More "The Butterfly Effect" Information Released

The Butterfly Effect project was an eye-opening experience and took Unity to places it's never been before. Many of the improvements that surfaced are planned for further development and will roll into the product throughout the 4.x cycle and beyond. The first of these implementations is DirectX 11 support and the improved post-processing effects you'll find in Unity 4.0.

Check it out here: http://unity3d.com/promo/butterfly/

 

Excellent work from all concerned. I guess the 5 gig webplayer version is still a ways off though lol

When I talk to friends in the game industry biz (artists) they all claim unity simply does not match unreal 4 demo. To address this I would suggest a series of webplayers which demonstrate key features separately:

- hair
- explosions
- millions of gpu particles

As the reason unreal 4 blows unity away visually is because they throw so much damn money into these demos it's not even funny. But in isolation, perhaps unity can kill two birds with one stone: being the first to have online dx11 demos, and the first to isolate these simple elements which are so exciting to so many.

Regardless, keep it up unity, it is appreciated by many.

 

It does look good, funny and cartoonie the main character falls bang into the uncanny valley in my opinion (which is trite as that's what he does in the short).

But it's not a very action packed must have game intro, e.g. Warcraft/Halo/Unreal!

Would you play a game about this Mr Bean like character?

 

Its an impressive demo, as hippo says it would be great to see these individual strengths being covered, regardless of Unreal 4's demos they did a good features walkthrough that explained a lot of really impressive stuff well - I'm sure Unity can do much the same things but it would be good to see them discussed explicitly

Great demo though and lots of great impressive technology on show, i watched it in the unite videos and it does have some showstoppers, the pyroclastic explosion at the end is much mentioned it seems

Its also nice to see a demo that isnt a bunch of freaking space marines, it's like technology devs are finally growing up

 

This isn't a game. It's a short film rendered in real time. I think you are too caught up in your "why Unity no AAA?" mindset atm ;-)

 

Make Advert Fate into a directx 11 fabulosa... NOW!

You see, it is perfect you can do real time reflections in all the gold stuff and particles everywhere especially the guns then just have this mystical girl hologram(Hair) that guides you through the map... there is an airstrike at the end of it IIRC on the massive bot so that can be an massive fireworks show(Explosions(Particles))

And tesselate the kagibees out of it.

 

I'm glad Unity tried something "different" ;-)
Professional developers don't need a Michael Bay type game demo to see what's new and interesting in an engine. Gamers do, but devs don't. It could be an interactive whack-a-mole that the purpose would be the same : show tool features, not game concepts.

All those FPS / RPG style demos in other engines are made to gather some kids in front of a big screen during a convention and say "woooooooow look at that warrior/knight/gun/rifle/alien ! It's so cooooooooool" in order to make some noise on gaming sites. But the dev next to them will say "yeah, the modelers artists of this demo are talented. But where are the engine features ?"
In the end, it's a game engine, gamers are not the audience, devs are.

 

How gamers think:

Unity = Bad graphics.
UDK = Good graphics.
CE3 = Best graphics.

They think of this when they are going to play a game, its not a big problem but still... and usually the tech demos push the engine to its absolute limits none of Unitys have.

 

I understand the logic. But still, if a gamer judges a game visual quality by its engine, it means that from the start the game artists didn't really overdo themselves So the blame is to put on them, not the engine ;-)
(I mean look at Oliver Spike : Dimension Jumpers, great example of quality)

 

You and I know that... TBH so should gamers but no they call it on the engine not the artists example : slender, not to be rude but its graphics suck and every one is like "he should have made it in UDK or CryEngine" when really these would just have some nicer shaders.

 

How do I put this , while I respect Unity for what it is . IF this is the best Unity 4 can do, you've really highlighted its limitations . I guess with 15 million and a team full of the best artist on earth , someone COULD make a game that really pushes DX11...

 

Can you elaborate a bit on how we've highlighted Unity's limitations here?

Where are these budget figures coming from to make a game with great graphics in Unity with DX11?

 

It's a showcase for what Unity can do . I love Unity, this SDK has literally motivated me to learn programming , but in my head I'm comparing it to this

Like the only part I really saw an out standing amount of detail was the fish tank ( the scales look nice) .

And thats my noob estimate given most AAA games are costing that amount now in days . I guess if you have REALLY motivated artists you could pull off a game that pushing the limits of not only Unity , but DX11 as well , for a million but thats low balling it .

 

So...Realtime GI. Deffered Lit Particle, and Full APEX integration isn't?

 

Hi,
I believe that unity made a nice demo.
I wish to see more, as downloadable projects.
Implementations of the technologies described in the blog post that can run in unity 4 have a great potential.
Jaw - dropping impressions of "x" company demo cannot pay the rent.

 

Hippocoder, Hold on, Im working on a GPU particles webplayer I don't think there were GPU particles in the butterfly demo?

But unity just is behind unreal engine graphics wise.Unreal just spends more resources on that area than unity can. Im more excited for the 'learn unity' videos. Those will show off unitys real power - simplicity, usability and workflow.

 

I think that was a very nice demo by Unity much more technically sophisticated than the Unreal demo video in this thread. The Mr Bean angle was alot more interesting that the typical angle chosen to do these demos. I think Unreal gets more credit than it deserves because the atmosphere is so dark, hiding it's flaws.

Of course Unity can't actually do what was demonstrated in the video but I read in another thread that shapekeys are coming. I'm not sure though about the man's hair and slippers as it seemed to be implied that that was an nVidia dependent process.

 

While the Unreal 4 demo is indeed impressive I think the tech involved in each demo is more on par than most people realize. I think it actually boils down to the art style for some people. If you like heavy metal with demons and lava then the Unreal demo is going to seem more appealing... if on the other hand you're tired of 80s album cover cliches dominating the forefront of AAA game styles then this demo might appeal to you more.

Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

Epic is awesome and they have honed a style over the years that perfectly compliments what their engine can do. So much so that the "Unreal look" is almost synonymous with AAA in some people's minds. For this demo we could've tried to compete with that look, but we wanted to do something a little different and we hope that most people can appreciate that.

 

The Butterfly Effect is just amazing, very good job guys.

 

I agree with everything you are saying. Really the only thing that really stands out to me technically in Unreals demo, is the real time ambient lighting that reflects off surfaces. Everything else is just great art and use of fancy shaders(which both engines have). Can Unity 4 do this completely in real time? If not, is this going to happen any time soon?

 

Yes, "The Butterfly Effect" is real time rendered. Marketing BS aside, we would never lie about something like that as it would just backfire in our face.

 

I really like the butterfly effect demo! would love to see some of the shaders and post processing effects for download...

Here's are some other tech demos that are amazing!

metal gear solid ground zeroes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5IVOs5Pxh8

Kara - Heavy Rain/Quantic Dream Tech Demo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EvqiGm0wz8&feature=related

FINAL FANTASY REALTIME TECH DEMO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UVX0OUO9ptU

 

I think if you could, it would be better for Unity to do a demo that shows people what they expect too see when it comes to eyecandy. People scream for a showcase in Unity that is along the Unreal demo lines. Everybody loves monsters, lava and big ass weapons swinged in slow mo to the tunes of some epic soundtrack. There is a time for everything, this wasn't the best time to do a demo like butterfly I believe. You could have spent that money better

 

I meant real time ambient light that reflects off surfaces...Can that be done in real time? Sorry if the wording was confusing.

 

I see what your saying and see it would make some sense marketing wise, but why do the same as all the others?, I think Unity could be noted for taking a different direction and thats great in my book.

 

But monsters, lava, and big ass weapons are lame ;-)

We're not trying to catch up with Unreal... we're on our way to leap frogging them while offering something much more streamlined. Most people here agree that Unity is simply a better tool for creating games. Catching up on the perceived graphic superiority of Unreal is one of our goals, but more important to us is enabling people to make their game ideas a reality with straightforward tools. I think it's easier for us to incrementally improve our graphics capabilities in comparison to Unreal having to rework their entire workflow.

Anyway, I didn't mean for this to become yet another Unity vs Unreal thread. "The Butterfly Effect" is an example of where Unity is at right now with high quality graphics.

 

You think monsters are lame, oh S*** Unity is doomed but yeah I'm not trying to sell Unity to people here but to my bosses and how awkward as it sounds I need to give them a boner but I can't do that with a nerd on moped So if you could consider something else for your next demo or maybe an artcompetition saving you the work yourself that would be awesome.

 

I'm up for an art competition

 

The shapekeys that I read is coming to Unity...would the be a Unity 4.x release cycle or Unity 5.x release cycle just to give an ideal in the next year or two or the next 2 - 4 years...

 

Lol that was a nice skit. But I totally agree with that. Epic seems not really creative when it comes to their games and tech demos. It's always the same setting, more or less. Though that may change with Fortnite.

But I have also to agree with Filto. The Butterfly Effect goes in the right direction to show what Unity is capable of. But the theme is a bit awkward, even if I appreciate that UT tries something different.

Edit:
As for the UDK demo. Yes it looks great technically. And some graphics stuff is more advanced than Unity. No doubt about that.
But personally, I'm not a fan of their license terms and the fact that they only support Autodesk software fully (Blender user here).
With Unity I have also a chance to get my game on consoles, thanks to Union. If I want that with UDK I have to buy a full license.
Not to mention, that the most "UDK games" are actually done with the full license, like Dungeon Defenders. UDK is still more of a modding tool and portfolio/showcase engine for artists.

 

I think their intention was much to show that it offered the workflow and means to easily create a plethora of things, bringing together many technologies into one narrative sequence, in terms of actual storytelling the unreal demos have been cretinous and just been grunty stills before the next special effect, its utterly immature gamenerd baiting, do you think pixar would make a warhammer feature film? no its a completely absurd idea, do you respect pixar any less for it? no, we're big boys and we should have the big brains to see beyond really trivial things and see what the technology in butterfly effect means and that they even got it together and were very happy with how it went, hence a big thumbs up for 'this engine actually works and you can make stuff in it that wasnt 90% imported from maya/max'. Workflow, ease of use, no demons, getting things done. I think its really nicely judged.

That said! And in some dream if this could come true - to be allowed to have some of the shaders or video explanations of some of the technlogies in the demo and other things unity are demoing, and us all given a competition to make a badass demo for unity, then i'm really quite sure we'll be getting plenty or super awesome looking demons and space marines and short of a feeeww things, theres plenty available on the forums, answers, google and asset store for amazing things to be done

Do a competition, aww go on, i dont fancy my chances to be honest but it would be great fun i think

 

The look and feel of Butterfly Effect aside, I really admire the approach from a design point of view. Unity is thinking more like a company like IDEO in this regard. Think about it, to do a tech demo they went to a company that doesn't do real-time anything and said let's make a real time movie. The goal is to make a movie, but more than that, it's to learn to make a better engine.

I love the Unreal demo, but think of their approach. Hey, lava making warrior guys, we've got a few new lava making tools. Go to town and see if you can make your last lava warrior dudes look even better! I mean, it's nice. But the approach is just not on par with what Unity's process was. What could Unreal have possibly learned from that?

 

Unreal didnt need to learn anything i dont think, im not sure the devs learn anything from the demos they dont already know, those demos prob sell games and ideas about games to gamers but very specific sort of games

Pandering to that market i think is a really awful idea for unity simply because Unity's massive drive is in small teams and Indie development, Steam Greenlight will no doubt get huge, the iOs and Android machines roll on, does that sector of the gaming dev world want to be labelled with high budget demons and space marines and vacouos concept? I'd hope not, when i think of a good game i think of something like Ico, not Demon Doom Rises

 

I think that this does not show Unitys capabilities as it can run on normal PC's not like unreals that runs on the top notch of everything it would kill my computer, but it could likely run this. I like this demo but with teselation I don't expect to be seeing polygons, and why not make a new demo with added explosions, you could make a demo like Advert Fate esily enough... Orrrr.... have Zombies.... Zombies = profit so Pysics + Zombies + Particles + DX11 == ?!?!?!

 

That's the reason why they call it "next gen engine"

 

Ethan said

And The Butterfly Effect is good... but realistically how many people are using Unity for videos anyway? I now think people use Unity in many way and Unity is made for anything like animations, casual games, hardcore games, so why only have one demo? why not make many for each genre like form a team of people that make demos, like the size of Advert Fate just constantly making new ones like this, with AAA graphics(Noting that it only takes 5mins to beat) then make a RTS, Side scroller, Racer, Adventure, RPG etc. some of these even have a base to work on... then there would be no doubting that Unity is capable of every type of game... having the source avaliable would be a huge plus as then we can use these (providing Unity lets scripts and art be used in Unity for free) as a basis for games giving another Super Mushroom over UDK and CryEngine that offer nothing like this, Even having the tutorials based on these showing how to make something similar would be great as there is no doubt that if Unity did something like this they would be optimized so for medium users this would be a good learning tool.

Oh and at first I thought this was on Moth Head, so not as many visible polygons but still some(Even on the main page of it)

 

Has it been said somewhere on what specs the butterfly demo runs?

 

I don't think so, When I posted "I think that this does not show Unitys capabilities as it can run on normal PC's not like unreals that runs on the top notch of everything it would kill my computer, but it could likely run this." I had a brain malfunction and though this was about Moth Head.

 

http://video.unity3d.com/video/6912619/unite-2012-butterfly-effect

In the caption it states that it runs on a 'Core i7 2600K, single GeForce GTX 680 graphics card'.

 

I am with Keithsoulasa here. While I love Unity, and I respect UT's effort in making in-road into AAA graphics territory - I think this Butterfly Effect Project failed to impress me on many levels.


1. It doesn't seem to be color graded - there is a general "flatness" to the movie.

2. There seems to be a lack of contrast/shadow definition - I think it needs a more defined SSAO - if you look at the picture below -


The shadow under the car should be a lot darker, same with the lamp post, the rubbish bin in foreground because of the sun angle.


3. The characters look pretty flat and wooden. There is no shadow under the eyes (eyelids shadowing)




It looks almost look like its unlighted.

4. The mocap is used to an underwhelming effect - the actor did a great job acting - but its lost on the translation and Passion Picture didn't tweak the final output to more reflect the actor's expression - eg. it does't even pick up 50% of the artist's expression of panic here (eg. pay close attention to the eye wrinkles, the little curling of the mouth and mouth shape):





5. Physics looks ridicules even by cartoon standard. It looks like its animated by hand. BADLY.


Compare the Butterfly Effect to the Epic/UDK's Samaritan Demo... I will be blunt. UT/Passion Picture's effort seems amateurish by comparison. Not only does Samaritan demo looks far more polish (art wise), it also looks far more impressive technically - and it came out LAST YEAR.

I just wish if only UT/Passion Picture could tweak it some more it would have been a lot more impressive.

 

If I am not mistaken, the radiosity in Butterfly Effect was baked, While Epic's Unreal 4 Demo's radiosity is real-time. And that's a HUGE DIFFERENCE both technically and artistically.

 

Yes, that was a miscommunication. I was simply referring to it being rendered in realtime and missed that he was talking about realtime GI. Nowhere did we talk about realtime GI for this demo so the question simply didn't register to me. We've experimented with the tech before, but that was just during a Ninja Camp.

I'll let you get back to telling us how much this demo fell short for you now ;-)

 

Lol !!

 

Where is my popcorn ?

 

Without wanting to offend Baws you're showing an amateurish appreciation of graphics or, in fact, any sort of imagery at all, it's like the newbie photogs on deviantart pushing the contrast and saturation way up on a pretty average photo for a cheap hit and 'ooh cool' effect, when in fact its just pretty trashy. The points you make about the images you posted at at points hilariously contrary, its a pity unity's own community seem sometimes so childish, its more of a problem to Unity than non-existent problems with the graphics.

 

this demo remember me the simpsons

 

First, the samaritan demo only purpose was it to showcase the new graphical features of UE3. Impressive yes. But not meant for the average consumer hardware. That wouldn't even run on the next gen consoles. That's the reason why for a lot people the optimized UE4 demo looks not as impressive as the samaritan demo.

Second, the samaritan demo was -like a UE demos- created by Epic's own art department. People that know how to squeeze the best out of UE. Not to mention the time that went into that demo.
For Passion Pictures however, this was the first endeavour with Unity. Probably with real time stuff in general.

So your whole comparison is not really fair.

 

What , thats Unity's fault , they could of called up Madfinger and asked them for a tech demo of whatever their most intense game is. To be completely honest I'm at a loss for what the point of the Butterfly effect movie even was .

Unity is not , and never will be a graphics powerhouse, it just isn't .

What could of been cooler would be something like a 24 hr game sprint , it would of been free to Unity( they could of just offered free pro licenses to the best entries )where each team would be recorded . That would show off Unity's greatest asset, fast and easy development . Epic has far more money to throw at things , and with massive budgets they'll be able to out do Unity every time on graphics

 

Well, look what I said here a while ago.
So I know that Unity is not comparable with UE's graphical capabilities. But his comparison is still not fair.

That probably would be a good idea to hire people that actually skilled with Unity to throw a nice demo together.

 

Sure,
On the other hand, by choosing a company that is not familiar with unity, they ended up expanding the engine with new technologies.
Reflection probes, new shaders, live scrubbing, hair, new skin, imroved clothes, imroved image effects, pyroclaster raymarching, blend shapes, are more beneficial for the developer than a "nice" demo.