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SvennoJ on 30 March 2011
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Hynad said:
SvennoJ said:
Hynad said:
Chibi.V.29 said:
 

Yeah but cgi looks so gooooood xD

They may look good, but they're not really worth it I think.

I'm much more impressed when the cut-scenes look bad ass using the real time engine, than when everything is pre-rendered or CGI.  The Metal Gear Solid series comes to mind.

I don't understand that sentiment. It maybe be impressive from the standpoint of what the engine is capable of, but it is putting severe limits on the artists. Theater is more impressive then cinema too, but I rather whatch a movie.

In engine cut scenes tend to highlight all the short coming of the engine, bad aa, bad shadows, low resolution textures up close, low detail light maps, pop in, frame rate issues. How can that be preferable to pre-rendering the same scene with the lod and draw distance set to max, extra aa, high res textures for the close ups, hi-res shadow and light maps and whatever extra detail or crazy ideas the artists would like to see in there. The same engine can still render all that but maybe only at 1 fps with 8gb memory. (Just don't use bink to store the end result)

What would be really impressive is use some sort of hybrid. Render in your character in hi-detail with a pre-rendered background with occlusion geometry and light and shadow maps to apply to the actors.


The examples you used can of course be applied to games made by developers who aren't so good at maximizing their game to the hardware's limitations.  Or are just trying to do too much with what they have in their hands.

Sure, CGI and pre-rendered look better.  But I'm always more amazed at games like Uncharted 2, Batman Arkham Asylum, Heavy Rain, God of War 3 or Metal Gear Solid 4, during their real-time in-engine content, than at games like Final Fantasy XIII.  

Now, pre-rendered is all nice, it fools many into believing it's actually real-time, but even if it looks better than real-time cut-scenes, I still prefer when they get the job done nicely in real-time.  It impresses me more when I see a dev putting the effort to come to outstanding results in real-time with its engine, than when they go the "easy" way with pre-rendered and CGI.  

Now, I can understand that some scenes they have in mind are just too damn epic or something, but back then, it wasn't holding them back.  They achieved the best with what they had, and they had to think outside the box to achieve the results they wished for...

Don't misunderstand me though, I'm still an eye candy junky.  So I take what they shoot at me.  I just have my preferences.

I thought Uncharted 2 has some scenes pre-rendered so the game can load in the next level while playing the engine rendered cutscene as a movie file. Killzone 3 does that too but not so subtle and with visible compression artifacts.

If you're using pre-rendered stuff, why not spruce it up a bit like ratchet and clank a crack in time's cutscenes or ff13. Although I'm a software programmer myself I'm more interested in the artist's vision then the programmer's effort to make it work in real-time. There's the whole gameplay part for that.

You can do so much more with video editing that you almost never see in video games. Quick cuts, smooth fades, picture in picture, large overviews and that's just the simple stuff. Show me stuff like Oliver Stone's editting and I won't be inclined so much to skip the next 'some people talking in a static location' cutscene.

That's what video games really need, good writers and a director. Enough of the slow pans / zooms with a few people spouting cheesy lines. Ufortunately rendering it in real-time pretty much excludes any artistic editting. Hats of though for Heavy rain for getting picture in picture to work pretty well.