TR3 Graphics are Ahead of it's Time - Page 6

TR-Freak · 02-03-20, 04:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kapu

Honestly Tomb Raider is the odd one out when it comes to individual meshes for characters instead of a single skin with skeleton. The first two Resident Evil games had individual meshes, but by RE3 they'd switched to fully skinned.

Jill has separatate hand meshes

Quote:

mesh swaps werent present until tr4.

wrong. Forgot Midas Death or Lara's Mesh swap when killed by the T-Rex?

I would only consider TR1 as "groundbreaking" both visually and gameplaywise. The rest of the series is the same just a little bit prettier.
Imho, they may have used the TR1 Engine for TR2 how it is today, but they should have overhauled the engine completely in TR3 onwards.
You can easily transform the "Meshes" approach of the Models to a skinned model with some minor tweaks.
If it was 1998, I would expect a much more flexible engine.
Looking at the source with TR5Main, we can see that Core was really ambitious with enemy AI. they have a "mood" that changes depending on whether you shoot it.
But since Floor Data and Box Data is really just a 2D Structure, enemies are limited to the ground underneath them (Birds cant cross sloped floor lol)
TR3 was the "peak" of Enemy AI. And that's actually pretty sad because they had very limited features.

Joey79100 · 02-03-20, 07:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulojr_mam

Oh, I see. Can't think of even one PS1 game like that with this "skinned model".

I haven't played many PS1 games but an example that comes to my mind is Syphon Filter.
Also didn't Crash Bandicoot have that too?

About mesh swaps, it was used commonly since TR1: weapons in Lara's hands or holsters are just meshswaps with or without weapon.

And about facial animation, in the same era there was Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (not a PS1 game but it was only on PC when it first came out in 1998 / EDIT: my bad, it was 1999), which didn't use skinned models, and used meshswaps as well for mouth movements, but with 3D mouths instead of just different textures.
That game also had kinda better lighting... or I should say lighting capabilities. You can see several places where you see the shape of the light on the walls, with a smooth transition. Also, the dynamic light was quite nice, you could see that when using the lighter (equivalent of TR's flares), which react much more smoothly on the environment. Unfortunately that game has places (mainly outside) where the lighting is pretty dull, canyonlands for example isn't that impressive. On the other hand, the outside of Egypt, or even better, the lines in Egypt, were lit beautifully.
And it also used UV maps instead of rectangle textures, mostly higher resolution textures, and had better filtering (trilinear), and higher distance (but this one might be also because the poly count was often lower than in TR, they used that a lot in outside areas).

TR-Freak · 02-03-20, 08:05

^Actually TR Lighting "engine" for rooms is just fine. The problem is that the vertices are too sparse to have nice smooth lighting. If you increase the Vertex Density by a factor of 4 or 8 you can see nice spot light influence area.

Another problem is that the game distinguishes between animated objects and static objects like plants in regards of lighting. The game doesnt illuminate Static meshes dynamically and only have predefined color tint and some vertex shadows while animated objects are illuminated by the room's ambient term and dynamic lights only (i.e. lights of rooms do not affect them). Thats why pushable blocks are clearly distinguishable from Room geometry (which is a shame because i like the idea of hidden areas obscured by blocks).

dg1995 · 02-03-20, 09:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kirishima

@dg1995

I think I found a picture of what that was supposed to look like.

https://www.mobygames.com/images/sho...eep-moving.jpg

Good find !

Really that was a mistake to remove them.

paulojr_mam · 02-03-20, 15:51

I kinda agree with Kojima. It does look weird. Same way it looked weird in the classic REs. But I wouldn't want every game character of the time to not have eyes. Worked for MGS, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kapu

Not to be rude, but you literally mentioned two such games in this same post of yours

If you're talking about Crash and Spyro, I do think they're aesthetically better-looking, but technically I don't think they're superior. They look better because they're highly stylized, and it's much easier to make something look good with stylized graphics than with the realism TR3 went for.

TR-Freak · 02-03-20, 16:05

TR3 is meant to be realistic looking?

Obi_Black · 02-03-20, 16:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by TR-Freak

TR3 is meant to be realistic looking?

Compared to Spyro and Crash - yes. Remember that we are talking about 1998 standards, when graphics in games like TR3, MGS or Half-life could be considered as fairly realistic. Ofcourse it's far from being realistic by today standards, but that't not the point

Kapu · 02-03-20, 18:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulojr_mam

If you're talking about Crash and Spyro, I do think they're aesthetically better-looking, but technically I don't think they're superior. They look better because they're highly stylized, and it's much easier to make something look good with stylized graphics than with the realism TR3 went for.

I was referring to the skinned models. The characters are made from a single mesh that bends at the joints, unlike TR, where each body part is an individual mesh with hard seams at the joints where the polygons move against each other.

paulojr_mam · 02-03-20, 20:34

Then I don't think being skinned is that noticeable.

That said, on a second thought I wouldn't say TR3's graphics are ahead of their time. Very good, but not "ahead". They weren't doing pioneer things that other games were doing, like Spyro's Level-of-Detail or Crash's algorithm that didn't draw polygons not visible onscreen or even Soul Reaver's no-loading world.

TR-Freak · 02-03-20, 20:43

^TR on PSX has LOD for the Room Geometry. The closer to a wall, the more detailed in regards of Vertex count it becomes. It is a measurement to counter Texture warping.

02-03-20, 08:05	#53
TR-Freak Unverified User Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Deutschland Posts: 5,140	^Actually TR Lighting "engine" for rooms is just fine. The problem is that the vertices are too sparse to have nice smooth lighting. If you increase the Vertex Density by a factor of 4 or 8 you can see nice spot light influence area. Another problem is that the game distinguishes between animated objects and static objects like plants in regards of lighting. The game doesnt illuminate Static meshes dynamically and only have predefined color tint and some vertex shadows while animated objects are illuminated by the room's ambient term and dynamic lights only (i.e. lights of rooms do not affect them). Thats why pushable blocks are clearly distinguishable from Room geometry (which is a shame because i like the idea of hidden areas obscured by blocks). Last edited by TR-Freak; 02-03-20 at 08:08.

02-03-20, 20:34	#59
paulojr_mam Archaeologist Join Date: Dec 2015 Location: Brazil Posts: 2,439	Then I don't think being skinned is that noticeable. That said, on a second thought I wouldn't say TR3's graphics are ahead of their time. Very good, but not "ahead". They weren't doing pioneer things that other games were doing, like Spyro's Level-of-Detail or Crash's algorithm that didn't draw polygons not visible onscreen or even Soul Reaver's no-loading world. __________________ Don the braid, raid the world Last edited by paulojr_mam; 02-03-20 at 20:56.

02-03-20, 16:05	#56
TR-Freak Unverified User Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Deutschland Posts: 5,140	TR3 is meant to be realistic looking?

02-03-20, 20:43	#60
TR-Freak Unverified User Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Deutschland Posts: 5,140	^TR on PSX has LOD for the Room Geometry. The closer to a wall, the more detailed in regards of Vertex count it becomes. It is a measurement to counter Texture warping.