The Graphics Rant
- Thread starter Draggonnfs
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Von_Blackhardt
[12] Conqueror
Nvidia Hairworks or AMD TressFX for starters. However the things that would fix it would also absolutely jeopardize 60FPS, which people forget about when they complain. It even causes severe FPS drops on my machine and I've got a 1080 TI.
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ProjectTango
[04] Fighter
So it's either plastic hair or Nvidia hairworks? :/
Fact is, more ambitious and technically demanding games have had much better hair than what we're seeing here. Case in point: FFXV, a sprawling open world game with generally great graphics, didn't prevent the game from having stellar hair rendering and physics.
The answer is not Nvidia hairworks, which would be an overkill. The issue stems from how the hair 'looks'. It's plastick-y, it looks "solid". It's one of the reasons why the models gives off "Action Figure" vibes.
I'll just leave this here. SCIV didn't have this issue.
That said, the physics looks fine in SCVI, definitely looking better than TEKKEN 7 in that regard, now that was fucked up
RileyBou
[04] Fighter
I think that's the point, it's not supposed to look real. It's stylized.
Von_Blackhardt
[12] Conqueror
You're right, it doesn't have that "problem", because the hair in SCIV looked like shiny, over-polished dogshit. Everyone in SC4 was shiny for some reason. It's not a problem - it's just a change in direction. You don't have to like it, but you're judging it on entirely subjective merits. I personally think it's a huge improvement.
Von_Blackhardt
[12] Conqueror
I mean, you're saying it doesn't have the same "problem" but if you look close you'll notice that they are both literally the exact same mesh, except the SC6 version has a more detailed, realistic and higher resolution texture applied.
Also, for your point about FFXV, you realize that game runs at a not-even-consistent 30 FPS on PS4, right? This game needs to hit 60 and it must stay there. It's also on a completely different engine designed specifically for that game. It blows my mind that you would even *dare* compare the two.
Also, for your point about FFXV, you realize that game runs at a not-even-consistent 30 FPS on PS4, right? This game needs to hit 60 and it must stay there. It's also on a completely different engine designed specifically for that game. It blows my mind that you would even *dare* compare the two.
ProjectTango
[04] Fighter
They aren't aiming to make it more stylized than past SC games, which had better hair, so no, that's not the point.
The "shine" of SCIV wasn't a hair problem, pretty much everything was shiny in the game.
Once again, you miss the point. What I'm showing with that comparison is how the hair looked thin and transparent on the edges, while SCVI's hair looks solid, with sharp edges.
It's sure as fuck not a change in direction considering they had the same problem with Tekken 7, lmao.
Either it's a kink they haven't solved with the engine or/and they just don't care too much.
They're the same mesh, but the shader is different. It's in no way, shape, or form, more realistic or detailed than the SCIV for the reasons I explained above. Everyone with a working pair of eyes can tell you that. The complaint about characters in VI looking like Dolls and Action Figures were tossed around on this board and others a lot of times. And for a reason.
FFXV is not 60 FPS, but it's doing way more stuff than a 3D fighter technically. If you think FFXV would struggle to run at 60 FPS in a closed-off space with two character models (like a 3D fighter), then it's not worth conversing with you on these matters.
About the engine, so what? You think UE4 can't do FFXV quality hair? Just look at the video I posted in the first page. (P.S: That game runs at 60 FPS on PS4)
Von_Blackhardt
[12] Conqueror
They added a literal blur effect to the models of SC4 to make up for less-than-ideal antialiasing. It would have especially been apparent and brutal on the razor-thin meshes of hair details. The hair is certainly more realistic-looking in 6, the texture has the strands more contrasty and individually defined. By no means is it photorealistic, but I don't think that was ever the point. Realistic hair doesn't have a blur around the edges. of it. The actual texture of her SC4 hair sucked, too. It wasn't good because the hardware at the time couldn't support it.
I regret to inform you that FFXV, even with the PS4 Pro on Light Mode with the latest "60 fps" patch doesn't hit the mark. It doesn't even go up past 50 on a good day! A very poor example. You also didn't design both games so you have no idea what "doing more stuff" means and what is being handled by handled on a graphical standpoint in the face of what their respective engines are capable of handling. You have absolutely no clue, so don't speculate.
And Lost Souls Aside: 1. Isn't even out yet, so you have no idea how the finished game will run. 2. The guy's hair, while beautifully rendered, only his ponytail moves, the rest of it is as stiff as a board. 3. The environments are incredibly bland, with literally nothing happening. Trees are just inserted into the ground like toothpicks. If knew how to actually look at graphics and performance, you would be able to make the exact same observations that I am making. There's nothing ambitious or groundbreaking about the game, it just looks cool. I'm fully aware of what the unreal engine is capable of, I've been playing games on it for most of my life.
If people are worried about the characters looking like dolls, now is kind of a funny time to mention it, considering that they have always looked doll-like throughout the entire history of the franchise. Nobody suddenly sparked up for DoA 5 and went "wow the characters look like weird anime figures". No shit, that was always the point.
ProjectTango
[04] Fighter
It's not the blur, but nice try. The hair is transparent on the edges, even when you take any blur into account.
I don't know if you're this obtuse or not, but why do you keep bringing the 60 FPS in regards to FFXV? No shit it won't hit 60 FPS, it's a massive open world game with huge vistas, cities, dozens of NPCs, all with their own A.I patterns. I don't have to design it to know it's way more demanding than 3D fighter like SC. For Fuck's sake man.
Lost Souls Aside already had a playable demo in the last PSX, it ran at 60 FPS, and it was beautiful. What nonsense are you spouting about the hair? It's not just his ponytail that moves, please don't make do a GIF for you, too. Literally in the first minute you can see it.
RileyBou
[04] Fighter
They definitely are trying to make it more stylized than SCIV and SCV, the art style, animation, and effects are totally different than previous games. They're leaning more towards a modern JRPG look. Also the hair is modeled totally differently than older SC games, IV and V used layered transparent textures for most of the hair where as this looks more 3D.
Von_Blackhardt
[12] Conqueror
It's not the blur, but nice try. The hair is transparent on the edges, even when you take any blur into account.
I don't know if you're this obtuse or not, but why do you keep bringing the 60 FPS in regards to FFXV? No shit it won't hit 60 FPS, it's a massive open world game with huge vistas, cities, dozens of NPCs, all with their own A.I patterns. I don't have to design it to know it's way more demanding than 3D fighter like SC. For Fuck's sake man.
Lost Souls Aside already had a playable demo in the last PSX, it ran at 60 FPS, and it was beautiful. What nonsense are you spouting about the hair? It's not just his ponytail that moves, please don't make do a GIF for you, too. Literally in the first minute you can see it.
It IS the blur filter. It's an old trick from the PS2 era used to fake anti-aliasing to get rid of jaggies. The hair does feature transparent textures, but that whole look you're blowing your load over is is mostly because of the blur - which is being applied on a 3D level. The hair meshes comprise of relatively flat sheets with a texture overtop. The texture feathering wouldn't be quite evident looking at the mesh from that angle. It would look almost exactly the same.
Back to FFXV and Lost Souls Aside:
The AI stuff is handled and therefore limited by the engine and the CPU so the graphics processing would actually have no effect here. This once again shows that you really have no idea what you're talking about. Also considering that most of the NPCs in FFXV are bland in appearance and just walk into walls and corners for no reason. Monsters just aimlessly walk in circles unless they are scripted. I can imagine that it must be oh-so-taxing for the Luminous Engine. This is, and will continue to be an annoyingly pointless comparison.
I noticed immediately that the protagonist in Lost Souls Aside has hair that moves... in the cutscenes, haha. You are quite naive to think that what one sees in a cutscene represents the gameplay graphics on any level. Go watch your video again, you're gonna get a kick out of it. Specifically, watch the first 10 seconds of it, they are very important.
You can see almost immediately that his hair doesn't move at all when the player has control. It's even highlighted against a white background so you can see clear as day that it's as stiff as a board while his ponytail flies all over the place - even while he is standing still and the wind is blowing through his hair. Everyone's gotta cut corners somewhere, bro. All of your ambitious, beautiful games, made by one guy or not, must make compromises. Considering that we've only seen no more than 4 enemies on the screen at once, empty environments and limited physics it would be disappointing if that game ran at anything less than 60 FPS.
I would also like to point out that I do photography for a living. I don't think we're quite on the same level here when it comes to spotting the little things.
Ramus
[14] Master
As someone who loves FFXV. There is like 10 hyper detailed characters, everyone else is a generic NPC, the graphics in that game are awesome, but it is also a empty game, there is no complex structures in the main game and I think Altissia is the only city/place with a lot of detail.
Lost Souls Aside: It is an impressive feat for one person to have made that alone, but don't forget how little footage we got from it, demos can be deceiving.
Lost Souls Aside: It is an impressive feat for one person to have made that alone, but don't forget how little footage we got from it, demos can be deceiving.
Macaulyn
[13] Hero
I'll just leave this here, we're talking about what we saw in an announcement trailer, after all...
Von_Blackhardt
[12] Conqueror
I'd also like to point out that we shouldn't be selling Soulcalibur's, or any fighting game's stages short. It's not just two characters fighting in a vacuum. We've seen some immensely detailed and impressive stages.
Fallen Colony from T6 is a standout with a fuckton of rendered area and a fighter jet zipping around. It's truly a sight to behold. The elevator stage in T7 has so much going on as well.
In Soul Calibur we've had stages like the Denever Castle, with tons of soldiers, flying birds and golems on the screen. The Wolfkrone Monument stage is one of my favourites, and the assault on the ancient citadel is no slouch either. While a few stages are absolutely horrendous, there are plenty that stand out in a big way.
Saying that it's just a 3D fighter with nothing going on is disingenuous at best.
Fallen Colony from T6 is a standout with a fuckton of rendered area and a fighter jet zipping around. It's truly a sight to behold. The elevator stage in T7 has so much going on as well.
In Soul Calibur we've had stages like the Denever Castle, with tons of soldiers, flying birds and golems on the screen. The Wolfkrone Monument stage is one of my favourites, and the assault on the ancient citadel is no slouch either. While a few stages are absolutely horrendous, there are plenty that stand out in a big way.
Saying that it's just a 3D fighter with nothing going on is disingenuous at best.
FluffyQuack
[14] Master
I wonder if a big element is that they're trying to bring costs down. Take this as an example:
https://abload.de/img/soph-ingame-sc6a0pb6.jpg
Look at her left hand between SC4 and SC6, this is very obviously the exact same model with some changes. And if you look at Mitsurugi's model, you can tell they're even using the same textures: https://abload.de/img/mitsu-ingame-sc64ar92.jpg
The models hold up well enough so it doesn't really bother me, but it is surprising to see models directly ported over like this. I can't think of many sequels to a new generation of consoles where the assets weren't completely redone, especially models for main characters.
The hair thing I find puzzling. As people have pointed out already it looks very "solid." Tekken 7 has a similar problem with rendering hair:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....307/9CBA4BF368CA878628E2443ABB8C45BF88B57F01/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....455/A3BE6C2000D50892724936D89AD5741C5D846901/
My first theory was that they changed alpha on the hair textures to be 1-bit, but I looked at the textures for a couple of Tekken 7 models and the hair textures have normal looking alphas. I'm thinking it's a style thing or the engine is interpreting the alpha in a really weird way. I'm reminded of Playerunknown's Batttlegrounds (another UE4 game) which actually uses dithering to represent transparency on the hair, so I'm starting to lean towards the latter theory: https://abload.de/img/578080_20171227221720uiq7i.png
Looks like Injustice 2 also uses some kind of dithering for hair transparency:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....770/F6CE03BE5E71B31650B9F638A8FA581B8A4BDA18/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....547/E4EED3FA87C248D2F849A17EA046C5319EECCE98/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....051/A6431855E272F02169ECFD59950B2917C70730D1/
Maybe it's a technical limitation with UE4 and Namco is doing a poor job dealing with it.
https://abload.de/img/soph-ingame-sc6a0pb6.jpg
Look at her left hand between SC4 and SC6, this is very obviously the exact same model with some changes. And if you look at Mitsurugi's model, you can tell they're even using the same textures: https://abload.de/img/mitsu-ingame-sc64ar92.jpg
The models hold up well enough so it doesn't really bother me, but it is surprising to see models directly ported over like this. I can't think of many sequels to a new generation of consoles where the assets weren't completely redone, especially models for main characters.
The hair thing I find puzzling. As people have pointed out already it looks very "solid." Tekken 7 has a similar problem with rendering hair:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....307/9CBA4BF368CA878628E2443ABB8C45BF88B57F01/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....455/A3BE6C2000D50892724936D89AD5741C5D846901/
My first theory was that they changed alpha on the hair textures to be 1-bit, but I looked at the textures for a couple of Tekken 7 models and the hair textures have normal looking alphas. I'm thinking it's a style thing or the engine is interpreting the alpha in a really weird way. I'm reminded of Playerunknown's Batttlegrounds (another UE4 game) which actually uses dithering to represent transparency on the hair, so I'm starting to lean towards the latter theory: https://abload.de/img/578080_20171227221720uiq7i.png
Looks like Injustice 2 also uses some kind of dithering for hair transparency:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....770/F6CE03BE5E71B31650B9F638A8FA581B8A4BDA18/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....547/E4EED3FA87C248D2F849A17EA046C5319EECCE98/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....051/A6431855E272F02169ECFD59950B2917C70730D1/
Maybe it's a technical limitation with UE4 and Namco is doing a poor job dealing with it.
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- Thread starter
- #56
Draggonnfs
[12] Conqueror
Well goddamn this place exploded. And got way too long and technical for me to read. So I'll just say that at this point I'm happy with SCVI's graphics, because the things like its beautiful lighting, effects and stages make up for the only thing that still bothers me slightly which is the hair, but we shall see how it all turns out in the end.
Ramus
[14] Master
I think the models in IV were nice enough, just needed some work on them really.
That said, I strongly suspect Namco doesn't want to leave the in between anime and "realism" they are going for since IV, due to being sorta of a watermark for the series at this point.
Calibur always felt more anime-ish than anything else imo, I just hope they put some more work in characters like Taki.
Everglaid
[01] Neophyte
yup. UE4 (and other current engines like frostbite, unity 5 & blender's eevee) doesn't have proper 'forward' rendering with transparency. things either need to be dithered or solid/sharp because if it's transparent it'll
in terms of 'don't judge what isn't done!' i'm not expecting any major improvements. the few characters they've shown are probably their most complete ones, and since they said "70% done.." T7 to T7FR mainly changed lighting and color filtering, not much on character models themselves. the game looks good. atmosphere and vibes are great. little details are just lacking. anime doesn't mean low poly faces.
would also like to add that i hope that each character will have at the minimum unique body textures. it's understandable to have 1 body mesh with size modifiers because of CAS limitations, but i'd still like to see a bit of effort put into making each character look different. tekken 6 had unique meshes & textures because each character had unique clothing options, TTT2 unified the body meshes but each character had very different normal map textures making the surfaces look different, and most of T7's unfortunately has the exact same bodies except for scars, hair, tattoos etc. (doa5 also does this barring raidou and marie rose smh)
and for the love of god it isn't that hard to just cut some holes in mitsurugi's pants instead of being barefoot in underwear
- Moderator
- #59
WuHT
Premium Moderator
Interesting stuff.
I don't understand as wlel (especially for the 1p) they wouldn't have the battle torn version. I can understand if something gets removed entirely if it is small (like lets say, an armband) but for his hip cloth, pants, shinguards, socks + shoes all to break is very jarring. SC5 had a good balance of breaks, but it enjoyed only having 1 break state (not 3) so it wouldn't look like you're getting your character undressed.
ProjectTango
[04] Fighter
*Thinks CPU load doesn't effect FPS*
*Says I have no idea what I'm talking about*
You can scream "BLUR!" till next year, it won't make it true. As gentlemen such as @Sectus and @Everglaid pointed out, it's a transparency issue that was present in other Namco UE4 games like Tekken 7 (Go compare Lili's hair from T6 to that of T7).
I don't really feel like talking about Lost Souls Aside to avoid derailing the thread further, but just wanted to point out that again, you're wrong. It moves in, gameplay too. Especially apparent in the latest video (Though I don't expect you to notice it given how obtuse you've been so far).