Quote:
Originally Posted by Jaws2002
Usually I'm outside at sunset most of the time and I like to pay attention to colors, how light interacts with things around, how the sunset looks from day to day depending on athmospheric conditions and so many other things.
The world around us is very colorful. Not every sunset looks like a hazy day, over a poluted big industrial city, or a washed out ww2 gun camera clip.
Look for the beauty this old rock gives us every day. You will be surprised how much color there's around us.
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I absolutely agree with you. However, CLOD had great sunsets not because the team did a great job, but because they used a clever technique to emulate atmospheric scattering that was developed by someone else.
Here is his website, just scroll down to atmosphere to see what I am talking about (incidentally, his teams work on clouds are also worth a look, hint hint 777)
http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Membres/Eric.Bruneton/
CLOD literally uses his code. If you look through the shader files, which can be done with ketegys extractor, you will see that the "new sky" sections is credited to him and line for line identical to his work.
Not that there is anything wrong with that. He released his work for free, and several other titles have used it to great effect. Space Engine being one of the best examples - and something I highly recommend anyone with an interest in space or modern rendering techniques to download. Its really is that amazing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by major_setback
The biggest issue they have with the graphics is that they changed the original settings
they had during game development and implemented the extreme contrasty look that
exists now. It gives an immediate striking look but adds nothing in reality.
There should be no part of any picture which is black. Even at midday.
Ask any artist or any photographer. It is taboo. It looks unnatural and tells you straight away
that the person who is responsible for the look of the game doesn't know what they are doing.
Game, with almost black shadows
However you will find very many photos of aircraft with black shadows if you look.
They are not good photographs though.
The contrast is way too high.
It looks like overuse of the 'levels' slider or misuse of 'curves' in Photoshop, in this way:
It looked quite good once, but they ruined it about the time it was released.
Look how much black there is on the histogram. There can be a little,
but here most of the pixels are around the black area at the left side of the histogram.
Detail is lost because it has been lowered to the point of disappearing into blackness.
There is actually no excuse for such poor graphics. Anyone with simple knowledge of photography or image editing should see it immediately.
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+1
As a person who has had a keen interest in photography since being a child, and who also enjoys 3d modelling, I can definitely back what you are saying.
Far too many games on the market today push the contrast up until its far too "punchy". The end result is tons of blown out highlights and crushed blacks, with little subtly in the mid range. It looks unnatural, but some people prefer it. Compounding this problem is that textures themselves often have far to much contrast - things like a gravel road or blocks of cement should never have areas of pure white and pure black!!!
And I've found that most people who work professionally in the area of graphics in games (emphasis on the games part) almost never have any background in photography. Instead they base their work on what their peers are doing. Ideas that are common to even the most entry level photographer are completely foreign to them (again, in my experience. They are a few people I've met who work a bit differently then the norm)
And there are plenty of other problems inherit to real time rendering that compound the above issues.....
But I'll miss how CLOD had the eye of a photographer behind it. I have never seen a game that did things like bloom right until I saw CLOD. Hopefully 777 will be taking some notes.