Tai chi [太極拳/Тайцзицюань] (demo-scene)

MikeCL

Happy to help!

Nice, already thought about the tennis court hehe.

Tomcat

xyz The point wasn't to suggest the exact mood but to illustrate that you can drive the mood substantially away from the boring default in various directions using only 4 key technical parameters (lambert+ambient, cast shadows, ao, depth fog)

When talking about color, this picture should be in front of the eyes

All the beautiful effects become dull on simple monitors. This is something to keep in mind.

Games use this a lot. Just one quick example:

This is clearly an advertising screenshot. It is interesting how it looks like in the game. The title "the magical hour" itself implies a very short period of time. In games with seamless daytime change, this will turn into a few seconds of real time for the player. The effort spent on implementation in such a case is not rational and therefore not found in such games. It can be justified from a design point of view only if in a particular episode the action takes place at a particular moment of the day and the game time is close to real time. Therefore, the episode should have a time limit (1-1.5 hours).

I'm going to investigate the implementation of weather and atmospheric phenomena, but these are clearly not priorities at the moment.

xyz

Tomcat We're talking games here. A game might choose to sustain the same visual mood regardless of actual passing of time. It can also choose to exaggerate the intensity of a mood. Many games do both of those things, e.g. all installments of Dark Souls. And it works perfectly, keeping you immersed in a particular (pleasant) mood for as long as you play. So yeah, in a game, you actually can have the magical hour that lasts for literal days, without anybody complaining. Doing "illogical" things like this for an impact is what we call artistic/poetic license

One last remark; mood is not really about weather or atmospheric phenomena. Visual mood is primarily controlled by lighting. All 4 technical parameters I've mentioned before fall under broader category of lighting.

kuligs2

Tomcat Call me crazy but whats with the obsession of vertical screens? This trend is outrageous imo where when you go watch a video on PC and instead of full screen the video uses only at most 1/4th of the screen ..

Also i see someone is total commander enjoy-er

Tomcat

xyz Yeah but imo "walking" in this case would be a playable 2D thing, not a couple of 3D assets under default-looking lighting and a basic character controller. It looks exactly like what it is - a beginner learning project.

Well, it is. Simple content creation programs and uncomplicated shaders. I just put it together in one place and checked how it looks together. If someone had done this before, I'd be interested to take a look and study it. But since no one has done it until now, I had to do it. Partly I had to refine the models a bit and rework the shaders.

On the one hand it could be interesting for developers as an example of simple content creation, on the other hand for players as a possible level of graphics in the game. If game developers would be interested, I would post the source code.

If everything presented in this demo is so simple, then why now, when the end of the quarter of the first century of the third millennium (sic) in the games are still found static trees and water? About the skin shader I'm not even talking about.

We had 5 character models, 3 houses, 10 trees, many kinds of shrubs and flowers, several trucks and cars… Also, seamless textures, music effects, models of various household items. Not that we needed all that for the gamedev, but once you get locked into a serious game development, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the shaders. There is nothing in the world more intricate, complex and crazy than designing shaders, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.

Tomcat

xyz One last remark; mood is not really about weather or atmospheric phenomena. Visual mood is primarily controlled by lighting. All 4 technical parameters I've mentioned before fall under broader category of lighting.

It's very delicate work and fine-tuning. Requires actually quite a long time. I will experiment with it a little later. For now, my immediate plans don't include competing with Dark Souls — we still have a small team.

So yeah, in a game, you actually can have the magical hour that lasts for literal days, without anybody complaining. Doing "illogical" things like this for an impact is what we call artistic/poetic license

Anyway, yeah. Things that are illogical in the real world can be logical in the game world. But I'm not sure exactly what “the magical hour” would be logical in my project. I hope, however, that I can set aside time in the future to test it.

Tomcat

xyz Many games do both of those things, e.g. all installments of Dark Souls. And it works perfectly, keeping you immersed in a particular (pleasant) mood for as long as you play.

This was done in "Witcher 3 Blood and Wine". The explanation for that effect there was that it's kind of this “magic kingdom” kind of thing. It didn't look very reassuring. So it's a very individual perception.

xyz

Tomcat Dude, you're taking everything I say too literally, missing the broad point I'm trying to make.

Here's a practical hint you can employ immediately to make your scene a bit more alive. On a clear sunny day, the sunlit areas will always be tinted yellow/orange while shadows will always be tinted blue. This creates a natural and pleasant warm/cool contrast between lit and shadowed areas. So color your directional light source orange-ish and your ambient light blue-ish. You can exaggerate this blue/orange contrast to your artistic taste by increasing the chromatic saturation of those tints.

Also the strength of the sunlight is best suggested by the darkness of the shadows. The darker the shadows, the stronger will sunshine appear to be.

So for the appearance of a very bright sunny day with a clear blue sky, push your shadows towards blue and make them relatively dark.

I'm speaking from the perspective of art directing a couple of relatively successful indie titles, and a decade of plein air painting experience. Make of it what you will.

Tomcat

MikeCL When I first saw the project, I had this SEGA arcade aesthetics in my head. Bright sunny day with a clear blue sky and clouds on the horizon etc. Then you showed the paintings which looks great, but are an art style closer to something I expect from something similar to Elden Ring. So, it's a bit hard to know what you're going for.

Interesting associations. So you didn't play the Sims series?

Creating a moodboard would help with this.

I will pay special attention to this.

xyz Here's a practical hint you can employ immediately to make your scene a bit more alive.

I will not return to this project now. I almost restored it after a disk failure, but because of the low interest in it did not begin to complete the work. But I accepted with gratitude and I am thinking over all the suggestions that are voiced here. And I will realize them in the next works.

Only before the experiments with atmosphere and light is still far away. I will need feedback on how all the beauty will look on different monitors.

kuligs2 Call me crazy but whats with the obsession of vertical screens?

No problems with vertical video — all decent monitors have pivot to portrait mode. This is a problem of only the most miserable monitors.

Also i see someone is total commander enjoy-er

Translators do not cope well with the American language — not always possible to understand. It is better to use English.

MikeCL

I'm aligned with what @xyz is mentioning here.

I would highly suggest, though, like with any project. Start putting together a moodboard for your project. Make a collage of images you have found that align with what you are trying to achieve with the project. This way, it can be used as a communication tool when discussing the project (such as showing people here what you are aiming for), and it also serves as a reference for yourself while developing the project.

When I first saw the project, I had this SEGA arcade aesthetics in my head. Bright sunny day with a clear blue sky and clouds on the horizon etc. Then you showed the paintings which looks great, but are an art style closer to something I expect from something similar to Elden Ring. So, it's a bit hard to know what you're going for.

Creating a moodboard would help with this.

xyz

Yeah, making a moodboard as @MikeCL suggests would be a very good idea.

MikeCL

Tomcat Sorry to hear you will not continue it.

This is where my mind instantly went when seeing the project for the first time (ignore the game genre, more about the environment and mood). But perhaps this is not what you had in mind.

Tomcat Interesting associations. So you didn't play the Sims series?

I've seen tons from it, but never played it I'm afraid.

Tomcat

MikeCL Sorry to hear you will not continue it.

This demo is a learning experience, so it's safe to say it will continue in another incarnation and everything said about it makes sense. For example, gymnastics — will be included, so there will be a very similar scene in the game.

This is where my mind instantly went when seeing the project for the first time

Well, all of these scenes (except for the obviously unrealistic cartoon character) could be in a life simulation game.

I've seen tons from it, but never played it I'm afraid.

The Sims is a very diverse game and different scenes can be included there — that occur in real (or fictional) life.

xyz

MikeCL I think this Sega arcade "mood" wasn't really intentional. It was more a result of technical limitations coupled with low art direction budgets 🙂

The ubiquitous combination of (0.0, 0.0, 1.0) blue sky, (0.0, 1.0, 0.0) green foliage and (0.5, 0.5, 0.5) concrete just burns my retinas.

Pro tip: never ever use this color combination in a game. Unless, of course, you aim for a nostalgia kick.

MikeCL

xyz Sega is famously known for this style. It's an artistic choice, perhaps it was born out of technical limitation from the start, but it definitely didn't evolve and stay because of them. Daytona and Sega rally is old.... But Sonic Adventure is not that old. And Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate is from 2021. Old games have their extremes; today, it would be done more subtly.

When I say the "Sega" look, I didn't literally mean "The ubiquitous combination of (0.0, 0.0, 1.0) blue sky, (0.0, 1.0, 0.0) green foliage and (0.5, 0.5, 0.5)". I meant the super-optimistic, perfect weather conditions in a "paradise-like" setting.

There are still lots of games that have a similar bright art direction that look amazing. Good art direction doesn't default to dark and gloomy. However, it's ultimately a matter of personal preference.

xyz

MikeCL I'm not talking about about gloomy vs bright. The distinction I had in mind is sophisticated vs crude. Although in the late 90s, on 32 bit systems, they indeed might have been using this type of palette intentionally. I'd bet they were already selling nostalgia towards graphical look of previous generations of their hardware systems.

There's a reason why games don't look like this any more though - it's objectively unpleasant to look at. And yeah, I'm perfectly aware that feelings of nostalgia can override this unpleasantness.

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