A question concerning computer game renders of ships

CharlesFXD

Hi guys. I have a question for the good people here about rendering ships for a videogame.

For some time now a few associates and I have been developing a capital ship combat simulation. IA’ve fleshed out the design and we have a working 2D prototype.

Now is the time to begin fleshing out the game with art. I.E. the really fun part ,
But thatA’s where my question comes in. What I want are beautifully rendered ships. (what producer wouldnA’t?) I donA’t know much about art but I know what I want. What I want are ships that are rendered to look like filmed models. I.e Star Trek and Star Wars 4, 5, and 6. NOT like the 3d rendered B5 vessels. To me the B5 ships never looked good. They look like they were rendered for a video game and thatA’s exactly what I donA’t want.

I donA’t know what has to be done. Is it lighting? The geometry of the model? The skin? Or all of the above?

It seems that with modern games normal textures and skins are outdated. nowadays it seems that you have a color-map (only colors, no shadows no nothing), normal-map (adds the depth), specular map (for shininess) and an alpha-map.

So my main question is this. What do we have to do to render our vessels to look like movie model props and not 3d generated game models? Is there a tutorial floating around (i cant find one but then again I donA’t really know what IA’m looking for) or do any of you guys have any tips and experience youA’d like to share?

I certainly hope my question was specific enough. If not, I apologize. I may be able to supply further information if I know what you need.

Thanks in advance.

Charles

Namelezz

The biggest thing that separates game renders from film quality renders is the lighting. Film quality uses global illumination, bounce effects, reflect/refract mapping... the list goes on and on. Game engines pretty much only do a light source and the resulting shadows. The reason for this is because to do the complex lighting takes some serious processing power. Most of the highquality renders you see on this sight take more than 5 minutes to make. And that is one frame. Can't really ask people to play a game with that kind of frame rate.

Though you might want to contact these guys and see where they are with the game engine they are developing. It is supposed to be able to do real-time radiosity lighting to a degree. It might be a step in the direction you are wanting.

Geomerics - Lighting

iOSYS

Ok, hereA’s how it is. If you want a filmed look, you need to have very good texture artists. You can accomplish a certain amount of effects needed to achieve a photographic look with shaders/spec maps/bump maps, but textures themselves have to have good shading to make them look really 3d. even if you just go over an average texture with a dodge tool in photoshop to create shading, it will transform the model.

A very good, but time consuming, way to get this effect is by using high polygon renders as textures. The problem with this technique is that the result will not be made to look good in game. A game texture has to have a number of differences from a photograph. for instance, it is important for have lots of contrast and strength, so that the little details are visible from far away. A cg render will not necessarily have this. And sometimes cg/photo textures simply look too good for the level of geometry detail, so it only served to make your models look more segmented.

Lighting is very commonly dismissed in games as not important. This is getting better nowadays, which is good, but lighting is just so important. Look at screenshots from Empire at war, vs Star Trek Armada. Armada's models are actually on par with eaw's, despite being 8 years older, and you'll see the difference lighting makes. good lighting is hard to code, complex to render in game, and often hard to set up, but it makes all the difference.

Another important thing is effects. It seems trivial, but if every bright light source has a lens flare, there is a bloom for every highlight, and you have some great nebula maps, it will transform the graphics. Look at the game Star Wraith. The models/textures are dos game quality, but all the effects give it a very pretty look.

Dawn of war is the sum of all of this. It has lighting, effects, and great textures. Beyond that, the things that make 3d renders look like photos are animalising, which is extremely hard for computers to render, and things like depth of field, which you donA’t really need in a game.

CharlesFXD

Dave, the programmer, hasn’t really gotten into the meat of Ogre 3D yet so i don’t know about it’s rendering capabilities in that area but Ogre is pretty solid and they just released 01.4.0 [Eihort] with new lighting and shader features..so that’s good

It sounds like i was right to think it was lighting more than anything from what i’m finding. Or at least lighting is a good portion. i know we cant make the ships look like Coolhands work (that would be so great…) but we’ll do our very best. Hopefully we’ll be able to squeeze every bit of rendering capability out of Ogre that we can and, thankfully, we’ll only be rendering a handful of vessels at a time.

Thanks for the info guys. I do appreciate it and if anyone else has any ideas or thoughts to offer I’d be grateful.

Andrew March

You need, relatively high poly models, good fx, outstanding texture artists, outstanding lighting.

CharlesFXD

high poly models are no problem nor is lighting. Dave makes his living as a programmer and I am confident he'll be up to par. effects arn't difficult but we're in the hole when it comes to textures and UV maps...a deep deep black hole

i have another question id like to throw out there (and thanks a hell of a lot for the support so far.)

would this be the proper formula for model building with a next gen engine?
1. unlimited poly model used to--->
2. burn normal map
3. skin
4. bells and whistles (specular and alpha maps)

i'm relearning everything coming from lower end 3d renderers where things were simple so you really have no idea what kind of help this is to me