[doc eggfan]

[Meat Miracle]

Well, of course it looks kick ass there, it's instrumental.

[doc eggfan]

Considering that 99% of his output is purely instrumental, then we don't have a problem here.

[Meat Miracle]

Okay then, I was confused by the engrish in that trailer that was posted.

[Mike Arcade]

This has got to be some of the best news I've heard in all of fighting games since Street Fighter IV, MVC3, and KOFXIII. When I saw the trailer myself I too thought it was 2D until it rotated, when that happened simply put I flipped my shit. THAT has got to be one of the most amazing things I've seen in gaming ever. Not only is it the sequel I've been waiting over 10 years to one of my favorite fighting game series ever, but it is also has the most impressive visuals in a game I've ever seen in my life so far. I am buying this game on day fucking one no doubt in my mind.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Blazblue series but sometimes it can be a little too Anime, first game in I was completely confused on what the fuck was going on in the story of that game, that had NEVER happened to me before in a fighting game up until that point. Unlike Blazblue, Guilty Gear doesn't have that Anime feel to me, it has a Heavy Metal feel to it, like listening to Slayer while reading Heavy Metal Magazine. First time I played GGX I was blown away on how Rock it was! I'm so happy this is finally being made. Though I do hope the fighting system isn't has cluttered as it was in Accent Core, AC+, and AC+R, awesome games but they overdid it when it came to adding stuff like Just Defense in. Here's to Guilty Gear and Arc System Works, you guys keep rocking!

Also I haven't heard anyone say anything about it, but I like Millia's new outfit, hat and all.

[Aerosol]

I don't like it much. It looks cool in stills, but I feel like using 3D models should mean smooth animation. There doesn't seem to be a technical reason why there isn't, either. It just looks like they won't for the sake of just looking like hi-res 2D sprites. That disappoints me.

[Chimera]

Bumpity bump.

So two months ago 4Gamer had an interview with Arc System Works about the technical process behind the art style they made for Guilty Gear Xrd. It's all in Japanese considering 4Gamer is a Japanese journalism site, but if you google translate the page you can VAGUELY make out some of what they're saying through the engrish, especially if you know some technical terms. Anyone here who's really into this stuff should try and translate some of the core principles properly; it's really, REALLY interesting stuff. Don't have Chrome / don't want to google translate? No problem, some of the image side-by-sides speak for themselves.

http://www.4gamer.ne...78/20140703095/

Holy shit some of this is the most innovative things I've ever seen, not just for game graphics but for CG in general. I can totally see this going places, like hell I want to make an animation with this tech!

Some screens and context based off what I could interpret, to pike your interest.


Their UE3 shader network. Looks hella complex. Fun fact: They made the original shaders in SoftImage, shown here:


That looks so simple by comparison. I think we're missing some information.


Shadow correction to make shading on the face look more Anime.

Same deal with the pants. Corrected to look like how an anime artist would shade the pants as opposed to how something shaped like that should actually be done.


You're probably wondering, ok how the hell did they do that? Especially with such a low poly mesh (compared to CG level art).

The answer? It's surprisingly, scarily simple and something I really should have expected: Vertex Normals!


They use the normals of a simple, shitty cylinder pants, because a cylinder is how an anime artist would usually draw pants like that. The high res pants are made to face the direction of the normals of the pants.


For the face, things are done with a bit more hand-crafted finesse. The normals are meticulously edited MANUALLY by an artist to have the light react with the face in such a way that would make sense to a 2D illustrator, allowing for the "triangle cheeks" and a smooth, clean curved chin shade at this lighting angle.




I talked about quite a few things they covered in this interview, but I did NOT cover everything, oh no. There's more on the first page that talks about how the shading was even MORE refined to be stylized, and even some stuff I didn't read yet on the second page, part of which they talk about how they got the outlines to work the way they wanted to, and only emphasize the lines they wanted emphasized at certain angles to make it look like it was actually drawn.

All in all, this is some amazingly ingenious tech that follows the philosophies I've been saying for YEARS. Really, really hope we see more things like this in the future. Games like Naruto that try to be styled like their show but end up just looking like a toon shader slapped onto their models would definitely benefit from tech like this, and if programs could be made for this stuff to be easier for 2D artists? 2 op pls nerf

This post has been edited by Chimera: 27 September 2014 - 01:33 AM

[grap3fruitman]

Found someone that did a bit more translation of that article. I don't want to steal their work so I'll simply link to it instead: http://www.polycount...8&postcount=229 and http://www.polycount...9&postcount=241