I want your opinion

THIS QUALITY with 3dgs. I know it is possible, but how would you tackle the task to achieve such quality with 3dgs? Shade-c evo? Self made shader? Level design with blender? etc..
And what would be a good price per hour for somebody to design such an high quality level (If all material need is paid for)?


Greetings Random

If i see right, parts of the level are made with Blender and was first used in a Gamestudio project called "Hotel California"

Ask rVl_eXile for creating the level as (if i am right) he made the level above.

For the graphics i would recommend using a custom shader solution created for your project needs (shadows, deferred/forward rendering, ...)

Also try using some kind of custom WYSIWIG level editor only for your project to get the most out of the engine, but basic level layout and modeling done in blender.

The post processing in the video is pretty simple, i assume it's only a simple grayscale/saturation shader
material shaders are lighting+shadows and normal mapping, nothing special in particular.

Regards
Felix

Shaders are doing the quality in games nowadays.
Ask Kartoffel, hes awesome

Well there you have problem #1.

Whatever it is, if you didn't create something yourself (with enough knowledge, of course) you CANNOT be
sure that it's working fast and efficiently and that it is doing what it should do without bugs or glitches.
And it turns out that these 'things' aren't as fast and free of bugs as one might think/like.

Not doing this stuff on your own also means you often can't do what you want to do because your tools don't allow
you to do so.

---

To quickly analyze this video from a graphics-guy's perspective, here's what I see:
- simple lighting
really. There's nothing special here (which doesn't automatically mean that it's a bad thing)

- an annoying video grain filter
video grain is great for hdr rendering (kills banding arfifacts), but it should be more subtle than this
Edit: yeah I know, the ppl who made this didn't use the video grain to increase the image quality. They wanted to have a cool, noisy look. But it still is too intensive imo.

- some shadow casting pointlights
no softshadows, I don't know how well shade-c handles shadows. It might do pretty well if it uses things like caching

- no hdrr
which I think is really sweet, although it's not a must-have for good graphics if you do things right

- too much contrast
I totally hate this. there are so many people who want as much contrast and saturation as possible which just kills the entire look

- no bloom :[
for me this is just like.. cake without icing. (I might be a little obsessed with bloom)


meh.. might be a bit too grumpy but I don't like the shot from the video very much.

To answer your question: Yes it is possible, but I wouldn't go for that specific look, imo.

not really.. It has a lot to do with using your shaders in the right way, properly adjusting them and having good and consistent assets.
But yeah. Without some shaders everything would look like crap. But then again, shaders are needed to render your objects, even if
you just use Acknex's default shader.

Shade-C would be a good point to start. Like I've said, if the shadowmapping is handled well in s-c. it shouldn't be a problem to have some shadow casting lights.
plus, Shade-C comes with a lot of useful stuff and seems to be fast enough (a modded version was already used in a commercial game)

(Edit: There are also gorgeous looking games with rather simple renering and postprocessing btw.. don't just go for complex graphics)

I have to Positive Kartoffel - but i have to admit there is a reason why the most of the Videos in the Link are Unity...

3dgs is not Artist friendly, you have to code a lot of stuff like me just to get to a point where you are able to start "creating".

Shade-C has a bad Shadow system Kartoffel, i worked with it pretty long and in the developer State from Github its pretty glitchy and buggy.
A beginner would probably just call it complicated trash. The other side: Shade-C is the best Graphics LiteC Framework around it just needs modifications along. I did a few so i am able to work with it.

So i am able to say it: I am able to create very intense graphics scenary for my game, just because i worked hard for it.

But then i took a kartoffel to the Knee, a guy that just snips with his fingers and creates IMPOSSIBLE renders XD Yes Kartoffel u are Awesome pls do more for Shade-C that would be ULTRA perfect.

Like with every skill you just need a little time and some dedication to get good at something. I just always looked at what I had, thought about what I can do to make it better and tried.. that's all.
Over some time you get a precise feel and taste for these things.

But seriously, I'm not THAT good and I'm lacking a lot of knowledge when it comes to certain shader-things (shadows, just to name one of them).

I don't think I have what it takes to make shade-c better... man, I don't even understand how shade-c exactly works.

Going to make a Video from my Project... Cause im epic. Then u all have an answer to: "Is it possible to do...?"

I can't.. that was to much!

Good to know that there are masters-of-shaders here.

Potatoman, how much per hour would you want to create shaders for a game?
In any way, you will here from me in the next 2-3 months ^^

I don't consider myself a professional programmer. Neither for shaders nor for all the other game programming and design tasks. I also think/know that I cannot professionally work on jobs like this.

These are the main reasons why I don't take jobs like this. I just can't ensure to provide high quality services (in a given timeframe) and there are too many things I'm not able to do, mostly due to a lack of knowledge and expirience.

Also a $-per-hour payment wouldn't work for me because I RARELY 'work' on a project / peice of code / whatever without doing anything else. So just a fraction of the spent time is being invested in actual programming.

Then maybe you should start doing some shader jobs?
Those are fun, especially if you do fixed price for single shaders. This way the tasks are very restricted and the fixed price solves the issue with you not working most of the time. To calculate the price just estimate the time you think it will take, double it and multiply with whatever you think you want to be payed per hour (I think I started with 20€/h). So lets say a basic bloom effect without anything else (filtering/downsampling/blur/upsampling/blur/combining) takes you like 3h -> 3h*2*20€ = 120€. The *2 is in there because your estimate will turn out to be wrong and from my own experience it is usually twice my initial estimate . Just be carefull to only do the things you specified in the beginning and not more because that usually turns out to get more and more work you do for free. Sure if it is just tweaking some values it might be fine and if something turns out to break, fix that and you may want to help integrate the effect, but that should be it.
I used to get payed after I was done with the job, which of course needs you to trust the one paying you to actually pay on delivery and not just use your shader, but it would have made it easier for me to get out of the job for whatever reason. While in rare cases people my let you down, I had mostly good experiences and even people paying me a lot more than agreed uppon before.

Thanks, Slin.

Doesn't sound bad (although I still feel quite uncomfortable about this). There are just 2 more problems:

1. The time I can and want to spend on programming varys a lot. Also, results are crap if I'm not in the mood.

2. Everyone wants the fucking epic allrounder pipeline with the mysteriously magical make_look_awesome(); function. So if I have to program something, it's the whole damn package and that's just too much.

Nothing last forever.. ^^
Some practice and your bud will blossom into a beautiful flower.... a potato-flower

Like I said. I have plans with you in the next few month. I will send you a PM.

I WANT THE POTATO!
He is mine ^^

Holy fuck you're creepy.

Nothing horrible, just games that are to be market.

120€ for a shitty bloom filter?! People actually pay that much? o___o°

I is not about what, it is about how much time you spend on a job.
Therefor the example sounds about right.

Well Potaterkartoff,

Its about Goodlooking and fully bugfree functionality. :3
So for Bugsupport 120 is a good doubt.

Actually, I wouldn´t do it for 120€ anymore Also I think nobody actually asked me for a bloom effect yet, but for other more specific effects, some people used to pay pretty good. Though my speciality were shaders optimized for iOS devices when they just introduced shaders (they actually had separated vertex and fragment shader units and vector processors o.O, It is all uniform by now...), so there were not many alternatives to paying someone to help .