3d Rendering... has come A LONG WAY in 10 years...........

[henrik.falk]

Hell, they made parts of the Matrix II and III without actual actors.

A remark on Keanu Reeves' acting i take it :-)

[Shogun]

Hell, they made parts of the Matrix II and III without actual actors.

A remark on Keanu Reeves' acting i take it :-)

Well, apart from all his scenes... alot of it was done with CGI characters such as the more complicated fight/camera scenes, like when a camera bullet times through/between 2 people, the complicated setup they use to go around the action simply isn't doable... Also, the hundreds of Agent Smiths...

[Ellay]

I watched Beowulf last night and the CGI didn't mesh well. I even got the 3d glasses but the characters were a mix of real and CG, and at a point they felt non realistic because the CG made them that way. The facial structures were just way off at points.

The Final Fantasy movie Spirits Within and Advent Children both were incredible without real actors and the characters felt more real than that.

[Zseth]

I completely agree Ellay, the Final Fantasy films were amazing, but they took the time to make them amazing. The rendering farms they needed for those movies spanned acres of ground, and took almost a year to render. Not create, to render. Beowulf just seemed rushed and poorly thought out on the technical side, would have like to have seen all real characters doing it instead.

[beyond-tec]

It's still simply amazing where we came from and where we are now.

I've started with a C64, went over to a PC with 2 MhZ and a Turbo button, bought an 750 MB Hardisk for 500 DM, I've seen Prince of Persia in monochrome, bought myself a GFX-Card and played it in EGA Graphics and it was phantastic. OMG! Colors! :-)

I've seen all this and I'm not that old... so there is a lot of stuff incoming during the next years and I'm looking forward seeing it.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I remember in about 1985-1986 playing a fantasy game that used asiic characters for walls and stuff lol ...


LoL this was it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_%28video_game%29


Dang how far we have advanced in so few years.

[Hippieman]

Semi-naked chicks can now be rendered on my PC? Hurrah!

"semi"?

Personally I know a few people that make animated "porn" using 3D apps like Animation:Master, 3Dmax, etc. etc. It's become widely popular, apparently, seeing as everything is "customisable"

aaah, development...

[Xzin]

Just look at second life.. which despite its low poly counts....

is really something else.

[Tonuss]

I've started with a C64, went over to a PC with 2 MhZ and a Turbo button, bought an 750 MB Hardisk for 500 DM, I've seen Prince of Persia in monochrome, bought myself a GFX-Card and played it in EGA Graphics and it was phantastic. OMG! Colors! :-)

Same here. Keep in mind that so many different parts of computer systems have continued to be improved as time passes. CPU power has increased in leaps and bounds. 2D graphics were off-loaded from the CPU to dedicated video cards, then 3D was as well, then PCs were given a dedicated channel for graphics (AGP then PCIe). Sound was off-loaded from the CPU. Hard disks have increased in size and speed and have larger data caches. Memory, etc...

Some of this isn't all that new. Anyone who remembers the C-64 and Amiga know about systems that run separate CPUs, video, and sound. But the leaps in pure processing power are hard to appreciate sometimes. The people who work on those 3D models that Xzin posted, as well as 3D animation... they know all about it. I can remember when simple 2D graphics filters took 40 minutes to apply to an image, or when a basic 3D render took a day or two. Now the filters are applied instantaneously most of the time, and the 3D renders run in hours, or only minutes.

I think Blizzard went the right route, not pushing the boundaries too hard in order to accomodate older hardware. But just compare it to the first Everquest and you can see the improvement. What I'm really wondering is how long it'll be before we can render environments where the trees are actually full of leaves instead of a few flat planes with textures. Stuff like that, it's really a sort of frill but the first time you see it you're knocked off your feet.

Lots of good stuff ahead. And some of it will be SFW! =D