Take a moment to watch Epic's
"Elemental" demo video below if you haven't already, which shows off the
not-yet-available Unreal Engine 4 in action.
A note: The video was taken in-engine with real gameplay footage.
Plenty about the demo stands out. Similar to "The Samaritan," Epic's first UE4 demo, crisp visual fidelity oozes from every frame, rendering sweeping giant outdoor environments as handily as zoomed-in close-up shots. At its heart, it's the lighting that makes it all come to life, and it's the lighting--and the result of a perfectly lit world--that Epic has clearly placed all of its bets on.
For lack of a better term, let's call it simultaneosity. I know, that just sounds stupid, but bear with me. Unless you speak C++ or work in the game engine business, much of the techno-speak used to describe the juicy parts of engine software make about as much sense as a book of trigonometry haikus.
Talk of velocity perspective, bouncing light dynamically, and shadowed sub-surface scattering just doesn't quite say it the way you should hear it said. Instead, think of it like this: everything that should be happening--all the things that make you forget you're looking at something that's been digitally stitched together with zeros and ones--all of those small, individual elements that must come together and work, react and exist in harmony must do so in such a way that absolutely and instantly suspends our disbelief. Discerning gamers will settle for nothing less, and for Unreal Engine 4's part, Epic intends the to shape the games you will see and play in the upcoming generation of consoles and PCs with believable lighting.
Proof of this notion of simultaneosity was everywhere this year at E3. While not done in Unreal Engine 4, games like Star Wars 1313, The Last of Us, Watch Dogs and many, many more showed off expertly-lit characters, settings and worlds that came alive thanks to convincing lighting. Developers were very keen to point this out during demos, and quite willing to risk glazing over the eyes of writers who are usually more interested in how games look than why. You may hear mention made over improvements in art design, in physics or animations--all crucial factors in creating simultaneosity--but it's the lighting that always came up, because it's the lighting that sells everything else.
Epic is no different, and spent the majority of our time with Unreal Engine 4 explaining how the lighting system works, most of which centered upon the use of real-time reflections, pinpointed lighting and shadowing that works at a pixel level. You can see all of this in play thanks to UE4's fully deferred renderer and use of global illumination, which allows reflective decals on each pixel to interact correctly with environmental lighting in real time. To the eye, this makes every surface reflect or absorb light as it should, even with multiple or moving light sources, and variant surface values. (Highly reflective materials handled direct light and moving light differently than more opaque surfaces, for instance.) All these lighting techniques helped bring the Samaritan demo to life so many months ago, with its copious use of lens flare, realistic depth-of-field adjustments and advanced tessellation. All this and more shine through in the Elemental demo.
Under the hood, the architecture was built with developer work-flow in mind, employing an intuitive interface designed to reduce iteration and enable fast on-the-fly design more akin to working with something like LucidChart than a dense menu-heavy UI. I know, fancy talk for marketers, Epic sales persons and would-be licensees of UE4. What this means to you is simple: you may get more games faster, that look better, because easier work-flow means faster and more cost-effective development, a good thing for everyone.
The ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3 helped shape our current generation, Epic's pointy "U" logo adorning the opening splash pages of many of the biggest games on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. While Epic hasn't confirmed what platforms UE4 will run on, it's clearly intended for all next-gen systems and should run on Wii U, as well as Microsoft and Sony's respective rumored new boxes, the Durango and Orbis.
With Epic confirming that People Can Fly are working on Gears of War: Judgment, which will hit Xbox 360 and be powered by UE3, we can only imagine that an Epic A-team are holed-up somewhere in North Carolina, hard at work on an UE4-powered Gears game intended as a launch or near-launch title for Durango. In the meantime, the Epic engine teams are readying the tech for potential licensing to studios everywhere, and with this Elemental demo, have begun to show the world how believable and convincing lighting will mark the future of how we will see and play games.
A note: The video was taken in-engine with real gameplay footage.
Plenty about the demo stands out. Similar to "The Samaritan," Epic's first UE4 demo, crisp visual fidelity oozes from every frame, rendering sweeping giant outdoor environments as handily as zoomed-in close-up shots. At its heart, it's the lighting that makes it all come to life, and it's the lighting--and the result of a perfectly lit world--that Epic has clearly placed all of its bets on.
For lack of a better term, let's call it simultaneosity. I know, that just sounds stupid, but bear with me. Unless you speak C++ or work in the game engine business, much of the techno-speak used to describe the juicy parts of engine software make about as much sense as a book of trigonometry haikus.
Talk of velocity perspective, bouncing light dynamically, and shadowed sub-surface scattering just doesn't quite say it the way you should hear it said. Instead, think of it like this: everything that should be happening--all the things that make you forget you're looking at something that's been digitally stitched together with zeros and ones--all of those small, individual elements that must come together and work, react and exist in harmony must do so in such a way that absolutely and instantly suspends our disbelief. Discerning gamers will settle for nothing less, and for Unreal Engine 4's part, Epic intends the to shape the games you will see and play in the upcoming generation of consoles and PCs with believable lighting.
Proof of this notion of simultaneosity was everywhere this year at E3. While not done in Unreal Engine 4, games like Star Wars 1313, The Last of Us, Watch Dogs and many, many more showed off expertly-lit characters, settings and worlds that came alive thanks to convincing lighting. Developers were very keen to point this out during demos, and quite willing to risk glazing over the eyes of writers who are usually more interested in how games look than why. You may hear mention made over improvements in art design, in physics or animations--all crucial factors in creating simultaneosity--but it's the lighting that always came up, because it's the lighting that sells everything else.
Epic is no different, and spent the majority of our time with Unreal Engine 4 explaining how the lighting system works, most of which centered upon the use of real-time reflections, pinpointed lighting and shadowing that works at a pixel level. You can see all of this in play thanks to UE4's fully deferred renderer and use of global illumination, which allows reflective decals on each pixel to interact correctly with environmental lighting in real time. To the eye, this makes every surface reflect or absorb light as it should, even with multiple or moving light sources, and variant surface values. (Highly reflective materials handled direct light and moving light differently than more opaque surfaces, for instance.) All these lighting techniques helped bring the Samaritan demo to life so many months ago, with its copious use of lens flare, realistic depth-of-field adjustments and advanced tessellation. All this and more shine through in the Elemental demo.
Under the hood, the architecture was built with developer work-flow in mind, employing an intuitive interface designed to reduce iteration and enable fast on-the-fly design more akin to working with something like LucidChart than a dense menu-heavy UI. I know, fancy talk for marketers, Epic sales persons and would-be licensees of UE4. What this means to you is simple: you may get more games faster, that look better, because easier work-flow means faster and more cost-effective development, a good thing for everyone.
The ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3 helped shape our current generation, Epic's pointy "U" logo adorning the opening splash pages of many of the biggest games on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. While Epic hasn't confirmed what platforms UE4 will run on, it's clearly intended for all next-gen systems and should run on Wii U, as well as Microsoft and Sony's respective rumored new boxes, the Durango and Orbis.
With Epic confirming that People Can Fly are working on Gears of War: Judgment, which will hit Xbox 360 and be powered by UE3, we can only imagine that an Epic A-team are holed-up somewhere in North Carolina, hard at work on an UE4-powered Gears game intended as a launch or near-launch title for Durango. In the meantime, the Epic engine teams are readying the tech for potential licensing to studios everywhere, and with this Elemental demo, have begun to show the world how believable and convincing lighting will mark the future of how we will see and play games.
Athens Time
0 σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου