Tech Demos and a 5 Year old Game looks great
Recently another video about the new Unreal Engine updates have come out. I thought it would be fun to see the video, and then take it apart.The Inside Unreal videos tend to look at a single aspect of the unreal engine, and then talk about it for a few minutes.
This- sorry it wouldn't post- video goes into detail about creating specialized material. Before we go in, you should know that although yes your computer can make the video work, it won’t make games that beautiful. The reality is that having enemies move around with intelligence, getting shot, and your selection screen can take up a lot of power. The models being shown are nice, but fairly difficult to make move correctly in a real game moment.
The creation system is taking the cover of the model, and giving it details. The video details what is going on in pretty good terms, but just to make sure, I will explain.
A model looks like a cut out piece of playdoh without its cover. The ‘skin’ of the character is assigned various parts and colors that should be a specific type of material. Extra details are added that would make your computer go slower if they were part of the model itself. These details are scuff marks, rust patches, and other things that can be placed on the skin with specific instructions.
The person placing the skin works to add things to the model like colors, and details. The engine allows those things to already have a look, so you can just assign them to parts of the model, and it shows up in game. This makes things like lighting work the same on any similar surface.
DSO is an amazing site. It shows off game engines working, and has updates on various graphics card updates. One of the sites common showings is how Grand Theft Auto IV looks after being heavily altered. Keep in mind that this game came out 5 years ago. It generally looks like this.
The modified version of the game uses all of the advanced level tricks to make everything look amazing. The many photos of the game when heavily modified make it seem like a high end camera shoot in the real world. Many of the same techniques that were used in the Unreal Engine video above, are being applied here. It really shows off the game.
