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Guilty Gear 3D models look like 2D sprites.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by miya, May 21, 2013.

  1. miya

    miya

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    I seriously thought it was 2D at first, can anyone explain how they did this?
     
  2. HolBol

    HolBol

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    Shaders, textures, and good animation.
     
  3. imaginaryhuman

    imaginaryhuman

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    That's a pretty impressive way to make 3D 2D. ... lots of vertex animation.
     
  4. HeavyMcD

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    I am looking in the video for any procedural cell shading tells and I cant find any. If this is real time 3d to 2d style shaders and lines the work is awesome. Other software programs do a good job at simulating 2d. I think Lightwave was the first to do this maybe 18 or so years ago. Then followed Maya and Max. Are we sure that this is indeed 3d? Is there something posted that says it is real time 3d animation and not digitized cell animation?
    Or are you going from the camera pivot shot as a reference that it is 3d? Because that camera is move kind of chunky. That could be rotocaptured from a 3d rendering as a reference. But that of course would mean that the devs would have to make that camera move for every character combination. Not impossible just time consuming.

    Regaudless if it is realtime 3d to 2d or a ton of 2d art very well crafted into the game, I love the look.
     
  5. ChaosWWW

    ChaosWWW

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    This looks very convincing but very convincing cel shading is not exactly new. If you look at the Naruto games for example, the quality is comparable.

    Wondering if this was worth the effort for a sidescroller, though? I guess even meticulously modeling a convincing illusion of a 2d character is easier then drawing hundreds of frames.
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2013
  6. CazicThule

    CazicThule

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    What makes you think they aren't? There's only one point where they "spin" around and that looked pre-rendered for the trailer and there's a visible cut between that scene and the gameplay. The entirety of the gameplay was 2d.
     
  7. HeavyMcD

    HeavyMcD

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    Exactly what I was thinking.
     
  8. Kinos141

    Kinos141

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    I like how the animation looks hand drawn.
     
    BrandyStarbrite likes this.
  9. khanstruct

    khanstruct

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    No, its 3d, but like others said, its nothing new. Look at games like Okami and Borderlands. Its just a clever use of shaders.
     
  10. ColossalDuck

    ColossalDuck

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    I am pretty sure he knows it was 3D. He was strictly talking about the gameplay being 2d.
     
  11. khanstruct

    khanstruct

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    I know. I didn't quote him. I was responding to the guy who suggested they may be sprites.
     
  12. will_jones

    will_jones

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    good lighting
     
  13. RichardKain

    RichardKain

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    Oooooo... I really like where they're going with this. Keeping the action and rendering fixed to a 2D plane is great for fans of the series. At the same time, the 3D rendering allows them to take advantage of the efficient production pipeline that 3D modeling and animation provides. (as well as the occasional camera pans) And I love the style they've managed to achieve. Very effective. I have most of the BlazBlue entries, and would love to get my hands on a game with a 3D art style like this.
     
  14. FlyingRobot

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    Lots of techniques can go into this, fueling debates amongst fans. But certainly this is not cel shaded 3D.

    The most effective is a combination of 3D and 2D which is a popular pipeline in cel shaded films. In that pipeline you have 2 set of characters, one 2D and one 3D double for that character. 2D Animators use 3D poses and 3D animation clay renders only for references and upon them they draw and paint cels. That way they have a solid reference and can't deviate from the character and also they are free to add 2D nuances like expressions, hairs, waving clothes etc. Most cases they are free to improvise in 2D and in some cases like turnaround they stick with the 3D renders and paints on top of it. Thus creating a sense of disbelief. It's a production trick.
     
  15. Acumen

    Acumen

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    I stumbled over some more 3d expertise insight in the subject over at polycount:
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121144

    Quite an interesting read :)
    And these guys sure have had their experiences with "neat shaders", so it's almost cute that they can't get their head around it precisely, either :D
     
  16. FlyingRobot

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    Interesting read!

    Though I'm still convinced, this is not 3D render/shader. Sometimes low tech looks like pretty hi tech.

    The Street Fighter 4 was 3D.
     
  17. sama-van

    sama-van

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    *Love* O_O!

    There are a lot of game in Japan dropping 2D to hi-res 3D for game!
     
  18. Khyrid

    Khyrid

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    If you look at 0:54 the guy's chest on the left is breathing. Notice how the textures expand. They would usually not do that in 2D animation. That can be animate din 2D of course, but the look of it is very similar to how 3D models look with breathing animations. Having worked on so many 3D models, I just have an eye for them. There were no 2D animated characters in this vid.
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2013
  19. SinisterMephisto

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    I don't get how you can say Naruto, Okami or Borderlands. This is far more polished and convincing. Those other games still let you know they are 3D. This one confuses you.
     
  20. n0mad

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    Hi, I was tricked into thinking it was 2d at first too because of chars looking like being animated at 12 fps, but the producer mentionned it was 3D, just that they intentionally kept a lower framerate for characters to keep the old school 2D fighting style. That's quite an awesome artistic choice imo.
    And it's no cel shading, just very well hand drawn textures.
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2013
  21. Devilbox-Games

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    On top of the high quality cel-shading and low framerate animation, it looks like they're doing trickery with the perspective too. If you look at when the camera first spins around them it almost seems like the characters shift from orthographic projection to perspective projection. I guess that would also help make them look more like flat sprites.

    I'd love to see some details about their techniques as I'm quite fond of NPR techniques, especially when it comes to anime-style visuals. This really does go beyond anything achieved in recent Naruto games, they look spot on in still shots but in motion it's easy to see they're rendered in 3D, unlike this new Guilty Gear. Okami is a great example of NPR but it's a completely different style and Borderlands is really rather basic cel-shading.

    I'm also very excited for the game itself, I never got into previous Guilty Gear games but I'm a big fan of BlazBlue and keep meaning to give Guilty Gear a proper go.
     
  22. n0mad

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    Forgot to mention that, too, yep it's orthographic :)
     
  23. FlyingRobot

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    Still can't believe my eyes, this is 3D. Yah it is, they used Unreal Engine.

    robot got fooled by crazy talented japs...:D
     
  24. SinisterMephisto

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    Its not the same thing
     
  25. dogzerx2

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    Oh, permission to swear... HOW THE ACTUAL FFFFFF....???

    just kidding!

    But seriously how did they accomplish such control over shaders? You had given me any isolated frame and I would have bet my life it's a traditional japanese cartoon!
     
  26. dxcam1

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  27. imaginaryhuman

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    Well, it's just textures on a mesh.
     
  28. PrimeDerektive

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    Man... I didn't buy it until that polycount dude's screenshot:



    That is incredible.
     
  29. RichardKain

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    Actually, the textures are probably a lot less significant when it comes to this approach. They are doing this with very high-polycount models. Most of the textures are for manipulating the shaders, not painting the models. A lot of the details are being done in the mesh, not the textures. (the opposite of the usual approach)

    They can get away with this because of the type of game they are making. A 1-on-1 fighter can devote a lot more geometry detail to the individual characters. The fixed chamera perspective makes for a much more predictable clipping area, and most of the corner-cutting for the graphics can go into the background arenas. This frees the developer up to go a bit crazy on the triangle counts on the characters. This lets them lean on the shaders for defining outlines on the complex geometry, which helps to create the illustrated effect.
     
    odaimoko likes this.
  30. meta87

    meta87

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    I couldn't believe this is cell shading either, dang! I kind of find the laggy animations annoying. I know it's keeping with 2d fighter animation style, but give me this in 60 fps! :D
     
  31. Devilbox-Games

    Devilbox-Games

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    Even with that screenshot no one would have been any the wiser that the gameplay used 3D models if they didn't do the perspective change and spin-around in the actual fight as they could have used 3D models for cheap cutscene production and sprites for the actual gameplay. I'm still really impressed with the whole technique.
     
  32. n0mad

    n0mad

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    What impresses me the most is how the artists managed to recreate practically the same look, proportions (and disproportions) from the old 2D sprites. It's incredibly accurate.

    See 2D sprite of Sol :

     
    Last edited: May 26, 2013
  33. the_motionblur

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    Wow! Ultra cool style. I love it.

    But not so many look as convincing as this one does, so far, do they?

    I'd take a new Final Fantasy in THIS style over the recent (post FFX) one, any day.
    Perferrably even with a more open world again. Though if this really is pure 3D the effort put into the models and animations may be very high.
     
  34. vladster

    vladster

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    I like it
     
  35. Ippokratis

    Ippokratis

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    I have submitted a new set of very advanced toon shaders to the asset store, it will be soon available.
    I believe it is able to reproduce the results from the video above.
    If someone can provide a decent anime fighter model, around 10-20k verts, please contact me at ippobour at gmail dot com.
     
  36. constant

    constant

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    They tricked me! Looks like the best cell shaded game so far, as close as it gets to the original.

    Making animations "choppy" produce such an effect, it's like setting the interpolation of keyframes to look like "digital curves".
     
  37. Alectora

    Alectora

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    It's obviously an amazing work. It requires a lot of tricks to achieve this. For example, the shadow is not even following the global light from the sun, but if it does, I believe the "anime" style would not be achieved. The texturing and modelling also require some tricks.

    But what amazes me is, if this is true, the animation is automatically chopped to achieve hand-drawing like anime instead of manually marking each important frame to draw. And I don't think they simply drop the FPS down, but there are some accentuation at certain moves, which I think it could programmatically achievable during collisions or limitations on when to draw. If this is true, it is extremely efficient for development to achieve this style.

    For me all of these are meant to maintain the purity of anime style but with the most efficient production pipeline they could get; by using 3rd party engine and do it in 3D. I saw on how difficult it is to maintain proportion/lighting in 2D hand drawing animation, and 3D simply cut that task off. With today's technology, the difference won't be much compare to high quality 2D hand drawing (as proven in the Guilty Gear Xrd trailer even when there are polygons in close up shots) as we could reach more than 15 - 20k poly counts per character (could be more for this kind of game), so this year is the right year to do so.
     
  38. n0mad

    n0mad

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    To have a better view on the work, here is two versions of Sol :

    GG Xrd :




    GG XX (2D sprite version) :



    And here is a side-by-side comparison between 2D sprite (left) and 2.5D version (right) :

     
  39. the_motionblur

    the_motionblur

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    I could be wrong as animation is only a secondary skill of mine - thus I use it mostly for rendering and not so much in Unity so far (unfortunately) but ...
    You can easily set animation curves to step instead of teweening - thus eliminating the in-betweening your software automatically does for you. Pixar demonstrated a similar style on the extras characters in Wreck It Ralph. I think so far it's just that simply nobody thought of using it for an actual stylistic purpose in character animation.
    It means on the other hand that for the acentuation of the motion you'd have to do all the work in between the key poses yourself again as oposed to letting the computer do it's work. Maybe there is some automation involved so that the inbetween is procedurally chopped up for the animation curves. With the style being so true to being hand drawn I could easily imagin they simply chose to do everything by hand to retain the full control over the single frams, though.
     
  40. BrUnO-XaVIeR

    BrUnO-XaVIeR

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    Anime industries are doing this for ages.
     
  41. Devilbox-Games

    Devilbox-Games

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    There's a massive difference between doing this in a pre-rendered video production environment and doing it in real-time. The techniques involved are non-comparable as, in anime industries, they can spend as long as they want rendering each frame and can hand-tweak a lot more factors of each frame and the final composite, including doing draw-overs to fix up each any issues with the rendered frames.

    This is impressive because it's done within the limitations of a game, it surpasses the previous best-in-class anime-style game, Ni No Kuni, but a wide margin. I mean, proper hair with individual strands and physics simulation has been done in movie industries for over a decade, that doesn't make it any less impressive when it's done in a real-time game, does it?
     
  42. MiguelFu

    MiguelFu

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    I've been following this guys for a very long time now and with each game they have increased the use of 3D models as reference for the animators.
    In Blaze Blue the 3D models had such quality that they could have nearly used the rendered sprite for the game. They even had the colors already in the model and outlines.
    But no, their process ends with a 2D hand-drawn sprite. And in this case is the same. The first camera spin is only for the presentation, the in-game sprites are made following the same process they have been perfecting over time.
    They get as close as they can in 3D, but the final in-game sprites are 2D. Saves a huge chunk of time because the animators skip the sketching, refining proportions and details, in-betweening... and they go directly to the clean-up stage.
    But rest assured that this sprites are 2D at the end of the process. Just take a look at the movement where the character is thrown into the air, the angle is quite extreme, but the camera is also still. If you had the power to make 3D look like this in real time, Why wouldn't you move the camera around more?
     
  43. MarigoldFleur

    MarigoldFleur

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    It's completely 3D. They've gone on the record as stating this.

    And they don't move the camera around a whole bunch because it's a fighting game that needs to take place on a locked plane and every single attack needs to adhere to a very clear, very readable set of frames.
     
  44. Devilbox-Games

    Devilbox-Games

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    Because moving the camera around would break the illusion. Half of the technique's accuracy seems to be rendering each character from separate orthographic cameras and compositing them into the scene. When the camera moves around the characters the perspective change and the characters suddenly look very 3D, despite the characters still being exactly the same models rendered with the same shaders and lighting.
     
  45. MarigoldFleur

    MarigoldFleur

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    The cutscenes that look near completely 2D are also rendered in 3D and have actual dynamic lighting. There's a lot of very specific shader work going on there that I've been working on replicating for a few months now. The camera doesn't have to be locked to maintain the illusion.
     
  46. pushbyte

    pushbyte

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    I've been toying around with shaders too, trying to emulate this look. Have you had any success? I'd love to see some screenshots if so or hear more about your implementation!
     
  47. MiguelFu

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    Source, please?
     
  48. MarigoldFleur

    MarigoldFleur

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  49. PrimeDerektive

    PrimeDerektive

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  50. MiguelFu

    MiguelFu

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    Awesome new video, thanks for the link. Yes, this one gives much more information.

    If anyone around here is interested in participating in fighting game project making 3D models that will be turned into 2D sprites, let me know, please. I'm considering to include 3D in the process to save animation time.