model details -the head

geeza · 22 May 2006 at 16:38

How come developers cannot yet create nice round heads? Instead they are more like octagons, or at least you can see the lines. How card can it be to create a circle shape and wack it on top of a body :confused:

heres what i mean

Rhys · 22 May 2006 at 16:41

Shave your head. Thats what it actually looks like.

I imagine its to do with performance. A curve = more detail = more processing involved.

Lee2k4 · 22 May 2006 at 16:44

Good question

geeza · 22 May 2006 at 16:55

Rhys said:
Shave your head. Thats what it actually looks like.

I have (mine was shorter than that) and it doesnt

elkdanger · 22 May 2006 at 16:56

It's a question of performance, not difficulty. To create a sphere that looks perfectly round, even at the stupid resolutions that a lot of people run at here with their 128x FSAA would require a lot of geometry, especially when you have several characters on screen at the same time. Is having perfectly curved heads an acceptable trade for speed?

Anyway, isn't this the kind of issue that ATI's Trueform technology was designed to resolve?

Edit: With todays technology, I'm sure a perfectly round head could be rendered comfortably. It's just a bit of a waste of polys really.

Psypher5 · 22 May 2006 at 17:05

I would have said simply, to keep polys down. Makes everything easier and smoother (playwise) in the big picture.

El_Watcher · 22 May 2006 at 17:21

That picture doesn't look particularly anti-aliased anyway, so if you turn that up a bit more, his head will probably be smoothed a bit more.

nintenjo · 22 May 2006 at 19:01

thats becuase hitman is a port from PS2... and Ps2 models have lower number of polygons.. If they wanted they could add extra polygons to the head but they tend not to when porting. Instead you generally increase he texture sizes and add some normal mapping etc.. to make it more detailed.

Most 360 only titles you will find have much higher polygon counts on the characters. Look at a wireframe of Joanna Dark from PDZ for an example.

exmaple:

surfsquid · 22 May 2006 at 19:29

Yes but look at her left shoulder, its deformed!

NotJimNot · 22 May 2006 at 19:42

Nah thats just a fashion look...

Anyone remember that computer game who's engine was based on ellipses?

I think if the engine has curvature written within then it can be achieved with much less processing power. Increasing the polygon count to achieve smoothness does seem silly. But I am no programmer so what do I know?!

Buzza · 22 May 2006 at 20:30

Artists have a budget of polygons, for performance and memory reasons, to use on a character and they have to distribute them the best they can to get the character as good looking as possible.

One thing that ties up a lot of polygons are joints(elbow, shoulders, knees etc), they have to be quite complex so they bend convincingly without getting weird deformations. Another thing that uses a lot of polygons are complex shapes like heads(face) and hands, they also have to deform convincingly when they animate.

DJammyRasta · 22 May 2006 at 21:53

as people have said its all about performance.... plus the fact that if u zoom close enough it will always come down to straight lines in the end... there is no such thing as a perfect circle

William · 22 May 2006 at 22:00

There is a brilliant photo in a PC gamer of a model of a face with a few million polygons then for the game its a few hundred and there is little difference.

Edit: In light of DD's post the picture is an old bloke with a bald head.

DaveyD · 22 May 2006 at 22:00

Plus, with Hair, you can get away with it, as you can have textures or bouncy moving stuff on top, with a bald head, you're very limited, and have to show the lack of high polygons.

Psyk · 22 May 2006 at 22:15

NotJimNot said:
Nah thats just a fashion look...

Anyone remember that computer game who's engine was based on ellipses?

I think if the engine has curvature written within then it can be achieved with much less processing power.know?!

The problem is I don't think modern graphics cards have any hardware to handle that sort of calculation, so since it would all have to be done in software it would be much slower.

geeza · 22 May 2006 at 22:17

DaveyD said:
Plus, with Hair, you can get away with it, as you can have textures or bouncy moving stuff on top, with a bald head, you're very limited, and have to show the lack of high polygons.

i thought to model decent hair its the hardest tihng. like the image above looks like a 2d picture stuck to her head!

DaveyD · 22 May 2006 at 22:27

geeza said:
i thought to model decent hair its the hardest tihng. like the image above looks like a 2d picture stuck to her head!

Was just saying really for general hair, as long as there's a texture there, you're going to notice the shape a lot less.

Generally for "3D" hair, a kind of cheat happens, where lots and lots of 2D, flat hair sections that have a wavy, free moving property, so with a few of them layered / mixed up, it looks quite impressive.

Kreeeee · 22 May 2006 at 22:49

DaveyD said:
Was just saying really for general hair, as long as there's a texture there, you're going to notice the shape a lot less.

Generally for "3D" hair, a kind of cheat happens, where lots and lots of 2D, flat hair sections that have a wavy, free moving property, so with a few of them layered / mixed up, it looks quite impressive.

Yep, like soul calibur 2.

geeza · 23 May 2006 at 11:44

films like buzz lightyear had really good fluid graphics and is a fair few year old now. When will we be seeing graphics like that and other movies. Hair/model details in them are always very good

DaveyD · 23 May 2006 at 12:30

geeza said:
films like buzz lightyear had really good fluid graphics and is a fair few year old now. When will we be seeing graphics like that and other movies. Hair/model details in them are always very good

You mean Toy Story? Those things take weeks to render, a few frames maybe done every few seconds maybe. They can get away with silly detail in films because you don't have to worry about framerate etc.