hair physics?..

Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:08 am

Hah, no, I'm simply saying that the most realistic you can get at the moment is impossible to have in games until better hardware comes out. But I guess that's true with all things. I just can't wait for games with that hair :P
I can understand having come clumps of hair or clothes that move, but you just need to consider a few factors of how it would work in Skyrim.

1. It can't look bad when looking at someone in first person. In native third person games, it's easy to have systems like this where it doesn't have to be perfect, because the camera is zoomed out and you can't look at finer details. But Skyrim does have first person, and you have to make it look natural.

2. There are many video games that have good cloth and hair physics (such as Assassin's Creed, noted above). However, playing Assassin's Creed, one must consider the extent to which they are implemented. There are main characters, who look nice, while generic NPC's don't have any unnecessary physics. In Skyrim, there will be NPC's all over the place wearing the same clothes you are, the same hairstyle you have, so you need to have the detail on everyone, not just the player, be equitable. That detail can't be so good it lags the game.

3. These systems, when coupled with other systems, can't make the game laggy. Skyrim is trying to do a lot already. The system of snow, the water, the shadows, and the advanced lighting all contribute to performance demand. There is an edge to this bucket, and we don't know how full it is. Adding another system on top of it can make it overflow, and it might not be able to be included without making another system worse.

That's about it I suppose. I'm just hoping that, if it's not included, it can be modded in on the PC version. Havok controls animations now, so hopefully we won't have the problem in Oblivion where parts of characters can't be havoked because of the animation system. At least Skyrim is still an improvement, where long hairstyles such as the ones provided by Ren could only move with the head, and loved to float or clip based on where your head was angled. Now that they angle with the body as well, we can at least have some long hairstyles that don't look ridiculous :P
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Brian Newman
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:51 pm

Hah, no, I'm simply saying that the most realistic you can get at the moment is impossible to have in games until better hardware comes out. But I guess that's true with all things. I just can't wait for games with that hair :P
I can understand having come clumps of hair or clothes that move, but you just need to consider a few factors of how it would work in Skyrim.

1. It can't look bad when looking at someone in first person. In native third person games, it's easy to have systems like this where it doesn't have to be perfect, because the camera is zoomed out and you can't look at finer details. But Skyrim does have first person, and you have to make it look natural.

2. There are many video games that have good cloth and hair physics (such as Assassin's Creed, noted above). However, playing Assassin's Creed, one must consider the extent to which they are implemented. There are main characters, who look nice, while generic NPC's don't have any unnecessary physics. In Skyrim, there will be NPC's all over the place wearing the same clothes you are, the same hairstyle you have, so you need to have the detail on everyone, not just the player, be equitable. That detail can't be so good it lags the game.

3. These systems, when coupled with other systems, can't make the game laggy. Skyrim is trying to do a lot already. The system of snow, the water, the shadows, and the advanced lighting all contribute to performance demand. There is an edge to this bucket, and we don't know how full it is. Adding another system on top of it can make it overflow, and it might not be able to be included without making another system worse.

That's about it I suppose. I'm just hoping that, if it's not included, it can be modded in on the PC version. Havok controls animations now, so hopefully we won't have the problem in Oblivion where parts of characters can't be havoked because of the animation system. At least Skyrim is still an improvement, where long hairstyles such as the ones provided by Ren could only move with the head, and loved to float or clip based on where your head was angled. Now that they angle with the body as well, we can at least have some long hairstyles that don't look ridiculous :P


The game already features sliders for most details, "NPC Physics" sliders would make a lot of sense. No point having that guy 50 feet away's hair swaying in the wind, you can barely see it - but if you've got the power, it's nice to have.
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Benito Martinez
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:49 am

The game already features sliders for most details, "NPC Physics" sliders would make a lot of sense. No point having that guy 50 feet away's hair swaying in the wind, you can barely see it - but if you've got the power, it's nice to have.


There are sliders in the PC version, yeah. But when including specific groups of visual features, they think of the Xbox, where there are no visual options to mess with. The PC can do some of those things better than the Xbox, but it won't have many, if any, extra features the Xbox doesn't because the Xbox is the primary platform the game is developed for. When it comes to PC gaming, who knows how high you can fill the bucket. But the Xbox has a known limit, and that's what game designers are concerned with matching.

Draw distance is also important. That's the question of quality vs quantity. Many games can go for quality, but Elder Scrolls is an open world, where there must be an even balance of both. A dynamic adjustment of detail can help with that, but if you don't use it to its potential, the system just ends up costing performance as well. I don't think it'll ever be truly mastered until games support DX11 with Tessellation, where quality can be dynamically downscaled the further you get away, without any loading or unloading involved.

Speaking of, I love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQQpCd_vvGU video. Elder Scrolls VI must definitely make use of that.
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Mark Hepworth
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:04 am

There are sliders in the PC version, yeah. But when including specific groups of visual features, they think of the Xbox, where there are no visual options to mess with. The PC can do some of those things better than the Xbox, but it won't have many, if any, extra features the Xbox doesn't because the Xbox is the primary platform the game is developed for. When it comes to PC gaming, who knows how high you can fill the bucket. But the Xbox has a known limit, and that's what game designers are concerned with matching.


Well, the console versions have "sliders", there's just no UI for it. They don't have to simulate every loaded NPC, is what I mean. (The same way there was no "View Distance" slider in Oblivion, and yet the consoles had a view distance)
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celebrity
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:21 pm

Hmmm... Was I the only one who watched that video the whole nine minuts?

LOL, I made it as a "work in progress" animation and youtube don't have a loop function so I just copied the animation, I have been thinking about a ending like having her strip.
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Caroline flitcroft
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:23 am

What stands out most to me regarding that pic is how low poly his clothes look.
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Mr. Ray
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:54 pm

So you don't simulate every strand. You don't call of physics at all because you can't do it down to the subatomic level, do you? Video games are all about abstracting what's neccesary, and the technology behind them is no different.

Corectly, you do the traditional way, hair is a transmapped hood, perhaps with a cople of layers, however you do cloth animation on the hair hood making the hair down your back flow up then falling and lay on the outside of armor. I have played with dynamic hair, found it nice for curly african hair but animation of long hair takes forever.

Same for clothes, you use cloth animation for long robes, skirts and capes, not on pants.
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quinnnn
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:38 pm

LOL, I made it as a "work in progress" animation and youtube don't have a loop function so I just copied the animation, I have been thinking about a ending like having her strip.


Well in that case, I would watch it all the way through again! :teehee:
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Steve Smith
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:38 pm

Possibly.

Hair should be dynamic, but let's not go overboard. Most of us here don't have hair that moves around, and that is because only certain types of hair/hairstyles move enough for people to actually notice.

So is it the end of the world if hair isn't a bit more dynamic this time? No, but it's always great to implement it to add believability. This is especially true in a fantasy game like Skyrim, in which many of the people you meet are going to have beards and long hair.
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Benjamin Holz
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 6:59 am

I always hated the hair in the TES games, even in Oblivion, games before it had better looking hair, its either plastic look AND shinny or shiny still
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Micah Judaeah
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:03 am

http://www.gamestar.de/_misc/images/original.cfm?pk=2198719

You can see his clothes look stiff and most likely don't have physics but the hair has that sharp corner in it near the back and it wouldn't look natural if he was standing up straight. What do you think?

I know the pic is old but i never paid attention to his hair.


I see what you mean. but on a serious note.... WHY THE F DO YOU CARE ABOUT THE HAIR?
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Kelsey Hall
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:55 pm

Not being any kind of an expert regarding in-game physics, my judgment will have to be reserved until I can actually see them.

I have viewed other in-game physics, and have watched many of the game-physics related vids on the net. There is a lot of potential.

I am sure some of what I have seen is what is called "next-gen," though. I would love to see some more from Skyrim.
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Susan Elizabeth
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:59 am

I'm pretty sure it will not look like that in the final version *hopefully :angel: * And for the hair and cloth physics, you don't have to go overboard with it, for example in Red Dead Redemption. I was playing it recently and it was a windy day in the game and John Marston's hair was blowing to one side, his coat was flapping around and the cloth on the tents was flapping too, along with the vegetation and grass. And this was on console and an open world game, I'm pretty sure it can easily be done for Skyrim :happy:
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Sam Parker
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 11:18 am

They can simulate a full head of hair. It just slows the most powerful systems to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF8CUSiPDJ0 :P

Maybe in the 9th generation of video games...


When talking about "hair" physics, games (that do have that) don't actually simulate each real-like hair strands, but instead uses cloth technique, basically it's more like clothes physics but with textures of 'hair.' Even so, no game developers do the whole head for hair physics, only the parts that would sway in the wind/motion, like ponytails and longer hair on the back of the head
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Alyesha Neufeld
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:36 am

Hair and cloth physics? Fat chance. Go look at all the games that have hair / cloth physics. They're all PC exclusives or Heavy Rain, and that's only because Heavy Rain has so little to render aside from the characters.
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Lillian Cawfield
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:56 pm

I'm pretty sure it will not look like that in the final version

I'm pretty sure it will. Think of all the times desperate people have said that when looking at pre release screenshots of a game. :cryvaultboy:
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Claire Lynham
 
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