It's been an interesting couple of days to watch peoples reactions to the Unreal Engine 5 demo. It actually makes me somewhat concerned though. Let me explain:
One thing that most people don't understand is that you guys might be swooning over what might just become the new 'piss filter'. This UE5 demo is impressive looking for sure and I love that it made everyone excited for next gen. I just kinda hope that the new standard for games won't just by default be 'PBR + Scans'. The industry has been in dire need of some change of pace for some time now - If you look at the credits for games like Uncharted, etc., I'm sure everyone noticed the armies of people that had to be hired to make these environments look like that. And I'd say that at this point it was probably unsustainable to improve graphics even more without actually changing how we go about creating those envs.
The big change that Epic is proposing here is that artists won't have to deal with making their own assets anymore - Yeah, photogrammetry has been used before, but I think not to the extent that will be required to achieve these kinda visuals throughout an entire game. Achieving this ridiculous level of detail is probably only doable if you actually use scans. Right now the standard is that all this stuff is sculpted by hand - and I'd honestly say it'd be ridiculous trying to match that look without scans. It's doable (just as it's doable asking a painter to paint in a photorealistic manner...), but probably not economically viable, especially since Quixel and other companies are out there providing film and game studios with high quality scans that are cheaper than hiring highly talented digital artists.
The nice thing that you do get from the 'current workflow' inside most studios is that at least there's still some artistic touch to it. Once the majority of developers have figured out that to achieve these next-gen AAA visuals, you have to resort to a PBR+Scans workflow, I honestly fear that a lot of games will start looking very samey. Why? Cause everyone is using the same asset library and a PBR model on top. Yeah, some AAA studios might also at that point be out and about doing their own scans, but you really have to ask yourself: how much as an artist can you still influence how things are gonna look if that's the way you go about it? I mean, what tools do you have left at this point to make your game stand out visually from the rest? Play around with tonemapping and image effects? Whoop-dee-doo.
If everything Epic is touting turns out to be true, I think we'll see a lot of games that will look very, very similar to one another, cause the goal here is to get closer and closer to photorealism and the only economically viable way to get there is by adapting this kinda way of working. Looking at it in a very simplified way, at this point all you're doing as an environment artist would be slapping some scans into a scene over a blockout, maybe paint a little on top, adjust the lighting and you're good.
My point is: I think a lot of developers will feel forced to adapt this way of working due to the ever-increasing demands on graphics becoming more and more photorealistic. And here's Epic giving developers awesome new ways of getting there. That in itself is a good thing, having some games out there that look photorealistic is a good thing. My fear with all of this is that it'll become a new trend. I think we'll see many, many, many games being done in this exact same way and while we'll reach new heights in terms of detail and will inch closer and closer to photorealism, we'll also see artists losing control, because realism is the name of the game.
A similar thing to that actually happened before. With Animation. The games industry used to employ quite a lot of traditional keyframe animators. With the rise of motion capture though, we've seen keyframe animation become almost a thing of the past in games. And I think that's a shame, since keyframe animation can still provide such amazing results - But Motion Capture is comparatively cheap and 'looks more real, so it's the right tool for the job'.
I guess this is just a little word of warning and I hope I'm wrong about this, but I don't think I will be. You'll see a lot of games that get this distinct PBR+Scans look, cause it's 'cheap' and comparatively economically viable. And while we're all swooning today, will we not get tired of most games looking like that 3-4 years from now?
One thing that most people don't understand is that you guys might be swooning over what might just become the new 'piss filter'. This UE5 demo is impressive looking for sure and I love that it made everyone excited for next gen. I just kinda hope that the new standard for games won't just by default be 'PBR + Scans'. The industry has been in dire need of some change of pace for some time now - If you look at the credits for games like Uncharted, etc., I'm sure everyone noticed the armies of people that had to be hired to make these environments look like that. And I'd say that at this point it was probably unsustainable to improve graphics even more without actually changing how we go about creating those envs.
The big change that Epic is proposing here is that artists won't have to deal with making their own assets anymore - Yeah, photogrammetry has been used before, but I think not to the extent that will be required to achieve these kinda visuals throughout an entire game. Achieving this ridiculous level of detail is probably only doable if you actually use scans. Right now the standard is that all this stuff is sculpted by hand - and I'd honestly say it'd be ridiculous trying to match that look without scans. It's doable (just as it's doable asking a painter to paint in a photorealistic manner...), but probably not economically viable, especially since Quixel and other companies are out there providing film and game studios with high quality scans that are cheaper than hiring highly talented digital artists.
The nice thing that you do get from the 'current workflow' inside most studios is that at least there's still some artistic touch to it. Once the majority of developers have figured out that to achieve these next-gen AAA visuals, you have to resort to a PBR+Scans workflow, I honestly fear that a lot of games will start looking very samey. Why? Cause everyone is using the same asset library and a PBR model on top. Yeah, some AAA studios might also at that point be out and about doing their own scans, but you really have to ask yourself: how much as an artist can you still influence how things are gonna look if that's the way you go about it? I mean, what tools do you have left at this point to make your game stand out visually from the rest? Play around with tonemapping and image effects? Whoop-dee-doo.
If everything Epic is touting turns out to be true, I think we'll see a lot of games that will look very, very similar to one another, cause the goal here is to get closer and closer to photorealism and the only economically viable way to get there is by adapting this kinda way of working. Looking at it in a very simplified way, at this point all you're doing as an environment artist would be slapping some scans into a scene over a blockout, maybe paint a little on top, adjust the lighting and you're good.
My point is: I think a lot of developers will feel forced to adapt this way of working due to the ever-increasing demands on graphics becoming more and more photorealistic. And here's Epic giving developers awesome new ways of getting there. That in itself is a good thing, having some games out there that look photorealistic is a good thing. My fear with all of this is that it'll become a new trend. I think we'll see many, many, many games being done in this exact same way and while we'll reach new heights in terms of detail and will inch closer and closer to photorealism, we'll also see artists losing control, because realism is the name of the game.
A similar thing to that actually happened before. With Animation. The games industry used to employ quite a lot of traditional keyframe animators. With the rise of motion capture though, we've seen keyframe animation become almost a thing of the past in games. And I think that's a shame, since keyframe animation can still provide such amazing results - But Motion Capture is comparatively cheap and 'looks more real, so it's the right tool for the job'.
I guess this is just a little word of warning and I hope I'm wrong about this, but I don't think I will be. You'll see a lot of games that get this distinct PBR+Scans look, cause it's 'cheap' and comparatively economically viable. And while we're all swooning today, will we not get tired of most games looking like that 3-4 years from now?
