The Freedom Fighter (Tech demo)

MikeCL

I started working on a new demo, I guess I could call it a tech demo.

(wip)

This demo aims to push the graphical capabilities of Godot 4. It's a way for me to see where the limits are, create a better pipeline/workflow for my other projects and also help create some excitement for the engine. Have it also tell a story, inspire people and hopefully trigger emotions.

The goal is to create a visually striking demo that runs at 60fps, even on somewhat old hardware (I'm running a Geforce 1070 ti GPU, for example). Once done, probably release it on itch for free.

I'm dusting off an old project (created somewhat 15 years ago if I remember correctly) and adapting that as a starting point.

I just finished recording some motion capture and setup the project in Godot. Here's a few very rough work in progress shots directly from the engine

I got the inspiration from Unity's Enemies

And Ninja Theory's Hellbade 2 demo

I probably won't get that close to the eyes, though.

Lethn

Good luck! I'm pursuing ways of pushing Godot 4 and stress testing it myself as well, the engine needs this sort of thing to show people what it's really capable of.

MikeCL

Lethn Thanks! Yeah, the more people that push out what the engine is capable of, the better 🙂

JusTiCe8

Good luck to you too although, your goal:

to create a visually striking demo that runs at 60fps, even on somewhat old hardware

is already mostly doom to fail, and I don't mean to drag you down right before you've started, I tried pretty much all 3D demos from official sets and my hardware (Asus ROG G750JH with a 780M GTX) cannot get 60 FPS without disabling many features and using low res, especially with global_illumination, graphics_settings, lights_and_shadows, material_testers.

So you can reach 60 FPS and more but only with limited features which won't be "striking" very much knowing what is possible to achieve with more recent hardware.
There is also some workaround which are not fully technical and mostly artistic and clever to get better results with fewer resources (quite like what devs does when they didn't have the choice to be lazy and rely on hardware manufacturers and foolish customers willing to spend thousands to get 3 more FPS) but is it relevant ?

Still, if you manage to get it, you could also fill a PR to add it to the official demo repository.

MikeCL

JusTiCe8 Thanks! Although, when I say somewhat old hardware, I'm thinking about perhaps the support of GPU's back from Nvidia 10XX era which still can pack a punch even though it's getting old by today's standard. Being realistic, there are, of course, going to be hardware limitations if there are features simply not supported by the hardware. But making something look good and impressive does not always come down to throwing more power and shiny new features at it. Things that look good are driven by great Art Direction combined with the technical skills to optimize things. I don't agree with you at all that projects need to require cutting-edge GPUs, or they won't look striking. That's a silly statement, IMO. I can still look back at old tech demos run on the Wii U that still look amazing. Some of the older Unity demos still look great, and I've seen people do great looking things with Godot as well. It's about knowing what you're doing that matters. No engine has a "create awesome" button. One of the purposes of the project is to find out where the weaknesses are and thereafter, find ways around it.

cybereality Thanks man!

cybereality

Very nice idea. The art looks good, hope you can make it work in Godot 4.

cybereality

My Decay demo from last year I got running on Intel integrated graphics. I spent a lot of time to make sure everyone could play it.

https://cybereality.itch.io/decay-a-real-time-experience

MikeCL

cybereality Man, I love that demo! I remember when I first saw it, I got really excited haha.

MikeCL

Some progress. Direct screengrabs from the Godot editor viewport. Reworking the textures for the armor from scratch as the old files seems to be missing, and the mesh needed some topology cleaning. Started playing with some moody lighting as well.

DJM

looks great! although i think the face is a bit feminin, but that may just be me.
the model also looks too perfect and shiny imo, are u going to add wear and tear?
i would also lower the armor to the side of the face. he cant see left or right with it. armor should be cool but also functional.

MikeCL

DJM Thanks man! About the textures. It's only the base colors right now. I lost the old textures. I'm afraid, so I have to repaint it. But the quality will come closer to what I showed in the first image. So yes... Lots of wear and tear. Same for the face. It just has some basic coloring, doesn't even have a roughness map yet, and is missing a big scar, stubby beard, etc. Normally I would also include subdermal, epidermal, primary, and secondary specular maps for the skin, but I don't think Godot's SSS shading supports that (If I don't create my own, it might also be overkill and bad for performance).

MikeCL

Here's a quick and dirty Keyframe concept storyboard

I might have to play around with these as I get a rough cut in. See how it feels when played

MikeCL

A couple of previews of the animation. It still needs a lot of cleanup and work. Captured from the Blender viewport

GodotBeginnerRich

Nice graphics, how did you do the mo-cap?

MikeCL

GodotBeginnerRich

Thanks! The mocap was done with my iPhone and captured using the Facemotion3D app with the Blender link. It's not perfect, but I am impressed with how far you can take things with an iPhone and software for 20 bucks. It took some experimenting to find the way that produces the best results with less noise and the best capture. It will be interesting to see how this technology evolves over time and improves. The only thing I'm waiting for now is an AI that can clean up the data for me 😅

The ARKit (Apple's tech for AR and capture) uses a set of shape keys to drive the facial animation. So, to save time, I used Blenders Rigify facial rigg to pose the different facial features quickly. I then have a script that converts those rigged poses to shape keys that can be used with the mocap data.

cybereality

Looks pretty nice for an iPhone capture.

MikeCL

cybereality
Yeah, what you can do with consumer gadgets these days is pretty cool.

MikeCL

Just a small update, a sneak peek captured from the engine in motion. Mostly working on cleaning up the animation as well as setting up all the shots.

MikeCL

Picked this project up again. Most work being done with animation, bringing the lighting and scene together. Here's a couple of light tests. Screen grabbed from Godot