▲ | os2warpman a day ago | |||||||
Why does everything (in big-budget video games) look shiny and wet? If it is an attempt at realism, reality is not constantly shiny and wet. If it a subjective artistic choice, it is objectively wrong and ugly. Is there an expectation that everything look shiny and wet to make it seem more "dynamic"? Is it an artists' meme, like the Wilhelm Scream in cinematic sound design? | ||||||||
▲ | mfro a day ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||
Overuse of reflective surfaces are the same kind of fad we saw with bloom in the mid 2000s and early 2010s. Now that SSR everywhere is technicaly feasible gamedevs want to use them everywhere. I think this started 5-10 years ago and RTX has renewed the meme, unfortunately. | ||||||||
▲ | HatchedLake721 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
Isn’t Unreal Engine guilty with this? That’s how I often recognize it’s an Unreal Engine game. | ||||||||
▲ | schmidtleonard a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
Specular highlights are cheap (frame time and artist time) and beautiful when done right, so everyone tries to do them and they get overcooked. There is a secondary problem in big budget games where modeling work gets farmed out leading to selection for "what looks good in the preview pic." In the preview pic, the asset artist gets to choose background/scene/lighting, and it's an easy trick to choose them to make the specular highlights pop. The person doing integration buys the asset, drops it in wildly different background/scene/lighting, and now the specular highlights are overcooked because the final scene wasn't chosen for the specific purpose of leveraging specular highlights. tl;dr artists ship the org chart too | ||||||||
▲ | pradn a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
Recently, some of it seems to be just to highlight raytracing hardware. Cyberpunk uses a lot of metal reflective surfaces to give a futuristic/tech vibe. But that's one sort of futurism. There'll be plenty of use of natural stone, wood, and tile far far into the future. | ||||||||
▲ | 0cf8612b2e1e a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
I thought this was going to be the subject of the article. For years now, everything looks weirdly shiny. | ||||||||
▲ | perching_aix a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
The common wisdom is that it's more difficult to make sunny and dry environments look pretty than it is overcast and wet ones. I tend to agree with this based on the end results I've seen over the many years. | ||||||||
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▲ | scyzoryk_xyz a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
It is amusing now that you point it out. There are always trends that come and go in these large scale industrial artforms. As others point out in this case likely a response to technical advancements and desire to emphasize those. Another example that would come to mind here is is the orangey-sunlit ears that seemed to show up everywhere to show off subsurface scattering. Thinking back - films also are always doing some new exciting thing all at once. That wild colored lighting aesthetic of the past decade comes to mind. That's a result of refined color correction software and awesome low-cost LED lights. Or drone shots. So many drone shots. It's usually a group-think phenomenon where everyone was previously unable to do something and now they can and everyone wants to try it. And then there are successes and management points at those and yells 'we want that, do that!', and distribution follows, and if becomes mandatory. Until everyone is rolling their eyes and excited about another new thing. It's a silly phenomenon when you think about it - any true artist-director would likely push back on that with a coherent vision. | ||||||||
▲ | rasz a day ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||
Michael Mann starting with Thief (1981). "Mann sprayed down the city’s nocturnal streets with tens of thousands of gallons of water, so that they took on an unreal, painterly glow." - New York Times |