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What's with the spandex armour?
User836
Member UncommonPosts: 117
When I played, I thought the game quite pretty and initially I liked the graphics and the art style. Then I started feeling that something about the characters was a bit off but didn't quite know what.. until I realized that armour is (except for certain armour parts) just a skin placed on top of the avatar's model. The waist circumference of the character is the same with a bare stomach as when wearing full plate. While my character had looked good during character creation, it looked super thin when in armour.
I'm not saying that this is a fatal flaw of the game, gamebreaking or any such thing (I didn't play on for long but for other reasons). I'm just wondering: was this just a way to cut corners or was this necessary to get good performance or something? As I said, overall the game looks good but this thing was a bit of an eyesore.
Is anyone else bothered by this?
I'm not saying that this is a fatal flaw of the game, gamebreaking or any such thing (I didn't play on for long but for other reasons). I'm just wondering: was this just a way to cut corners or was this necessary to get good performance or something? As I said, overall the game looks good but this thing was a bit of an eyesore.
Is anyone else bothered by this?
Comments
The end game is mainly large scale PvP and when you have battles consisting of 100 or more people you don't care how fancy the armor is.
Sample of a relief shader rendering. The bumps aren't part of the model, they're done with textures that simulate 3d information.
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"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
And either way, couldn't the same method be used to give thickness to the ESO armour?
Also, thanks to everyone who replied.
You could use it on a character model and some games do, but it starts to complicate things with mesh deformation and throws a lot more polygons onto a model than if someone has constructed a similarly shaped model, meaning it'll rapidly bog down your machine if you fill the screen with characters utilizing such.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Yes. It is done with textures.
Guy on the left is base model. Triangles usually, but this one happens to be quads (square faces).
Next is the SAME guy smooth shaded (rendered so you don't see the triangles (quads) and with light and shading)
Next is the SAME guy with the relief map applied. You see tons of extra detail including shape.
Last is the SAME guy with diffuse (color) texture added.
A normal map looks like this:
In the RBG channels, there is 3D information (a vector) encoded.
A relief map (displacement map?) looks just like a normal map except it has one extra channel, encoded in A, which is the distance from the face of the real model to where the 'fake' 3D mesh is located in 3D space. That distance is called the displacement.
There are limits to relief / displacement mapping. There are a couple different techniques, and some make nasty artifacts if you push it too far. Some can also bog down a Graphics Card.
Although it could add thickness, it might not. Some shaders bump out, others bump in. The bump out ones are the slowest, but they do add thickness to a model.
My GUESS about ESO is using a shader (the program on the GPU that does the effect) that they felt was a good trade-off between quality and speed. It looks to me like it might be bump-in, but that's tough to tell eyeballing screenshots.
NOTE: I might be slightly off in terminology. I'm an amateur at this stuff.
edit: I don't know tesselation. That's more advanced than anything I've touched.
That's good information, thank you.
In the Witcher example, the base model is already "dressed" and so the finished result looks great. In ESO, unless I'm mistaken, the "dressed" character uses the same model as the "naked" one, which should be why it looks strange to me, am I right?
I suppose they could swap base models for different body parts when you swap out gear and I would guess that that's being done in e.g. Age of Conan? What you save in going the ESO route then is not having to create as many models + the "naked" model is perhaps not very detailed which means it can be displayed easily?
(I'm not well versed in this area but I hope you understand me even if I use strange terminology)
Parallax is inversely, one of the "bump in" methods. The styles that rely on using texture shading and point of view for creating the illusion of depth by skewing the surface texture.
ESO doesn't do either of those, really. Mostly they just use normal maps, which only really defines depth in terms of how it maps shadows on a surface, rather than attempting to emulate depth or create it.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Yes, I think that's correct. Normal and parallax mapping on naked character models with painted armor.
Real 3D armor sometimes uses a technique called mesh hiding. You pretty much take a single character model and put every possible piece of clothing on them (as a 3D model), and then set up each armor so it can be toggled off and on. Only the armor being worn (turned on) renders so rendering speed is still okay, but it adds a ton of memory load (models get huge).
Only seen it done once with the engine I use. It looks like a boat load of work. The rigging and animation looks like a nightmare. Months of work per character would be my guess.
Another technique for armor is mount points. The armor is a model not part of the character, and then is attached to the model so the models animation moves it. Shoulders, helmets and weapons are common with this technique.
edit: cleanup
I do PVP a lot and performance in large sieges with 100+ players and multiple siege engines is nothing short of outstanding - if it wasn't, THAT would be a deal-breaker for me.
Is it mostly PVE players who have played a lot of Asian PVE MMOs that are so bothered by this?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The armor looks like crap. Everyone looks the same, bad. The reason cosmetic cash shop items are so succcessful in MMOs these days? Because most people DO care about how their character looks.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
User836 said:
I associate highly detailed armor with Square Enix and other Asian developers. Looks seem to be a big thing for them.
My guess is that those who hate everything about ESO (but for some reason like to stalk those who don't share their hate) have no credibility on the topic whatsoever.
Try mixing in some positivity with your hate... if you care about being credible, that is.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Ok, while WoW or GW2 or FFXIV are "pretty" in their own ways I really dislike their styles and actually that is the most important factor that keeps me from trying out FFXIV. Much prefer the Elder Scrolls style (although the implementation, as described earlier, doesn't impress me). Even better is the AoC visuals and armour design though, they're my favourite.
Nothing wrong with liking FFXIV visuals but they are so not for me. I don't see any contradiction in wanting good character models and not liking mini van-sized shoulderpads, warriors in school girl outfits or kawaii animal player characters.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
1. Player Only - Higher Quality Armor and Cloak is render on their character only.
2. Radius - Players within the set radius will display the higher quality models and cloaks.
3. NPCs On / Off - NPCs use higher quality armor / cloaks.
4. Everything On!
Similar in how EQ2 does it... I would probably try the radius option first with the NPC option on and then if I had to Player Only + NPC option on.
But since you had zero interest in reading what others are saying. main point of criticism is that armor looks like skin itself and got nothing to do with exaggerated shoulder pads of WOW armor. And ofcourse usual fans ran to support your absurd argument.
Life as usual on ESO forums.
i'm big about what my character looks like but i typically like dark, gritty, and menacing looking characters.....not cute Asian style.
so eso wins in the long run for me.
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