Is Next-Gen finally when we will see "Pixar" level graphics?

Manmademan · Mar 23, 2020

Tyaren said:
There are actually plenty games that do imo look better already. Not in all aspects obviously (polygon count for example) but overall there are games that look better than Toy Story 1 or let's say FF Spritis Within.

Doesn't look that hot anymore...

yibing-jiang-10450091-866470210036967-7848675158992496279-o.jpg

nope

Tyaren · Mar 23, 2020

Mr_Antimatter said:
The thing with film is they can spend hours doing full ray tracing and particle calculations for a single frame.

games have to do that in 1/60 or 1/30 a second.

Mae can get close in terms of models and textures, but matching particle effects and lighting is going to take some time more.

Yep, and literally every frame of a Pixar movie is edited by hand by artists. Unless there will be some day a super powerful AI that can in realtime edit to perfection every game frame like an artist can, then modern prerendered CGI movies will never be matched by realtime graphics.

RingRang · Mar 23, 2020

I'm fully expecting Ratchet & Clank to be a 4K/60fps Pixar looking dream on PS5.

Linde · Mar 23, 2020

if we're talking toy story 4 level, no, not even close

Yogi · Mar 23, 2020

Pixar from it's very inception maybe.

Crossing Eden · Mar 23, 2020

Manmademan said:
nope

This isn't even what the final game looked like. At a tech talk they literally said the tech used to make that scene look as good it was wasn't actually usable. Hell, based on the last trailer even TLOU2 won't match the visuals seen in that debut trailer or even it's own debut trailer.

Deleted member 4869 · Mar 23, 2020

Soapbox Killer said:
This is very close if you ask me, even though I can see the obvious flaws.

Yeah, But that's a pre rendered scene, not real time.

Crossing Eden · Mar 23, 2020

Soapbox Killer said:
This is very close if you ask me, even though I can see the obvious flaws.

That's CGI, not realtime.

Soapbox Killer · Mar 23, 2020

Ishida said:
Yeah, But that's a pre rendered scene, not real time.

I was under the impression that all the scenes in part 3 were real time and not pre-rendered? False info maybe?

aweedswee · Mar 23, 2020

I believe the toy story level in kh3 was VERY good considering it was all rendered in real time. I believe a KH4 in next gen consoles with ray tracing will be jaw dropping.

Nzyme32 · Mar 23, 2020

If this is truly what you think constitutes it, then HL:A has already hit this "next gen" marker, with some incredible fidelity, animation work and artistic direction, made all the more ridiculous within the VR medium where graphical fidelity is more constrained for performance purposes. I won't provide spoilers, but there is some incredible stuff going on there, all in game without cutscenes.

Pretty confident a bunch of the animation work is from Jamaal Bradley, who used to work for Dreamworks, so that makes sense.

Deleted member 4869 · Mar 23, 2020

Soapbox Killer said:
I was under the impression that all the scenes in part 3 were real time and not pre-rendered? False info maybe?

Yeah, KH3 uses pre rendered cutscenes for certain sequences.

Delusibeta · Mar 23, 2020

Depends what you mean by "Pixar level graphics". If you mean Toy Story 1, then Kingdon Hearts 3 clearly demonstrates that games have passed that benchmark.

Tyaren · Mar 23, 2020

Soapbox Killer said:
I was under the impression that all the scenes in part 3 were real time and not pre-rendered? False info maybe?

Easiest way to tell that's not realtime is:
1) There are zero polygon edges. Everything is perfectly rounded, while in-game models still have noticable polygon edges.
2) Cloth physics move way too smoothely and realistic. No game has so far managed to do as smooth cloth physics in realtime.

Manmademan · Mar 23, 2020

Crossing Eden said:
This isn't even what the final game looked like. At a tech talk they literally said the tech used to make that scene look as good it was wasn't actually usable. Hell, based on the last trailer even TLOU2 won't match the visuals seen in that debut trailer or even it's own debut trailer.

I'm aware that's nowhere close to being in-game. The point of the comparison was that Spirits Within was considered to be EXTREMELY impressive when it released in 2001. a $140m budget (edit: 200m in current dollars), years to render, the whole 9.

That we're clearly well past it even with crazy rendering tricks should put the Toy Story argument to bed. Edit- FF:TSW came out the same year Pixar made Monsters: Inc, and had a bigger budget.

edit: more fun- FF: TSW

The Order: 1886

2811592-the%20order_%201886_20150220235620.jpg

I mean, yeah you could probably nitpick some stuff but for most people we're at or past 2001 level CGI, at least when it comes to rendering people.

aweedswee · Mar 23, 2020

I hope in next gen games we can see vastly upgraded AI, physics and material simulations(fluid, hair, cloth etc,) than we have this gen. Jaguar cpus in PS4/XBO really didnt enable a substantial leap in those aspects. Pushing graphical fidelity is fine, but let's not kid ourselves games already look phenomenal, add ray tracing and yea I can see games look closer to cgi movies than ever before.

Narroo · Mar 23, 2020

The main issue is that it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. Movies tend to have a massive emphases on vague "image quality" effects that can't be replicated well in real time. So, the results always look different.

A good example: KH1's CGI intro. It still looks fairly nice, even though it's age is showing. You can tell that it's low poly and less detailed than current KH3 in game cutscenes, but yet KH1's CGI intro arguably looks better in motion.

zswordsman · Mar 23, 2020

I hope we fix clipping this next gen. I don't want to see my weapon clip just because I wanted to wear a badass cape.

pixelation · Mar 23, 2020

Final Fantasy 7 Remake looks damn awesome to me.

Ehoavash · Mar 23, 2020

No but seeing this kinda made my jaw drop lol

Mory Dunz · Mar 23, 2020

one interesting thing this gen has been people are less able to tell CG from in game

Fat4all · Mar 23, 2020

Mory Dunz said:
one interesting thing this gen has been people are less able to tell CG from in game

devs are getting really good at making in-engine assets that are high quality as well, especially with engines like the RE Engine

s y · Mar 23, 2020

I think things like hair and cloth physics will finally be early pixar good.

jacks81x · Mar 23, 2020

There's just no way games will ever catch up to the quality of the current Pixar at the time. Just think about it. Pixar has unlimited budget and not hampered by hardware to make a 2-hr movie where every frame can be meticulously rendered and polished to perfection. A game that's released this year started development 4-5 years ago, has to run on hardware that's far from high-end, and render a fully interactive world for the player the run around in.

CRIMSON-XIII · Mar 23, 2020

Kingdom Hearts 3 did Tangled, Frozen, Toy Story and Big Hero 6 very well, even Pirates of the Caribbean. I can only see it getting better on PS5.

Manmademan · Mar 23, 2020

jacks81x said:
There's just no way games will ever catch up to the quality of the current Pixar at the time. Just think about it. Pixar has unlimited budget and not hampered by hardware to make a 2-hr movie where every frame can be meticulously rendered and polished to perfection. A game that's released this year started development 4-5 years ago, has to run on hardware that's far from high-end, and render a fully interactive world for the player the run around in.

And yet we're pretty much past FF:TSW. Next Gen systems will be WELL past it. So it can happen, but takes a while.

edit: I think next gen systems have a decent shot of getting past Beowulf (2007).

rustymonk · Mar 23, 2020

Q: Will we see realtime raytracing this gen?
A: Yes.

thecaseace · Mar 23, 2020

To be honest after playing Luigi's Mansion 3 I realise animation quality is probably more important than asset quality in this regard.

If we get to see more expressive movement from characters I feel like the asset quality will be good enough to allow the players imagination to do the rest.

jacks81x · Mar 23, 2020

Manmademan said:
And yet we're pretty much past FF:TSW. Next Gen systems will be WELL past it. So it can happen, but takes a while.

edit: I think next gen systems have a decent shot of getting past Beowulf (2007).

Are you saying in 2020 games have finally caught up to TSW, which came out in 2001? Also, I don't think OP is talking about cutscenes in games, but rather just regular gameplay graphics. Nothing on the market is close to current Pixar quality. Games are at a disadvantage period. AAA games coming out in 2024 are already in development now, using 2020 tools and technology. A movie that Pixar will release in 2024 doesn't even need to start production until 2023, when the tools and technology will be far more advance. And as I said, every frame of a Pixar movie can be rendered and polished to perfection. How achievable is that with games, where every frame of every gameplay second can be perfect? I don't see how that's possible with an interactive medium.

AwakenedCloud · Mar 23, 2020

We've already surpassed The Phantom Menace!

Decarb · Mar 23, 2020

"Pixar quality" is a moving target and I think games will always remain a generation or two behind movie quality visuals. I mean, the movies run at 24fps and they're pre-rendered at giant render farms for days. How can real-time graphics running at 60fps rendered by home consoles beat that?

Spider-Man · Mar 23, 2020

Obviously never as CGI for movies will always be ahead of real time graphics.

Its closer than its ever been for sure.

Vulcano's Assistant · Mar 23, 2020

There is no parity in the progression of different element that make the visuals of a game.

We can probably do 2008 cgi faces next gen in real time, but not 2001 cloth physics.

Kittens McMittens · Mar 23, 2020

Don't Pixar only render at like 2k? And the actual information in each scene is somewhat less because they model a lens? Also, they only have to render 24fps.

Still, I think it's possible to get close to Pixar level graphics even with current gen. The hard part isn't about horsepower, it's dealing with dynamic lighting and the fact the camera can move freely. In a film, each shot can be purposely composed so it looks exactly as intended. That's just never going to be possible most of the time in a game with a free-moving camera.

Crossing Eden · Mar 23, 2020

Manmademan said:
I'm aware that's nowhere close to being in-game. The point of the comparison was that Spirits Within was considered to be EXTREMELY impressive when it released in 2001. a $140m budget (edit: 200m in current dollars), years to render, the whole 9.

That we're clearly well past it even with crazy rendering tricks should put the Toy Story argument to bed. Edit- FF:TSW came out the same year Pixar made Monsters: Inc, and had a bigger budget.

edit: more fun- FF: TSW

The Order: 1886

I mean, yeah you could probably nitpick some stuff but for most people we're at or past 2001 level CGI, at least when it comes to rendering people.

I mean yea but even some aspects of these incredibly old films still run circles around video games. Like, hair and clothing. It also helps that video games are in realtime rendering at a higher resolution than these older films did. Like video games look amazing, but there's still so much we've yet to accomplish as well as a CG film.

Vulcano's Assistant said:
There is no parity in the progression of different element that make the visuals of a game.

We can probably do 2008 cgi faces next gen in real time, but not 2001 cloth physics.

^

Randomly Generated · Mar 23, 2020

AwakenedCloud said:
We've already surpassed The Phantom Menace!

Jeez this aged a lot worse than I remember.

Crossing Eden · Mar 23, 2020

Randomly Generated said:
Jeez this aged a lot worse than I remember.

Deleted member 36708 · Mar 23, 2020

For now I'm a okay with what LM3 provides.

GMM · Mar 23, 2020

In many ways modern real-time rendering techniques have surpassed early Pixar films and the VRX industry is facing a major revolution with real-time ray tracing changing workflows significantly and this allows shows like The Mandalorian to be produced with the fidelity it has at a reasonable budget.

But real-time raytracing as we know it today will only get you so far, it's super expensive computationally and the only reason we can run it real-time is because it sacrifices the amount of light bounces and resolution. The full frame is more of a physically accurate approximation than a 1:1 ground truth of how each pixel should be rendered in a true path tracer.

I would argue that we have game today that look better overall than what Toy Story did back in the day in terms of visual quality, Toy Story might be more true in terms of the math done to reach the picture it has, but the approximations we see in games today are damn close and spits out a fantastic image. Another thing that also makes games look worse than movies is that games often tend to break down visually in certain ways since the player has control of the camera, every shot of a movie is carefully constructed to look as good as it can.

The next generation of consoles will be capable of rendering really wild images with the power they have and with how developers chose to adopt ray-tracing into their rendering pipelines. I could easily see that we would be getting games targeting 1080p in exchange for near photo realism through ray-tracing, next gen is about the quality of each rendered pixel and not necessarily resolution alone.

Randomly Generated · Mar 23, 2020

Crossing Eden said:

I just retroactively won an online argument circa 2004 with a guy who swore these were indistinguishable from Stormtroopers in the original movies.

TAJ · Mar 23, 2020

Chivalry said:
Lmao, no. Next gen is powerful, but not enough to power complex real-time raytracing.

There was no raytracing in the first six Pixar movies, complex or otherwise.
EDIT: Actually, it was used on one glass bottle in A Bug's Life, but still.

Thera · Mar 23, 2020

Offline super computer rendering VS real time "normal" computer rendering?
It is just not the same "game" here.

bionic77 · Mar 23, 2020

Totally uninformed opinion, but I feel the problem is not the machines but the amount of resources it would take to make the lighting and animation at the level you see in a blockbuster Pixar movie.

I bet you could do it without enough time, money and manpower. But its probably not worth the effort unless you want a 2 hour game with the greatest graphics of all time. These days we expect AAA games to come with a shit load of content. I don't know how you could create that content with the fidelity, content and animation you see in these movies.

Fahdi · Mar 23, 2020

It doesn't matter now does it? Technically CGI will always be superior. But subjectively art style will always be first to me.

GMM · Mar 23, 2020

Crossing Eden said:

To be fair, this came out nearly 20 years ago and was super impressive at the time. It's kinda insane that they managed to produce that movie at all with the extreme amount of full on CGI shots it contains and the scope of them, especially the lighting is super impressive when you compare it to everything else from that timeframe with the exception of Lord of The Rings.

That scene could have looked so much better had ILM spent a little more time adding imperfections on the surfaces of the storm troopers to make the armor seem more grounded by feeling worn and added some more dust in the air to make the foreground mesh better with the background.

It's a turd of a movie that aged poorly, but I respect the hell out what ILM managed to do at the time.

Betelgeuse · Mar 23, 2020

AwakenedCloud said:
We've already surpassed The Phantom Menace!

lol, is this real?

It's like a bunch of textures haven't loaded in yet. Not to mention the materials just don't look remotely physical.

Crossing Eden · Mar 23, 2020

GMM said:
To be fair, this came out nearly 20 years ago and was super impressive at the time. It's kinda insane that they managed to produce that movie at all with the extreme amount of full on CGI shots it contains and the scope of them, especially the lighting is super impressive when you compare it to everything else from that timeframe with the exception of Lord of The Rings.

That scene could have looked so much better had ILM spent a little more time adding imperfections on the surfaces of the storm troopers to make the armor seem more grounded by feeling worn and added some more dust in the air to make the foreground mesh better with the background.

It's a turd of a movie that aged poorly, but I respect the hell out what ILM managed to do at the time.

I mean yea, most examples that people bring up to compare video games to were mindblowing at the time. VFX was one of the only things the PT got awards for.

Vitamin_B_Complex · Mar 23, 2020

Manmademan said:
edit: more fun- FF: TS
The Order: 1886

I mean, yeah you could probably nitpick some stuff but for most people we're at or past 2001 level CGI, at least when it comes to rendering people.

Ok I gotta ask. Was The Order 1866 supposed to be filmed with a lens that was made in 1866. The chromatic aberration is so damn strong, a lens manufacturer would be laughed out of every film production company if their lenses produced this crass of a defect. Holy shit. I get that it is a artistic effect and I don't mind it too much, but let's keep it somewhat realistic.

Rant over.

Deleted member 4869 · Mar 23, 2020

Randomly Generated said:
I just retroactively won an online argument circa 2004 with a guy who swore these were indistinguishable from Stormtroopers in the original movies.

I freaking LOVE the Star Wars prequels. But not even I would try to defend that... They should have used live action footage when few Stormtroopers were on scene. There's literally no excuse for that scene to be CGI.

Deleted member 59109 · Mar 23, 2020

GMM said:
To be fair, this came out nearly 20 years ago and was super impressive at the time. It's kinda insane that they managed to produce that movie at all with the extreme amount of full on CGI shots it contains and the scope of them, especially the lighting is super impressive when you compare it to everything else from that timeframe with the exception of Lord of The Rings.

That scene could have looked so much better had ILM spent a little more time adding imperfections on the surfaces of the storm troopers to make the armor seem more grounded by feeling worn and added some more dust in the air to make the foreground mesh better with the background.

It's a turd of a movie that aged poorly, but I respect the hell out what ILM managed to do at the time.

AotC actually has a lot of cool action scenes. The Jango Fett vs Obi Wan sequence also comes to mind.

Is Next-Gen finally when we will see "Pixar" level graphics?

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