Trees, Shrubs, & Grass

[st2988]

First of all, I think Pillars is already spectacular looking, and I'm sorry if this topic has been discussed already, but I didn't find it in a cursory search.

 

I noticed in Update #49 that windblown dynamic foliage assests are static images layered with rotating foliage underneath. The result is that a large portion of the tree is entirely static while some leaves bend in the wind behind the fixed tree or bush. In my opinion, this creates an artificial and unnatural appearance that distracts from the rest of the great work being done.

 

My question is, why not just prerender the entire tree rippling in the wind, and then place that tree animation above the prerendered background in the engine? It seems that this would take less steps than combining an animation layer and a static layer to create a single tree, and it would look much more realistic.

 

Let me know what you think.

[sesobebo]

i'm guessing it's because they don't want to have "locked FPS" that the pre-rendered animation would require. i think that's the reason that not just foilage, but every moving piece in the game (water, characters, moving background props...) is actually 3D object placed upon the 2D background.

[AwesomeOcelot]

That's not true, you don't need to lock FPS for 2D animation. Developers also lock FPS for 3D animation and physics. The waterfall seen in Update #49 is 2D animation, and I'm assuming also the moving foliage in that scene given what Josh says about it. I'm not sure why they haven't animated the entire scene, although it might be because of the work that would be involved throughout the entire game.

[sesobebo]

That's not true, you don't need to lock FPS for 2D animation.

My question is, why not just prerender the entire tree rippling in the wind

i'm guessing it's because they don't want to have "locked FPS" that the pre-rendered animation would require.

pre-rendered was the key word here.

 

 

 

The waterfall seen in Update #49 is 2D animation

is actually 3D object placed upon the 2D background.

Edited June 25, 2014 by sesobebo

[AwesomeOcelot]

You don't need to lock FPS for pre-rendered 2D animation. 2D animation includes pre-rendered 2D animation. The 2D animation, if it's frame/sprite based, has to have a frame rate, but with frame padding that doesn't mean you have to lock the frame rate of the engine. You can find 2D pre-rendered animation in 3D engines that are not frame locked.

 

The waterfall seen in Update #49 is 2D animation as you can clearly see from that screen shot, it's just not part of the background render. Both the background and the waterfall are 3D objects in the engine, you can't say one is 2D and one is 3D.

 

Another reason they may not have animated entire trees is how much file space that would require.

Edited June 26, 2014 by AwesomeOcelot

[sesobebo]

You don't need to lock FPS for pre-rendered 2D animation. 2D animation includes pre-rendered 2D animation. The 2D animation, if it's frame/sprite based, has to have a frame rate, but with frame padding that doesn't mean you have to lock the frame rate of the engine. You can find 2D pre-rendered animation in 3D engines that are not frame locked.

true, true.

but what You're left with is something like this:

a game running at the speeds that the hardware can produce (120Hz, 144Hz...), and some piece of background "chopping it up" in it's pre-determined 30 or 60 or whatever FPS. for me that's not a very good alternative.

 

 

 

The waterfall seen in Update #49 is 2D animation as you can clearly see from that screen shot, it's just not part of the background render. Both the background and the waterfall are 3D objects in the engine, you can't say one is 2D and one is 3D.

ok, i've picked the wrong terminology. should have gone from the start with key-framed and pre-rendered animations, and static stuff.

having said that, the waterfall does not look like a pre-rendered animation to me (a 'video texture' if You will); it looks to me like a static texture getting warped and offseted on the fly every displayed frame (not unlike the shrubberies -minus the vertical offset).

 

 

 

Another reason they may not have animated entire trees is how much file space that would require.

yup.

[AwesomeOcelot]

a game running at the speeds that the hardware can produce (120Hz, 144Hz...), and some piece of background "chopping it up" in it's pre-determined 30 or 60 or whatever FPS. for me that's not a very good alternative.

What frame rate is that axe animation? 12 or 15? Mixing frame rates could be problematic, it needs to be tested. My prediction is that this problem is much less the higher the frame rate of the animation, the closer it is to the frequency of the monitor/frame rate of the engine. So if you have a 120Hz monitor, and your running the game at 120fps, a 60fps 2D prerendered animation wouldn't be too bad, it certainly wouldn't be as bad as that axe.

 

ok, i've picked the wrong terminology. should have gone from the start with key-framed and pre-rendered animations, and static stuff.

having said that, the waterfall does not look like a pre-rendered animation to me (a 'video texture' if You will); it looks to me like a static texture getting warped and offseted on the fly every displayed frame (not unlike the shrubberies -minus the vertical offset).

I think we disagree about terminology. A film reel is frame based 2D animation, but it's also one long static image that's being offset. So we don't disagree it's being offset, but that makes it animation, not static. It's also being manipulated by 3D real-time effects, there's actually at least two copies of the animation with transparency (I don't see warping). Yet the underlying animation is still pre-rendered, it's still 2D.

[st2988]

Could you prerender it at 120 FPS and then automatically skip say, 3/4 of the frames if the person's PC is only capable of running the game at 30 FPS, or skip 4/5 if it's running at 24 FPS, etc?

[st2988]

Another reason they may not have animated entire trees is how much file space that would require.

 

As far as this goes: If you animate individual trees, you would only need one animation per tree type. So if there are 60 trees reused throughout the game, wouldn't 't you only need 60 of these pre-rendered animations, in perhaps 5 to 10 second loops? That doesn't seem that space intensive to me, you'd have 600-1200 frames rendered per tree if it's rendered at 120 FPS.

 

The real question, to me, is whether it is possible to dynamically sync frame skipping through that animation to the FPS at which the game is running. Why not use something like Unity's "deltaTime" to find the average framerate, then skip the animation forward by deltaTime frames. Do you think that would be possible and look fluid enough?

[AwesomeOcelot]

As far as this goes: If you animate individual trees, you would only need one animation per tree type. So if there are 60 trees reused throughout the game, wouldn't 't you only need 60 of these pre-rendered animations, in perhaps 5 to 10 second loops? That doesn't seem that space intensive to me, you'd have 600-1200 frames rendered per tree if it's rendered at 120 FPS.

With overlapping trees, many trees, and prerendered shadows it would be complicated, and simulating wind may require more than 10 second loops

 

The real question, to me, is whether it is possible to dynamically sync frame skipping through that animation to the FPS at which the game is running. Why not use something like Unity's "deltaTime" to find the average framerate, then skip the animation forward by deltaTime frames. Do you think that would be possible and look fluid enough?

Wouldn't you just be dropping or padding frames? Just push frames. If deltaTime is faster than the animation framerate pad by repeating frames in proportion, if deltaTime is slower drop frames. No averages involved.

Edited June 29, 2014 by AwesomeOcelot

[st2988]

In retrospect, I think a better option is to only prerender the tree trunk, and have the entirety of the foliage rotate in the wind like only a few branches currently do. The way to do this might be to apply a more subtle rotational effect to the branch images than what's currently being used, and then on top of each branch throw a foliage layer that looks like it's rippling in the wind by applying a sort of a rippling pond distortion effect over the foliage image. That way there would be no playing of 2d animations on the map, and you wouldn't have the odd mash up of rustling leaves with still leaves that's currently in the game. I'd especially like to hear your thoughts on this idea.

 

With that said, here are some more comments about the 2D animation idea:

 

With overlapping trees, many trees, and prerendered shadows it would be complicated, and simulating wind may require more than 10 second loops

I don't know why more than 10 seconds would he necessary, as it stands it's a static tree with some slowly rotating images of branches. I think this looks less realistic than a tree rustling for 10 seconds and then playing the video in reverse for a total of 20 seconds of relatively fluid wind motion.

 

I see your point about overlapping shadows and trees. Do you think it would be possible to record 10-20 seconds of all dynamic assets on a map as one super high resolution video, then split that video into smaller segments that only play when they are within camera to keep system requirements relatively low? The dynamic video would be a layer above the static map. Maybe that dynamic layer could have it's own simplified static depth map so that characters are shown either above or below parts of the dynamic layer depending on their y-coordinate.

 

Wouldn't you just be dropping or padding frames? Just push frames. If deltaTime is faster than the animation framerate pad by repeating frames in proportion, if deltaTime is slower drop frames. No averages involved.

Right exactly, padding and dropping frames. However, I think deltaTime can only give you a reading of how fast the previous frame took to load rather than how long the current frame is taking to load, and that number could fluctuate much more than an average, which might lead to less fluid animation. I don't know, I guess it is something which would have to be tested out both ways to find what looks better.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I think distortions such as a ripple effect would look worse than what's currently there.

 

If you start animating trees then you're obliged to simulate the wind because with detail comes expectation, it's more apparent with detail that there's a loop and you'd notice more that the physics is simplistic. Right now they're trying to suggest subtle movement of a 2D image, they probably could refine that a bit, but if they start adding detail people will notice the flaws more.

 

It would be possible to animate all objects in the scene, but I don't think it would be an easy task, and there would definitely be performance hit.

 

I don't think being a frame behind matters so much. it's more about the frame rate, and it wouldn't be so bad if that fluctuates as long as it's at a conformable minimum. The problem with an average is what is the range is wide? Showing the animation at 45fps when the game was 30fps and it's now 60fps.

[flabbyjack]

I think you're overanalyzing things, your brain will fill in the rest when you look a tree, whether its a single tree, a copse, or a forest.

[Nines]

I don't want to start a new thread, so I'll just ask here. After watching latest videos, I'm wondering what happened with animated greenery? Everything looks much more static, than it was in Update #49.

[samm]

Beta does not show movement either. A pity regarding the grass, but the trees were looking as if they had rotating patches attached, so I don't miss it that much.

[Zeckul]

I can easily see how the animated foliage effect would have been deemed unconvincing and removed for artistic reasons. Perhaps this still is WIP?

[5anitybane]

I'm pretty accepting of however they do the trees, really. The core of the game is the depth of the adventures and lore, rather than AAA visual fidelity, which is fine because it's an adventure RPG, really. It's like playing a story; focus should be on the adventure itself, characters and character and plot development, rather than how a tree animation looks. If it has a static image with a moving sliver akin to mid-2000 RPGs, that's fine, it just compliments the setting.

[El Pollo Blanco]

I must say I will be a bit disappointed if the subtle tree/shrub/grass animations don't make it into the game, everything is a bit sterile when there's very little background movement.

[Nines]

Beta does not show movement either.

Well, that's a shame. Hope they will bring it back.

[Jfk003]

To those who are trying the beta as of december, is there any foliage/tree movement in there, after all?

 

I like what I see so far but definitely get the impression that a lot is static or robotic in an otherwise splendid game. The backgrounds are so enjoyable, like matte painting.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Jfk003

[Starwars]

No. Josh confirmed somewhere that it was something they were playing with but didn't have enough time (or budget, can't remember) to make it work well enough. It's too bad.

 

For what it's worth though, it doesn't bother me when I play now. I mostly reacted the first time when firing up the beta because I was expecting more movement. I got over that pretty quickly, think the game still looks gorgeous.

[Jfk003]

Ok, thanks for the feedback.

 

Yeah well I'm pretty sure I'll get over it while playing, but it is really too bad. It's like we are here in 2014, and basically we are going to get a good game but with the same limitations as the old ones. Stiff animations, static backgrounds.

 

I also find it sad that we always have the argument that, because it's an rpg, we should accept that only the story, loot and combat are important. It would have been the occasion to have both eye-candy and standard rpg things. Still, backgrounds are nice but..

.I don't know, we could have just as well taken the old Infinity Engine and inject the story and assets in it then.

 

It's just... I don't want to be ungrateful there, but it's a pity. Won't stop me from playing though. But I can already see the reviews picking that out.

[Starwars]

I agree, though it's not something that really bothers me personally. If they hadn't made use of it in that one kickstarter video (maybe a mistake now in hindsight), I don't think it would've bothered me at all.

 

Still, I hope they can develop this system so they can use it in either an expansion or the potential secret. If done correctly, I think it could really bring life to areas.

[Nakia]

Although I like some movement there are a couple of reasons why I like it subtle.  One is that two much movement of foliage and water can be distracting.  The other is more important in my opinion.  People who have health issues with movement can become kill, Nashua or headaches.   

[Jfk003]

I think ultimately we would all like more life in the scenery, but it's true that if they are on a budget, then by all means go full on the gameplay first and foremost.

 

I don't really think movement distracts to be honest, if you look at Divinity it's okay. That shouldn't be the problem, but priorities have to be set and if they didn't implement animations, it's because of that. I can understand.

 

As you say Star Wars, I do hope that with the kickstarter they'll find room for improvement after release. But typically that's not really the type of thing companies improve after release.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Jfk003