Cinematic Effects in Source

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/12/09/source_film_effects/1.html

UPDATE if you can, please do download the videos BEFORE commenting. As we said in the article, the screenshots don't do it justice, and the 204MB trailer is just WOW.

 

Just reading through the article now and getting the vids as I go, but one thing has struck me already. Do we really want to be trying to make games more like movies, or should we be focussing on making them more lifelike? Obviously there isn't motion blur or depth of field blurry stuff in real life, so should we want it in our games?

It seems to me that every type of media(radio, music, TV, cinema) tries to get to as close a reproduction of real life as possible, this could be considered almost a step back in that goal, even if it does look purdy.

 

I don't know, I've always seen DoD as 're-living a true story' -- a bit like Saving Private Ryan in that sense, so I think cinematics in Day of Defeat make sense.

 

There is though. It may not be quite as dramatic as in the game, but it does exist. There is certainly an argument for games vs movies vs photo-real etc etc but it's horses for courses really ie if you don't like it, play something else. Some games will cater to this market, but others never will.

 

i dont really like the look of the film grain effect from the screenies, but i havent downloaded hte trailer yet
might work for that but i cant see myself playing the game with that on
i do play dod:s online with hdr turned on, you dont get totally blinded when coming out of a room i find, its a fairly subtle effect and looks great

 

I don't know about anyone else, but this stuff is totally awesome. HDR was cool, and very necessary, but this is just...

I just can't even begin to imagine how complex this stuff was to develop. I've done some graphics programming before now, and even the simplest stuff is difficult and tricky. My hat goes off to the team at VALVe for this. Amazing.

 

Well, still downloading the vids, so I guess I can't fully comment(damn you 512Kb connection), but I'm kind of split myself.

On the one hand, I can understand that this would definately have an "ooh neat" effect, it might increase immersion. On the other hand, I kind of feel that if other devs follow suit, spending say a year or two, or maybe more, on getting things looking like movies, including the flaws(like noise), then surely thats just a few more years untill we get real-world graphics in our games. I guess maybe the question I'm thinking of is do we want to feel like we're teenagers or twenty somethings fighting for our lives in 1944, or do we want to feel like people sitting on a sofa watching a movie? Again, I havn't seen the vids, so my opinion might flip over once I do

edit: OT, but, its surprisingly unnerving disagreeing with you guys.

 

I dunno, it's not for everyone - I don't have a problem with you disagreeing because things like this aren't for everyone. When I first watched the video, I didn't think it was *that* impressive, but then when I watched it a few times, I noticed the subtle bits that were very similar to war films I've seen. That was what I found most impressive.

Everyone thinks that the Source rag dolls and physics are excellent, but that was the one thing that stood out as remarkably poor in the trailer. I guess when you aim for realism, something else in your engine becomes the weakest link. This is why we need physics processing.

 

both, surely?

 

Thats the thing though,you cant have the cake and eat it. You either feel like you're an actual soldier, and they aim for making you as the player feel like that, or they aim for making you as the player feel like you're inside the perfect war movie. I guess which one they aim for really depends on the sort of game they're aiming to make though, so I guess no choice is the wrong choice

 

All sounds pretty cool and stuff and some of the effects look amazing.

Can't say i'm overly keen on the depth of field stuff. It just irritates my eyes... just getting the trailer now so I'll see how that holds up

I really like the way valve dont just make games and then release updates which are essentially just bug fixes, but actually release real updates to gameplay and gfx. The stuff they seem to be doing is far more innovative than any other company seems to be doing - or if other companies are doing this kinda stuff they should hire new marketing staff as I sure as hell haven't heard of it!!

The futures bright.

 

Couldn't agree more

 

This stuff looks really, really nice. I'm glad to see Valve keep pushing Source further along. Assuming that the auto-focus for DOF works properly, I can't wait for everything but the film grain. I don't care for grain effects during the actual game as since when do your eyes have film grain? I understand that it would be great for cut-scenes but not during gameplay.

Special thanks to bit-tech for the awsome high-res videos. They downloaded nice and quick too, they must be doing a number on your bandwith!

 

Glad to hear you had a good downloading experience, Stephen. Thanks to RTT, our servers are doing just fine. Plus, if there happens to be extreme load, you can always grab the videos using any of FileShack's fine mirrors. Our thanks go to Maarten & crew for the support.

 

Maybe I'm just being dumb, but doesn't the engine used in PGR3 already do HDR+Motion Blur+DoF? I'm pretty sure it does, but feel free to yell at me if I'm wrong.
That said DoF, while a nice effect it cut scenes, is going to be odd in-game. As you say in your intro what is in and out of focus in real vision depends on what you're focusing on and changes rapidly. I think it might be anoying to look at one thing and have the game decide where you're focusing so it's not in focus.

 

The trailer is v nice - it really is just like watching a film... I still really can't imagine taking part in it (i.e. playing the game) and as pointed out in the article, as nice as it looks at the end of the day it is going to reduce the players gaming ability so is only really suited to single player... unless in future games there is a basic implementation of this for lower spec computers to keep every one on a level playing field.

Good job Valve.

 

Easily the most interesting and well explained article I have read from Bit-Tech, top marks

 

Good point. It's gonna be really difficult to get those 200m headshots if Valve suddenly decides you're not looking at the guy, and he turns into a little blurry spot.

(Not commenting on the effects yet, as I'm still dl'ing the clip)

 

I really like the motion blurr and depth of field, and i especially like the color correction. But, the grain effect is just idiotic. I can see it being good for cinematics, but in game? Thats just rediculous. The whole thing about dod, saving private ryan....is to make it seem that you're actually there. Last time I checked i don't have grainy vision. This game may be set in the 40's, and films didn't have that great of qualtiy 60 years ago, but when you play a game it's supposed to be like you're there, not watching a movie made 60 years ago.

Anyways, it was a very good and informative article. Another example of why I love this site so much.

 

Good article, but disappointing trailer. What really let it down was how badly and obviously staticy the movement by the digital actors were. I've seen so many great things done with the source engine, that for something like this to be let down because they overlooked one part is kind of sad. The source engine seems to lend itself to very fluid character animation, but yet they completely missed out on it. Oh well, maybe in the future…