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.Do people want realistic textures and fur shading, or like actual molded eyes and mouths (ie not textures)? IMO that would look just absolutely awful, and I feel that at this point it's pretty obvious that the simple colors and shapes, the textured eyes and mouths, are part of AC's style when not even the toys (which aren't limited by a system's power) look like that. Just about the only thing more I can think of them doing is making everything look like the Animal Crossing figures/amiibo so it looks like you're playing in a little toy town, which would probably just come down to lighting and DoF effects, but I don't know that playing in a toy town is the "feel" that Nintendo tries to illicit with this series.
Thanks for watching, all!
If you have any questions for me, feel free to post them in this thread I'd I'll try to get to them when I have a free moment!
I honestly don't even know what Nintendo could do to Animal Crossing at this point without completely changing the entire visual style of the series. The models are all nicely high poly and smooth, the textures are crisp and colorful, the animations are great, they're clearly adding in lots of nice special effects and lighting tricks (I pointed the hair sheen out to my girlfriend when we were watching the Tree House walkthrough, such a nice detail that looks fantastic).
Do people want realistic textures and fur shading, or like actual molded eyes and mouths (ie not textures)? IMO that would look just absolutely awful, and I feel that at this point it's pretty obvious that the simple colors and shapes, the textured eyes and mouths, are part of AC's style when not even the toys (which aren't limited by a system's power) look like that. Just about the only thing more I can think of them doing is making everything look like the Animal Crossing figures/amiibo so it looks like you're playing in a little toy town, which would probably just come down to lighting and DoF effects, but I don't know that playing in a toy town is the "feel" that Nintendo tries to illicit with this series.
I feel like this is peak Animal Crossing, reaching the upper limit of where they can take the series' aesthetic. Again unless they completely changed everything about how the game looks (realistic, cel shading, making it look like clay/plastic/yarn, etc) I don't know what more they could do to make it look better. It looks perfect!
Isn't the hair light reflex just a b/w specular map with a colour ramp?
Generally speaking I noticed a lot more geometry on objects. That to me seemed to be the biggest upgrade
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)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.
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.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 by 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).
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.
Just to be clear, I mean this mostly for extreme cases like this one: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)
Very informative video. Great work! The game looks fantastic IMO.
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.
I could still listen to brainchild talk about tech in games all day long. Mesmerizing.
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 polishIt's coming! It will take me a little bit for that one.
Something I don't talk about much is the investigatory aspect of these analyses. I try to be as scientific as possible, which is quite time consuming; hypotheses need to be falsifiable and I have to control for a lot of different factors, which isn't easy when you don't have dev code (there are lots of ways to render a given effect).
LM3 has significant changes that need to be investigated thoroughly before I'm comfortable publishing an evaluation, but it is coming!
I'd be satisfied if the graphics was pretty much similar to Animal Crossing Plaza.
Yes, yes it is.
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.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.
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.
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).
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)
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.
Probably wrong thread, but yeah.
Outside of being Romero's studio, the trailer isn't very interesting. It's an xcom like strategy game but looks like a top down shooter