Realistic Graphics?

Hey guys!
I've been working on this project for a few weeks now and was thinking I got it looking pretty good visually. I'm only using the free Unity at the moment due to financial constraints and was intending on upgrading once the project was finished. Now I'm wondering whether as a one man team I shall ever be able to make this game look nice enough to seem realistic and immersive or whether I should change the visuals and instead aim at something more like Godus?
What do you think, are my visuals good enough to progress with or would my time be better spent heading in the retro-cartoon direction?

 

A lot of this really boils down to the time and ability you have to give to the project. Your ability may be in artistic talent or in the ability to buy good looking models.

In my opinion, a one-man-band will never look like a 100 person team working for a AAA studio with a million dollar budget. I also don't believe that you need to look AAA to have good looking and "realistic" graphics because you can go a long way toward realistic by having things work realistically. If your characters move funny or the styles of the textures on your various models do not match, people will notice and you'll lose any chance for realism.


If you want to see a couple of demos of what some has put together in a Unity level, check out Arteria3D's World Builder or Middle East City. Both have downloadable demo scenes, as do some of the other packages. (I am not associated with Arteria3D; I simply know of them offhand as a demo scene with detailed buildings, shadows, and sound.)

 

The graphics do look pretty good for Unity free - especially if you're a one man team. If you're ever doubting how far you can take it with a one man team, take a look at this guy's project:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/dlg-no-heroes-a-realistic-multiplayer-fps.96339/

As Socrates said,

 

This is honestly the toughest part about realistic graphics. Making sure your models look consistently detailed, and having the proper shading and whatnot. Great textures, great lighting can help a long way too, especially when coupled with HDR lighting and GI (I'm on Unity Pro). In my case, I am working on a fighting game, and well made models come a long way too...

Ever since moving onto PBR shading, I am so glad getting the look I want has NEVER been easier for me.

 

Thanks for the replies! I agree making it all have a consistent feel is so tricky! Especially if the models are coming from several different sources! I'm a complete noob when it comes to shaders which I think I'm going to have to change! As i believe they're pretty essential to good looking games?
I have seen some Arteria3d works before, I think I had a pack of models by them once upon a time, they're pretty impressive!
Thanks randomperson42! It's taken a lot of work Still a bit off The Forest though
That's pretty darn impressive for a one man team! Perhaps I should make an experimental version of my game with stylistic graphics and see which one has a better effect...
Once again, thank you for your help!

 

I guess you will be fine, with some work it could look as good as The Forest, and people really liked the graphics of that

 

No problem man. Right now, I am dealing with making sure my models look consistently detailed, especially when they are finished at different times. And changes in my pipeline are adding to the detail and complexity of designed models. As for your screenshot of the forest, it will need A LOT more work for it to look realistic... right now, it looks like a flat diffuse with no differences in detail.

And this is where PBR comes into play.

 

Your scene looks very good but its a bit too dark because, like others already covered, you are not using the post vfx, etc. I've seen some wonderful art in Unity Free but they were toon shaded. If you want realistic graphics you'd for sure need the edge that Pro gives. Now, there maybe some fake HDR plugins for Unity Free or something I dunno

Disclaimer though- I do not consider myself a 'graphics' programmer. I just take the base Pro feature set and turn them on

 

The only thing that really stands out to me as needing improvment as far as the enviroment goes is the dirt texture. It looks very low res. Can you add normals to it, high texture size and more details?

 

Yeah, it's visible especially in the first image.

 

dirt is blurry, grass is much to 'big', and the character needs as more 'sweaty' / 'glossy' texture. Trees silhouettes look good but the distribution is like someone's backyard not a wilderness. If this is the western Great Plains those trees would be far away and the grass with be various species, taller but thinner, and 'drier'.

I think with Unity 5 and Speed Tree you should have a much easier time of it.

 

Your opinion would be incorrect, time and time have I seen on the CryDev forums levels and scenes (from OMB's) that would put most AAA studio's to shame. I'll be honest and say I've never seem anyone manage it in Unity (I have seen pretty close like the forest), but there is time.

Thing is there is only so far you can go without your games performance will hit through the floor, there is a point where you have to decide if your making a game or a tech demo.

To the OP, it's just a matter of tweaking. The grass looks a bit luminous (Hulk Green), some of the floor textures are wayyy to large but all in all it's not bad. Keep going!. Do what makes you happy.

 

^Yeah, I agree. It's like you have a dark color scheme going on for the trees but a happy sunny fields scheme going on for the grass, and they clash in a bad way. Add a bit of yellow and black to the grass to bring in with the rest of the enviroment.

 

Personally, I just think it boils down to lighting.

 

Yes as far as the terrain is concerned many of the textures are just flat diffuses as I couldn't figure out how to attach multiple materials to a terrain object? So only my cliff texture has a bumpmap...
I have heard the key to graphics is lighting and getting it right! I am currently leaning toward converting to a more toonish look. There is some heavy content in my game such as cannibalism etc, do you think switching it to a more cartoony feel would still work with such mature themes? I can't get out of my head that cartoon graphics means a kids game
I can definitely work on the ground texture, perhaps decrease it's scale so it's not as stretched, although it'll probably be worth just getting a higher def image...
Unity 5 I am hoping will be the answer to all my problems! I agree the grass was too big, after I posted those images I realized my character's scale had gotten reduced for whatever reason so the grass shouldn't be so huge, but even then I think it'd be worth shrinking, or even switching from unity's grass to something better? Off to the asset store I go!
I shall definitely do what makes me happy! Thanks for the advice The correct balance between graphics and performance is so slight another driving theory heading me toward stylized low-poly graphics.
I agree the grass is too bright and happy compared to such moody trees, I'll darken it, should I darken some grasses more than others to give it a bit of diversity as far as grass types goes?
Oh also as far as the tree distribution and even he number of trees goes they're being placed entirely at random each time the scene loads as a bit of a random world generator.

 

Uh, cannibalism isn't mature behavior and couldn't be a mature theme. It's not a selling point obviously. If you do it cartoon style they do 'cannibalism' all the time, knowing the sweating character(s) in the cauldron will escape.

 

You're starting to ask everyone else what they think about every tiny little thing. That's raw insecurity and it's the death of any indie developer. Have confidence and balls, and go for your dream instead.

 

This. You'll not get far without those two ingredients, no matter how small your grass is or how sweaty your characters are.

 

And just to beat a dead horse. Follow your passion. Nothing wrong with asking for feedback, but you need to have some kind of vision. You shouldn't be like "I don't know if this is good, what do you think?" You should be like "Here's what I got, I think it's good, any critique on how it could be better?"

It's the same concept as searching for a solution to a problem before you make a post asking for help about it. Bring what you think is good to the table.

 

I don't want to be blunt, but "Step your game up, man..." crank that S*** out and then show us.

 

The lesson I've truly learned, besides having to 'cowboy up' and not doubt my judgement is that knowing what your game is and how it plays are good things to know, but knowing what your game looks like is just as important! I didn't have a clear visual in mind for this game, I had always assumed I'd just make it look as real as I could without ever thinking of more creative and efficient looks to aim for. Over the last couple of days I've thought a lot about how I want my game to look and have chosen a visual style and palette I would like to reflect! So that's what I'm going to aim for and hopefully with a bit of luck it'll look half as decent as I'm envisioning Once I get my textures together and the modelling done I'll chuck up a few screenshots

 

I think you people have all been watching Top Gun, haven't you?

 

Like the others have said you might be doubting yourself too much. I think your visuals look pretty good. Heck it looks a lot better than most of the pics I see in the WIP section. Hit me up if you ever put up a project thread. I'll take a look.

Does your work look better than Crysis or something? Well probably not but it looks very pleasant already.