastic balls.
Instead, there's a specular highlight for each strand of hair, reflected in its own direction, independent of the other strands. That's the definition of anisotropic highlights on hair. They're all still part of a single tangent space normal, but it works completely different than a regular normal.
Not quite. Incident light from the environment lighting also influences the hue of the color shift, which is why the secondary highlight in the video example is purple at night and yellow in daylight.
Also of note is how the anisotropic highlights are unique to each villager's head, based on the detail of the tangent space normal maps (not every head will show the standard ring).
This anisotropy is very evident here, looking at the difference in highlights on all the heads with respect to the direction of the light source (the sun).
Yo thank you for taking the time to explaining this to me. So far I just used AS for brushed metal surfaces (once or twice)Thanks again, everyone!
It's called a tangent-space normal map, which is what I mentioned in the video. I even describe the hair strands as being part of the TS normal in the video instead of them being 3D modeled. I take it you missed that part?
And the anisotropy itself doesn't have anything to do with color, but the UV coordinates of the normal map (in tangent-space) that tell the renderer how one part of the normal is oriented relative to the other parts of the normal. This is a mathematical algorithm. Without it, you'd have a sphere-like reflection of the sun moving on top of the villagers' hair as if they were plastic balls.
Instead, there's a specular highlight for each strand of hair, reflected in its own direction, independent of the other strands. That's the definition of anisotropic highlights on hair. They're all still part of a single tangent space normal, but it works completely different than a regular normal.
Not quite. Incident light from the environment lighting also influences the hue of the color shift, which is why the secondary highlight in the video example is purple at night and yellow in daylight.
Also of note is how the anisotropic highlights are unique to each villager's head, based on the detail of the tangent space normal maps (not every head will show the standard ring).
This anisotropy is very evident here, looking at the difference in highlights on all the heads with respect to the direction of the light source (the sun).
My main focus with 3d is mostly modelling and sculpting. I use rendering mostly to showcase my work, so my knowledge of textures and materials is limited. I understand most principles due to my training as a 2d artist, but lack the technical insight that is used to simulate physical properties in 3d renderers.
So excited for this game.
No worries! Anisotropic lighting is something many artists don't really use that much (unless they work with a lot of napped material like velvet), and when they do, they're usually using some sort of hack because physically based anisotropic lighting is very performance heavy.
Anisotropy on hair is pretty complicated and is not something that can be be faked with a texture trick and behave how it does in AC New Horizons. It doesn't mean that the method in New Horizons uses offline renderer techniques, it just means that the lighting is actually anisotropic, even if it's lacking all the physical sub-cuticle scattering calculations of the more complex anisotropic lighting models.
Same.
What do people who interpret it as a shooter think of the very last shot of the trailer? That's so clearly - in my eyes - indicating "Strategy game".
I meant to pop in yesterday, so excuse my lateness -- just wanted to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed all of these tech analyses, brainchild. Not only are they extremely informative, but the tone is so refreshing; it's such a nice contrast to hear a calm, affable, well-researched voice on YouTube. Good on ya, can't wait for the next one.
