We put out the [Bishop] speech about a year ago, and some people criticized the quality. From where we are now, what percentage of the quality bar did that hit for you, as far as facial performance and so on?
TL;DRHe rates the old Bishop speech's facial performance at roughly 80–85% but the asset only about 60% due to technical issues, and says it will be re-rendered with the much better current Bishop.
The performance itself was pretty good, but we had lots of technical issues. I can name a few. I think some normals on his face were inverted. We had the wrong type of skinning. The hair was really not good, and his uniform was just the first pass. From an asset point of view, it was not really that great. So I would probably say facial performance maybe 85% or 80%, and what the asset actually looks like maybe 60%. So he looks much better now. Of course, at one point I need to go back and re-render this, because this will also be game content that you can actually view on TV screens. So it will definitely be re-rendered with the latest Bishop, much better.
The reason why I ask is I've seen things deforming a lot better, and new shaders on the eyes, and once you see things actually firing off the way that they need to as a one-to-one, some of the stuff I've seen has been nuts.
Our problem is always that we kind of make it look polished, but of course it's an ongoing process. There's lots of things that you still need to work out, technical things. For example, a month ago we got something really amazing from Jeff, one of the graphics programmers. Before that, in CryEngine the eye shader was always just giving these little dots, no matter how big the light source was. And now, if there's a big area light in front of the character, we actually see it reflected in the eye. Way better than before.
It's amazing to me how just that simple thing, when I walked in and saw that face on your screen, it's immediately noticeable. Sometimes it adds something where you're like, wait, what's different? You may not even know and recognize it.
The eyes especially, you always know that something's wrong with them, but you cannot really tell. The eyes are something that humans, since they are babies, can immediately recognize what's off there.