New age of game art- respect?

[butt_sahib]

To respect or not respect? Thats the quesiotn BIATCH

My mind runs around in imagination,thought and pondering the most while im sitting on my toilet. Today, i went in with my GameInformer which had this review of EA's Fight NIght Round 3.

I started to really think when i read these lines: "To create the amazingly lifelike digital pugilists, the athletes appearing in the game have had every contour of their bodies captured with a laser scan, and high-resolution photographs capture the smallest details of their skin".

Not that this technique began with EA's FN- i remmember it going way back to WCW for the ps2.

So the thought came into my mind..are we REALLY going towards a direction where increasingly more advanced art skills are needed the next day or are we actually going into the opposite direction? Dont get me wrong, i love and admire the guys over at EA- but what kind of skill does one REALLY need to -get a scaned model of an athlete(which is obviously non-animation frinedly) and making a animation frinedly mesh over it. Then uv mapping it and applying the high-resolution textures over it?

Are the good old days gone for good in some genres. Even though the new generation demands newer-realistic games, its still a sad thing in my opinion.
Now i know that this isnt the case with all the genres out there.

BUt we do need to realise that this trend has hit the shores with games of every genre.

I'm thinking over this through the mind of a game artist if you havent noticed and are thinking "....yeah so?"

I will always admire my seniors for the MAD SKILLZ they had doing A grade texturing on the most optimised models there were.

[Kwakkie]

In the end making a game is just like working in a factory, if they can make it faster and better with a machine, why bother wasting money? I understand your point, I'd give massive respect for a guy baking an egg in the jungle of borneo using only 3 sticks of wood in the skull of a monkey, but why bother?

Thank god they'll never invent a machine that can make a stylish, unique and cool model with the push of a button, so there will always be a need for gameartists. :D

[Gavin]

Everything has it's place, man. I find a huge problem with this industry is that people put themselves on this pedestal with Dali and Picasso and forget that this is, most of all, a business. Certain games need certain things and I don't think that it earns less respect. At the end of the day, the teams does what needs to be done to create a product that earns money, pays their bills and keeps their belly full. That may sound a bit cliche, but in my personal opinion (I know a lot of people disagree with me) it's about creating a kick ass product. I've played almost all of the WWF (WWE) games and, I think, if they were all fully hand painted it would take away from the end result. What they want to do is create a near realistic game that resembles it's real life counterpart. Buyers WANT the players to look exactly like the real thing and the best way to achieve that is scanning and photosourcing. I actually have friends who have purposely bought EA sports games over 2K ones because the players looked more like the real life person.

Now. If someone had a guy dress up as Cloud, scanned it in and then textured it with high res photos...would it be as cool? Probably not. That's because it's a totally different thing. They've created a unique world and want to suck you into that. They're not trying to mimic something that already exists.

Personally, I like that type of game. Things like Fable, Gears of War, Prince of Persia...Unique settings, something original, something I couldn't see by turning on the TV and switching to TSN. But I think the idea of not respecting a team because they decided to use the best possible method to achieve what they need to achieve is a joke. "Old school" game art is sometimes more impressive based on the fact that some guy did ALL of that work by hand and didn't cut any corners...but really that doesn't matter. They just did what they had to do. It's not like EA is scanning and photosourcing because it's cheaping out. The alternative just cannot realistically achieve their goals.

I don't think this method has necessarily hit every genre there is...but with the demanding workload game devs need to deal with, it becomes a lot harder to do everything by hand and not photosource just a little. It doesn't mean that they put less blood sweat and tears into their work...it just means that they do the best job they can with what they've got. Even then, I think you can still look to DS, PSP and Wii games to get that old school feeling we were used to before OMG NORMALMaPZ!1?1 became common place.

SO! Enough ranting. My answer is that I think the "old school" games and the new "realistic" games deserve just as much respect because they accomplish what they set out to do.

Gav!

[jec1183]

I will have to agree with Gavin on this one. This most certainly has a place in the industry and I can't sit here and say that it is a bad thing. You are talking about games that now, take a long time to produce. Much longer then their old hand painted 1500-2000 tri Grandparents. Gamers, aside from the psp, ds, wii, and ps2 have come to expect a certain level of detail usually pertaining to normal maps. These used to take even longer to produce until the introduction of zbrush and mudbox. Still some of these characters or props or what have you can take 2-3 weeks to produce. If I can have a person come in and get scanned so that I can use that scan as a high poly source for a normal map then I am going to take it. Like Gavin and everyone else says, at the end of the day it is plainly and simply a business. Time is money and in a field such as games the faster you can get things done the better. This tech allows artists to create these assets in half the time or better and currently this tech is not taking away from jobs that someone could potentially have.

[Ramseus]

So maybe you won't end up modelling your shiny new space marine's face, that just gives you more time to spend on detailing his highly impractacle but totally awesome armour. Kind of evens out, dunnit?

[JacqueChoi]

Even with scan data, you need an artists eye needs to clean up/add detail to the geometry, and textures in order to yield the best result.

I personally enjoy playing with procedural character creators like Oblivion or the EA Sports games (even though for the most part, they yield piss poor results).

I spent about 2 hours with my character generator on Mass Effect.

I can definately see a lot of games going towards a direction that give the user the tools, to make MUCH more higher quality customized characters.

[cookepuss]

Not that this technique began with EA's FN- i remmember it going way back to WCW for the ps2.
I'll do ya one better. I remember the PS1 game "Apocalypse" doing this back in 1990. The scanned in Bruce Willis.

but what kind of skill does one REALLY need to....
Lots. Laser scanned data is pretty much a point cloud. It's way too dense to be practically used. To get it into some usable form, especially for a game, you'd have to do what you would with a ZBrush sculpt. You've got to retopologize it, which means you need actual modeling skill. You'll also need some knowledge of what animators want or need, as it relates to deformable topology. You also need to UV it, texture it, transfer normal, data, and so forth. That means you need some material skills too.

Even when you mocap the animation, you still need actual skill. The mocap data is a mess. It's way too dense and messy to be usable. You need to reduce the data to usable key sets. You need to sometimes readjust keys to fit in with the reduction. You also need to have actual animation ability to key in stuff that would otherwise not be caught by the mocap process. In some cases, you even need to add keys that would not be possible to ever mocap, especially if you're dealing with fantasy or cartoon characters.

Mocap & digital scanning are just tools. They're designed to cut back on your production schedule. They're not a replacement for skilled professionals. That's like saying that just because rotoscoping exists that 2D animators can be replaced. It's just not true.

There will always be stuff that you can't accomplish by sampling reality.

[cookepuss]

I've played almost all of the WWF (WWE) games and, I think, if they were all fully hand painted it would take away from the end result. What they want to do is create a near realistic game that resembles it's real life counterpart. Buyers WANT the players to look exactly like the real thing and the best way to achieve that is scanning and photosourcing.
OT: The only games I'll disagree with you on are the old Gamecube "Legends of Wrestling" games. The idea was that the devs would bring all of the classic wrestling characters together. However, instead of sampling photos or going for ultra-realistic sculpts, they opted for stylized recreations. The end result was something that embodied the spirit of the over the top cartoon action of "sports entertainment" over the past 20-30 years. For that reason alone, even though it doesn't stand next to more modern wrestling games, LoW 1&2 stand as some of my all time favorites in the genre. TV Wrestling has never been about reality. I'd rather play with a stylized version of my favorite grapplers than manipulate an eerily zombie-like recreation. That's just me though.

I think that IGN probably summed it up well, "They look just like the old LJN WWF action figures, from way back in the '80s." Here's a case where laser scanning and and mocap real people just wouldn't be appropriate, if you want something other than other than reality.

[Gavin]

OT Con't:
Hey Cooke!

Although I wasn't a huge fan of those games (...I think WCW/NWO Revenge for the N64 is probably my favorite...) I can totally see your point. I used to be a huge wrestling fan, I actually attempted and strongly considered a career in it but nowadays it's just depressing. I was talking to someone, can't remember who, a little while ago that I really wish they'd make a good wresting game that isn't loyal to a brand. But not necessarily "over the top" either. I think it went by a different name in Japan...but something like Saturday Night Slammasters..just in 3D with a bigger move set and pretty pictures would be awesome, in my opinion. I can totally respect WHY they do it, but I'd really like a wrestling game that isn't more or less propaganda. Have unique characters, unique storylines. It could even be cheesy...I'd still pick it over being randomly attacked by John Cena.

Much like SSM, the wrestlers could mimic old school ones. I think Vader, Ultimate Warrior and the Great Muta were parodied in that...laws may be tighter now for that sort of thing, but i think you could still have really nice looking characters and have that "old days of wrestling" feel. You may just need to have a smaller roster though. Although...the nostalgia feeling wouldn't be there....now I'm rambling. See what you've done! :P

Cheers!
Gav