Graphics: Tech VS Art

i know we had alot of threads concerning similar topics, but i still feel that some things are relevant, ESPECIALLY for indies and 3dgs users.

for one, 3dgs users are NEVER able to compete graphically with the best out there. its just not possible. in general, most indies cant compete with a multi million dollar production, simply because development is expensive.

and yet, we see alot of beautiful indie games, mostly due to their art style. but what is the technical side of this?

as i looked through a few games, i always stumble across some nice things. WOW for example is on a technical level from ten years ago. Still, its a beautiful game thanks to the art.
On the DS, there are a few games called ARTStyle. Pretty nifty stuff. A few lines and pixels and thats it. those games embrace an ugly style as style. Its like watching a badly animated flash, or southpark for that matter.

The more "realisitc" games i play, the more i start to hate brown. real life isnt brown and i dont know why some devs dont see that. maybe its brown and grey in texas only? ive never been to texas, so i dont know. but where i live, things are colorful, especially in summer.
so why are most people who want to do realistic games so obsessed with brown and grey? is it harder to make things look real with colors? TV tropes anyone? real and unreal? nevermind...

im currently devloping a game. its an rpg, classic old school with alot of dugneon crawling stuff, level ups and all that shit. as of now, i still use placeholder textures. real textures come in summer when the game is done.
im in beta stage already, so everything is implemented and works. currently filling the levels with details and doing enemy placement - crucial for a game like this. im still not sure how to do the videos but thats for another day.

so i thought: what graphical style do you want to apply to the textures? models and environment are rather realistically shaped, down to earth. but do i want realistic textures?
i came to the conclusion that i should go for something more artistic. not like WOW but in a similar fashion. darker. definately darker but colorfull.
and guess what? a first test with a few really ugly textures showed me that the game looks absolutely gorgeous with this style. so ill go for it i guess.

i completly lost track of what i wanted to say here originally, so i guess it turned into another "dont try to go realistic" topic... oh well...

naah ur right, also, most games that make use of brown and grey, i've only realy scene that in shooters and thats because they wanna create a warlike scene so they keep the tones low, also, reality is colorful but sometimes seeing all those colors in a video game will look odd... and the game dubbed as powerful..

truth is, indie games dont fail because of the technical possibilities of an engine, they fail because of the motivation and bad workflow... such as spending 2 months to create a cool looking radar BEFORE you even start working on gameplay

based on experience, good looking games are almost mainly art, sure you need the technical power to get all that art onscreen, i hear people saying, ohh, 3dgs suck, it doesnt have realtime shadow mapping... and i can sit right now and list ALOT of multimillion dollar games that still use static lighting..

the idea is to aim for stylized rather than realism, especially as indies, i dont think i've EVER seen a succesful indie game with a realistic art style

Amigaaaaaa...!
What I actually want to say is that I really don´t like the title, as both has to go hand in hand and the in my opinion best examples are demos. It isn´t the music which makes it great, it also isn´t the graphics style or quality and it of course isn´t the coding, but all together. The combination of all makes stuff like this an amazing piece of art in my opinion.

The most important lesson that good Indies and Professional Companies
have learned is to use a consistant style.

No Matter what approach you take, All Elements should
be made with consistancy to a style in mind.

The worst is to use a mix of different styles and quality,
(like taking objects from different artists,
or making certain parts very detailed, and others sloppy)

--

using an Art approach (stylised and lower resolution)
is the more economic approach for Indies.
Important is to be able to replicate the style
over all Elements then.

Big companies are doomed to make Games realistic, detailed
and use the latest Effects and Animationtools.
Indies have the leasure not to be downgraded when using
a more simplistic style.


---

I actually like the brown / realistic style.
(Stalker, Fallout 3, etc)
But also the Artistic Approach like in Blizzard Games
or Torchlight.
A dungeon athmosphere should not look too "happy" though.

Most indies cannot but it is possible. Did you ever play the game Trine? It was beautiful, more detailed than many big productions.

And then there are still big indies like Valve with very nice productions.

In the end it has nothing to do with indies, it is a problem of budget, passion and time you spend.

Regarding the brownish base tone: I don't like it. I was so disappointed as I saw Unreal Tournament 3 with this muddy molten mash. They created so much nice details with polygons and textures but it got lost in this colour monotony.

Another interesting fact is that many new indie games on Steam come with a blocky wireframe look. I personally dont like it at all. But they dont stop ton continue this way. In the end these kind of games have to compete with the blocky look of the LEGO games and this is hard to achieve. LEGO games are well made.

I believe it is not a problem of time and budget for indies, that is a problem for the big companies. Indies only have passion/dedication as a problem. If you fail 10 times at creating a good texure, you try another 10 times until it looks perfect. But it requires dedication. Companies must cut the line if it doesn't look perfect because the budget is empty.

I work 40 hours a week, but I find myself able to build a game piece by piece the times I am home. The only reason I'd be in a hurry is because my dedication/interest fades over time for one game, and I want to start a new one.

No Matter what approach you take, All Elements should
be made with consistancy to a style in mind.
Very true !

With hardware level up each year, games standards level up also. Crysis 2 are said to be the best looking game on PS3 and new standard visually. It's each time an increase in details on textures, animations, physics etc ... you can't compete ans an Indie. Each big production game is big teams with people having years of industry work.


Trine, is not incredible also, very good, it uses some good textures, and models, and shaders, but it is still a little game.It don't have incredible level design or gameplay, or character design like in God of War 3 ! You can't compare what is not comparable ! It's more some sort of very refined visually mini game.


Not all times realistic design make a big game !
For example last FF13 on PS3 , is beautifull, but
very annoying : long combats , and only combat. You pass all your time watching menus and life bars !!!!!!!I enjoy lot lot more playing God of War 3 , you watch action, you have big top nocth real time game play.Just my personal taste, but yeah graphics, even top notch won't make the game, if gameplay, fun are not present !


---------------

Some Lego games are really great, like Star Wars series.
Simple character design, but with variations, customisations.
But very good gameplay, fun , very entertaining !
And visually their style is cool !

Another example is the game BorderLands !
It uses some shaders, but all is cartoon style like in comics ! i find it very beautifull this way. And gameplay, loot, RPG system are so good Another good example of unrealistic design !

most big companies have loadsof people working on the textures, a few textures per person. so they dont have to rush through about 70 textures quite quickly. most indie game designers i know work on their own or in a small group of 3-4, unlike companies like nintendo, how have about 300 people work on a game.

But this is not really the point. Trine is a small game, yes. But it looks consistently beautiful. I thought this discussion is about graphic style, not about the size of a game, the amount of character animation or anything else.

And this is exactly what I meant: Small teams (hobby or indie developers) can create nice and consistent art. They can create something similar to big productions, just smaller.

Indeed i agree !

What Inidie need is to really work on concept and design.
Even non skilled art people can make great thinsg if they adapt
the concepts to their skills !

An example :

The design is incredibly simple, but researched and effective !

Another example :



BorderLands great comic design :


Trine, indeed, is a very clever use of shader, texture projection to simulate trees or clouds shadows to bring variation lightening !


All that can be done in A7.
But not all people here have great ideas, concepts, design, or clever ideas to use of shaders and effects.
(Lot of people here are programmers first or beginners in game making)

In the end its a simple economic calculaton:

Artstyle-To-Use must be choosen by:

(AverageTimePerAsset / NumberOfArtists) * NumberOfAssetsNeeded <= TimeAvailable

with: NumberOfArtists * MonthlyPay * TimeAvailable(Month) < Overall Budget

-> AverageTimePerAsset (smaller for Comic/Abstract look)(longer for realistic / detailed look)
-> NumberOfAssetsNeeded (should be estimated early by the Gamedesign planning)

-----

Thus, since Indy Devs have many more limits (often just one Artist, and also a limited Time - before Frustration stops the project)
they should either Choose a game where less Assets are needed
(Casual Games, Games where Assets can be repetatly used - like in a tilebased gameworld)
or use a quick-to-develop Artstyle (Comic / Stylized look with low details)

But I am afraid that many of you have a wrong idea about the costs of art.

I can say from my own experience that todays realistic art is not more expensive than a few years ago. It is the other way around. Tools like Modo and ZBrush allow to create in hours what we had to built in days or even weeks with old-school polygon modellers like Max, Lightwave and Co.

I can model a texture faster than I painted it in the past.

The tools are just better, we use less time. Graphic automatically became more detailed this way.
I would even go exactly the same route for a cartoon asset. So I don't see any difference here. And cartoon models can look way more rounded and cartoony when I use some proper normalmaps and modern technology.

a good point was made here. concepts and coherent style.
thats what i miss with most indie games. you need to have a cocnept, an idea how your game should look.

also, another good point wwas level design. i can clearly tell through the level design of some games if a pro was at hand or a trainee. a good level designer creates a level that consists of unique rooms. none of them look the same, and backtracking is reduced to the minimum the game requires. i find it often annoying in indie games that you have to run through the level a gazillion times to lengthen the game. this just sucks. reduce backtracking. its bad level layout and bad gameplay, and gameplay is frankly, all we have...

I'm not primarily an artist, but I do have some experience with sculpting, UV mapping, baking normal maps, texture creation and so on. I remember first hearing of normal-mapping technology (many years back) and being dismayed at the inevitable increase in difficulty of asset creation.

To my surprise and relief, such a natural and real way to add per-pixel details (as well as continual advances in software such as Blender) actually made it easier and easier as the years went by.

So yeah, I'm not an experienced artist like you, Frank, but it's nice to see my impressions of the art side of things reflected in your experience.

Jibb

I am not a Blender user but I saw some videos and it looks indeed very good. The tools for sculpting and re-topology are looking fast and convenient. I hope they finish this release anytime soon. I would like to check it and I am also interested in the animation tools. I could imagine that they became better with this new open video project.

speaking about metroid prime, aren't we?

metroid prime is a "prime" example. not only do they have a uniqueness, they also tell the whole story through level design. unlike HALO which has to have the worst level design of the last generation (right after the PS2 castlevanias)

As I first saw this game I instantly thought this is a rip-off of the good old Turrican that I played on C64. So I did not find it unique, but in the end it was well made.

It depends on the type of game if "going back" in a level
should be used.
In a free Gameworld such as Stalker, its part of making
it an exploration world.
Very liniar Games (like Fear, Halflife) should not
send the player back.
But I dont really like liniar games.
The players choice is limited down to follow the
path the gamedesigner defines stricly, and maybe kill
one monster more or less.

I thought the level design in Metal Gear Solid 1 was brilliant. Stealth was very important, and you'd have to go back to the same areas from different directions, and this often had a big effect on how you'd need to go about choosing hiding spots and sneaking past enemies.

Also, whenever you were forced to go back, elements changed to reflect progress in the story.

For many games, each level feels disconnected from the plot. For MGS1 the level design felt like it was part of the story, and vice versa.

I've ashamedly never played a Metroid game, but I imagine that's the kind of thing sP|Ke means by telling the story through the level design.

Jibb

umm? did i read that right? halo has bad level design? i hope you mean the campaign mode and even if you do mean the campaign, it doesnt matter, the level design suits the gameplay, throw halo style gameplay with halflife2 level design and youre stuck with "wtf".. as its obvious, level design is dependent upon gameplay, i also hate linear games that tell the player what to do, our levels in scion for example are seperated into gameplay zones, we then plan on paper how each zone should interact with neighboring zones and how the different routes to each zone come into play even though i dont see what level design as to do with this topic though and i also dont think the designs should be grouped into just stylized and photorealism, not because i dont want a stylized game doesnt mean i want photorealism, i just want visuals that wont be scorned at

Hm, I think level design has a lot to do with this topic - as its part of the "art" factor.
I never played the first Halo, but based on spike's statement, I'd say he wasnt talking about the level's design in relation to the gameplay, but only in visual terms. So I guess he did never experience the levels viual design as outstanding or stunning.
Referring to darkinfernos last statement, I also dont think there's just stylized and photorealism - just take a look at Mirror's Edge, it is without a doubt very stylized, optically speaking, but in a technical way closer to photorealism than, say, Half Life 2.

i consider halos level design bland because there are a dozen rooms that all look the same. thas nut impressive thats cheap.

also, metrid is year solder than turrican

back to topic. id like to bring up the wind waker here, for i love the art style on that. in fact, this was the game that made me fall in love with toon shading. yeah, i go there.

take the wind waker today. it still holds up nicely in terms of graphical quality because of the style. and now compare it to any other game from 2001. yeah...

you can achieve good visuals with a matching stle even without hard tech. the more real it gets, the harder it is to do. uncanny valley, believability and money are to blame. i find it frustrating that the broad masses have accepted CGI and hand drawn artwork in movies, but still struggle to accept an artstyle in games.

yesterday i witnessed it myself. i was out, having good fun, when i overheard two people talking about games. and then they agreed that theyd never play anything besides PC or PS3 because of the bad graphics and such. then the mentioned modern warfare 2 as the prime example of graphics.
and i hate it when that happens. not that the game is bad, but this mindset just ingores all the amazing art found in non realistic games. and thats basically the target audience for "hardcore" game developers (although i HATE that term).

and as indie, you simply cant reach that, you you aliante those people because you cant reach that quality and you alienate everyone else because the rest is not too fond with brown as a color. lucky us your gameplay sucks or else it would be really frustrating...

Depends on the Customer and Age.

16 year old Boys will not admit to like toon style casual games.

But making a small game, wich is normally rather casual
has to target other customers.
And there a colorful artistic style is the better choice.

My casual game PACHEE sells 80% to women from the US.
And they prefer a different style than boys who play
Tripple-A Warfare shooters.

pure art - Okami:






They used several quite impressive rendering techniques besides of some conventional, f.i. there was a pp-effect wich smeared the outlines of the objects to give the appearence of ink.
The most trees were made with simple sprites but this doesn´t disturb since it fits the style.
Also the gameplay was as innovative as the graphics - simply awesome

Yeah a great great game i played on PS2 !
The characters have very low polygons, but they have lot fo personnality, their own poses and body language !

Visually ,teh simplicity make all things clear, and easy ot distinguish, beautifull shader.
The other big point, is top notch real time gameplay.
And the attributes, powers increase like Zelda games.

Lot of people using A7 could make such game, less time consuming than making precise, photorealistic models and textures.

Another game that is impressive: low polygons, low but very effective textures, and great research on design and colour of textures and environment si a IPhone game: Dungeon Hunter !
Even under houses , objects on groudn it seems to be some shadow on ground (not floating objects)

Even low res textures, or models, all things remain beautifull, caus they don't use very darks textures or atmosphere, and all that fit and mix together very well !
Lot of people should take example on that game , even beginners !

We could crate a design manual based on that game that would
power up lot fo games or people here indeed !!

now were talking. although i dont like okamis graphical style. TOO expressionistic, but still, an impressive design

I find Okami very great !
Anyone could make it in a less "ink" way, only small outline on models !

Lot of people could make such simple 3D game, but it asks lot of
work on design and level design, choose of colors etc ...
But could be done with A7 and it woudl be a succesfull game indeed !

Another very simple design, but very effective :

Iphone game





Reminds me Aaaaaaahaaaaa game made with A7.
Also a simple game, but very entertaining, and effective design and colors even if simple !

Lof of people thata are mainly programmers could be inspired
by how to make great looking things using good colors and textures.

Choosing the right colors and textures is already the job of a good designer, isn't it?

In these forums, too much people, beginners don't have
this simple basic knowledge , or never do a level/colors design
document before doing the game.

We could make another design document tutorial ?
We could do it by theme.
I could do some basic design chapter ?

it would help if noobs actually read what you tell them. then theyd learn alot in here...

Even in George's AUM serial about game making there isn't mentioned a color design document.
Its not only the newbies, there is almost none among us who does something like that, including me.

If you wanna do a basic design chapter, that's great!

In regards to:



Doing artwork for games like this can be as exhaustive as doing photorealistic artwork, just because simple geometric forms and colors doesn't mean that the task is simple at all. Stylizing is in my oppinion a very hard job but the results can be overwhelming.

Getting a feeling for colors is maybe not suited for everyone and even though it comes with experience. If you need a shortcut, tools like kuler should be on your linklist:

http://kuler.adobe.com

i preach for years that most here should hire a solid art director. that doesnt mean you have to hire a professional but just someone who knows his stuff...

Looking back critically at my own experience, i spent too much time at making the art during the development of a game. That means i wasted so much time by refining the art... starting the game over and over...

Including the art only in the game design document would be a much better way in my mind. That means describe the style, look&feel very roughly with some sample screenshots from other games and even sketches. (In addition the whole gameplay/levels/story should be layed out there - so you can "play" the game in your mind by just reading that document.)

Then during development time i would make a prototype with just gfx placeholders, that already have the right size. Once the gameplay system is finished, so that one can play the game, i would start on working on the art part. This way you can see if the game is fun and refine it with the art and push the feeling of the game you got by playing it even further in a specific direction. This procedure also guarantees the coherence of style throughout the game.
If you decide for an art style you cant create yourself, its a good way of working together with some artist from this point on. So she/he has the freedom of creating all the assets from scratch.

The reason why so many indie games do the "art" style over the "tech" style is simply the cost in time/money for the tech style. An art game is also more congruent for an "indie" game. If an indie game has too good techie gfx, people will wonder if it really is "indie"...and worth the money.

Just my 3 cents

I think I already showed that in the off-topic topic but since it perfectly fits the topic:


I tried to adapt the Golden Sun style to 3d with dynamic lighting and all that 'modern-game' stuff.
That was really a hard piece of work and I didnt do something similiar again...making a realistic look is still easier.

@Spike: you could to try to create your textures from photo-realistic once using the Anisotropic Kuwahara Filter:


I would really like to see how that actually looks in-game when consequently used for all textures.