Update #61: In-game Art

[Jajo]

Screen shot looks beautiful!

 

I disagree with critiques of the environmental shadows. In a place with multiple equivalent light sources and many objects that reflect and disperse light being close to one another (ceiling, walls, pillars, ...) the shadows will never be prominent or sharp.

 

To me, characters don't really stand out or feel out of place, but I'd have to see it in motion, to be sure.

 

Armours and weapons look very nice too. Can't remember the last game, where these didn't have fantasy/caricature painted all over them.

[Ansku]

Looks very nice to me, much kudos

[Addon]

Great work! But I have one question. Maybe I'm wrong, but Polina's art seems a little bit darker, with more natural lights and shadows. However i'm sure that final polishing will solve all the issues. Can't wait to see some ingame videos: dungeons, villages, etc.

[mstark]

Given the fresh looking blood on the some of the cultists' robes I'd expect to see a freshly splayed corpse on the sickle-laden table, with appropriate amounts of gore surrounding it.

 

Love it!

[curryinahurry]

Curryinahurry: Yea, those are no doubt steps, and I saw them, but the door is still a few inches off the floor (a foot was an exaggeration). You can see the light getting through on the floor underneath the door, and you see the height of the gap at the left corner of the top step.

 

Hard to tell, but it looks like a step, then a threshold, then about a 3 cm (1 1/4"+ -) gap.  That wouldn't be uncommon for that type of construction.  It isn't a manor house.  Anyway...that is more than I ever planned to discuss door framing tolerances on a gaming forum.  Cheers

[Chrononaut]

I'm glad they seem to be using a (relatively) high polycount for the 3D models. 3D models floating on 2D maps always stick out like a sore thumb unless they are detailed enough to blend in like sprites do. Temple of Elemental Evil was a particular offender

[IndiraLightfoot]

Curryinahurry: Indeed, this is enough door talk for a day. We have a reached a threshold, and hopefully that gap is just 3 cm. Getting all gnarly thinking about those boards and lintels and sills. I refuse to be hinged up on something so trivial and square, so let's keep this door shut. 

[DaWu]

hate seeing the rifle. kills the immersion. nobody wants rifles and pistols!

[nydde]

I love the fact that the armors/weapons look very realistic and not cartonish! I cant wait to see the finished product

[Agremont]

Beautiful! Just the right look.

 

Looks a bit odd without any character shadows, but I'm sure they'll be in the final version.

 

Edit: I now see that there is shadows. But the characters still stick out a bit too much.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Agremont

[Sensuki]

hate seeing the rifle. kills the immersion. nobody wants rifles and pistols!

I on the other hand will quite happily use a wheellock musket. I think a firearms only character would be a fun challenge on Path of the Damned / Hardest difficulty. Oh noes dat slow reload.

[mudd1]

Looks amazing! My only (minor) concern is that the individuals inside the room are visible, even though the party is outside of the room, with the door closed. I'm guessing that fog of war/mob detection is not in yet?

 

I would have felt so betrayed if they presented a screenshot where half of the screen was black with the reason "sorry, fog of war". So yeah, thanks for switching it off for this screenshot

[Valen_Threll]

Looks really wonderful to my eyes, the artistic direction for this game is showing itself to be just lovely; I can see myself becoming really immersed in this world if the rest of it is on par with what has been shown.  As others have said the characters do look a little "floaty," but i think a static screenshot like this does probably acentuates that effect a bit.  Love the toned down yet still somewhat stylized look the armor has to it, and glad to hear color customization is in.   As a side note, the cloak-less avatars makes we wonder if there are still plans to try and implement cloaks, or if that just ended up not working out  . . . also: weapon sheathing?

[Karranthain]

Love it. The character modles do stick out a bit, but it's relatively minor. They are quite detailed, however.

[Lord Lierdan Firkraag]

Yessss! That's it!  Great update, thx.

Everything about environment looks pretty cool to me. But i must mention this; without shadows, every char seems to be floating in the air.
 

[deanwilk]

Must agree i'm very impressed. I was so young when I played baldur's gate and didn't fully understand the mechanics however with that I went onto neverwinter nights etc. It really carved my gaming future. Very much looking forward to this game with a maturer mind. Every update looks great especially this visual. Good work!

[Chrononaut]

Can enemies open doors?

[Raiga]

(The in-game level image bugged me to donate to the project via paypal, I have sold my soul to Project Eternity)

 

Looks great, I'll play the game right out of the box if the visuals are the same.

 

(I am a bit of a visual addict and am not sure of unity engines capabilities)

Trivial details:-

- I am missing depth perception of Static BG vs 3D rendered models, Blob shadows shadows perhaps looks good if its not viable to have real time shadows from multiple light sources?

 

Fancy stuff:-

- (Another?) Light map on the the 3D models perhaps, derived from the static lights placed on the scene. So that the lighting on the character models are cohesive against the environment's lighting and not stick out.

 

Find a needle on Mars (exorbitant stuff)

- Baking textures on 3D models to fake ambiance or self shadowing, especially the shields.

[Keyrock]

The in-game art looks great.

 

[J. Trudel]

In-game art is amazing. I hope that you guys will do all that art in ultra high res so we might zoom in and out to view the details.

[Mico Selva]

Obviously this is not the final look yet, but I really like the direction it is going.

[villain of the story]

 

 

How will the shadows/lighting work in the final product? The environment is gorgeous, but the conflict between the apparent lighting of the scene and the way the character models are illuminated makes the latter seem out of place.

 

The character models only have one shadow cast from the scene's directional light.  Per-character point light shadows (especially multiple point light shadows) would get computationally expensive very fast.  The characters are lit using dynamic lights placed in scene, but real-time lighting is never going to perfectly match the pre-rendered lighting of the scene.

 

For what it's worth, I think circular shadows in no particular direction might be less jarring. The shadows being, at times, cast against the lighting of the characters' surroundings has a strikingly unnatural effect in the screenshot (though I don't know if this is less or more apparent in motion).

 

It looks lovely otherwise.

 

 

Maybe we could have the option to switch between the two? Shouldn't be much trouble, I think.

[Wyrm]

Outstanding. I am officially excited again!  

 

That is all.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Wyrm

[Galadh]

I really like the way the charachters blend with the background: even the outline of small and problematic objects such as blades and knives seems clean and sharp. I have a 15.6 full hd laptop, and the overall effect is quite amazing. Moreover, this is just a screenshot, so if you think they are hard to distinguish in the dark (even though half the people seems to think the opposite), you must also consider the motion and in-game effects - group infravision, charachter circles, and so on.

I have just some doubts:

- It's just me, or the screenshot is a bit blurry? I mean, the background gives me the impression of an enlarged raster image; it's not the one image pixel/one monitor pixel sensation typical of infinity engine powered games. I know this is just a compressed jpeg image, but still... .

- Aren't the flails a bit too "stiff"? The chains seem as hard as blades (to me).

- I'm a little concerned about how light effects such as permanent auras, group infravision, glowing spell effects, etc. will be applied to 3d charachters: they could brutally expose their 3d nature.

 

Keep it up the good work!

 

P.S. I'm not an english mothertongue so please, be forgiving .

[Woldan]

I love the fact that the armors/weapons look very realistic and not cartonish! I cant wait to see the finished product

 

Thats one of my favorite features of PE.