A new console generation is almost upon us, not to mention a new era in PC gaming fidelity. We know better graphics are coming, but just what do those better graphics actually look like?
They’ll probably look a lot like this.
This technology is called Separable Subsurface Scattering. It’s the product of “hours and hours of research, desperation, excitement, happiness, pride, sadness and extreme dedication” on the part of researchers Jorge Jimenez and Diego Gutierrez, and it’s designed specifically to be used for human skin in video games.
Not trailers, not movies, not cartoons, but video games. SSS has been written entirely in DirectX 10, and everything you see is being rendered in real-time. Don’t believe them, you can download the original demo here and try it yourself.
If you watch the clip and find yourself a little underwhelmed, that might be because it was designed to run fullscreen at 1080p. So try it out as nature intended for the full effect.
THE DAY HAS COME [Jorge Jiminez, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
Aydin
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 2:40 PMgot a link so I can test in on my xbox???????
Will Sparrow
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 3:28 AMNo
boomtish
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 2:57 PMCool, but without the animation to back it up it’s just a pretty picture.
Zane Kazuki
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:14 PMi agree
Crispus
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:58 PMCould suffer badly from Uncanny Valley syndrome if animation isnt as realistic as the model.
Robert
Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 6:07 PMits not a picture there are real time lighting effects and the camera revolves around the subject.
One step at a time these guys only create the technology, it’s up to the developers to take it and rig it for facial animation hair etc and finaly animate it.
James
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:04 PMThe lack of eyelashes is freaky…
Benny
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:09 PMHe doesn’t open his eyes at the end, just like in all the horror films.
ben
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:10 PMLooks awesome.
But you’re gonna need really good quality facial animation to go with that though. Otherwise it’s gonna be super-uncanny-valley.
Also, notice they didn’t have his eyes open. The dead eye problem with video game graphics is way more important to fix than the skin texture.
Blaghman
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:20 PMWhile I can’t necessarily say if it’s the case of this implementation, but the really uncanny look of eyes is caused by how they have multiple layers, and a lot of depth. Given the way subsurface scattering works, you could theoretically write a shader to handle eyes based off the same basic stuff, that would help.
splintex
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:20 PMSuper uncanny valley.. was that the sequel to Secret Valley? If so, can i man the flour bomb catapaults?
Anon
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:24 PMI can guarantee graphics won’t look like this next gen. That model is ridiculously high poly and the texture is ridiculously high resolution. I don’t actually see anything in that video that is new or groundbreaking. Of course you can render a super high poly model with a super high resolution texture in an empty space with modern graphics cards. You’re not going to be able to render 10 different people with a suitably realistic environment to match them though.
Nige
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:22 PMCan you, Anon? Can you really? Well there you have it, ladies and gents… Don’t know why the discussion continued after this comment. Anon’s cleared it all up for us right there… With a guarantee, no less! Whoa! With that sort of awesome foresight power at your disposal, I’m amazed you choose to remain anonymous, sir. Think of all the good you could be doing! Anything else you can guarantee for us?
Anon
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:37 PMYes I can. Current high end PCs aren’t capable of rendering scenes with this level of fidelity at anything approaching a playable frame rate, and as always the consoles will be using mid range PC parts at launch because they have to keep costs down, and it’s a given that there will be a new console from Microsoft and or Sony within the next 3 years.
Nige
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 6:02 PMIn my very best Peter Venkman… “That oughta do it, thanks very much, Anon!”
Aydin
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:57 PMyour sarcasm is legendary
Scott
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:29 PMWhen I look at this, and compare it to the faces in current games, I wonder why people keep saying we don’t need another generation of hardware yet. I was ready a few years ago.
zwonker
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:38 PMI was just waiting for the goatse moment ..
Jiff
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:39 PMIncredible! But a bit beyond current tech given the lighting requirements i reckon
Cameron
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:42 PMWe don’t need more face tech, what we need is improvements in clothing. Look at Mass Effect from 2007, the faces then were amazing, but the clothing hasn’t improved at all since then. Come back to be when you get clothing flowing properly, not poping out, contouring to the model correctly, and simulating real cloth correctly (ie not looking like plastic).
That Teemo
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:45 PMI thought Assassin’s Creed 2 did some great clothing,
Shane
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:16 PMYes, but that had the unfortunate drawback of clipping in and out of solid objects extensively, especially when Ezio carried a heavy weapon.
N0NEoftheAB0VE
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:04 PMYeah but does anyone really notice that – and if you happen to – does it preclude your enjoyment of a game?
That Teemo
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:44 PMRealistic Graphics are nice and all, but give me some stylised artistic flare to show some talent of the artists rather than going from the gritty.
Ridort
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:52 PM>written entirely in direct x
lost interest.
John
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:31 PMBit of a mac fan boy? Move along nothing for you here son.
Can’t wait for more dx10/dx11 stuff this is going to be awesome
Ridort
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 5:25 PMNope, quite the opposite, I hate apple (namely, iPods, iPads, iPhones, and Steve Jobs) with a deep loathing passion.
I just know that direct x is a cancerous attempt to become a gaming and graphics monopoly.
“Hey guys, check out how amazing direct x is! It’s so great, it does great graphics and doesn’t afraid of anything! … *cough*even though opengl has, for a long time, been able to do everything direct x can do!*cough* Quick everyone, go code your own direct x game for microsoft machines! Don’t forget, if you make xbox games, you have to give us money! What’s that, you want to code on non microsoft products? Too fucking bad.”
The sad thing is, the gaming industry are jumping on the direct x bandwagon not because of its ‘power’, but because of its popularity.
I will always use opengl, because it is, in most aspects, vastly superior to direct x, and I can code for non microsoft machines. When you’re making a product that will reach the widest audience possible, you’d be stupid to use direct x.
Jiff
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 1:53 AMBe that as it may, if you are an OpenGL coder you’re doing yourself a disservice by not watching and learning from this guys research, just because he chose DirectX doesn’t mean the same principles can’t be applied to OpenGL code..
Tezz
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 7:21 AMactually you would be stupid to not use both DirectX and OpenGL.
Ridort
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:06 PMFor a massive company, maybe, but I don’t see the logic in doing something twice to get the same result.
effektd
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 3:56 PMI remember reasing Disney comment that while realism in a graphical sense is appreciated for objects and animals, they found with research that the human mind didn’t accept/couldn’t accept and/or liking too what they were being shown
In a nutshell a couple of movies Disney/Pixar have made with humans have been deliberately made to have unrealistic attributes purely for the acceptance factor.
Someone mentioned it before, Uncanny Valley – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
Chuloopa
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:12 PMThis looks absolutely breathtakingly amazing.
What’s with all the haters?
Shane
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:19 PMI think it’s a normal reaction, a sort of backlash against getting hopes up :P
(At least, that’s what it is for me)
Shane
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:15 PMThere comes a point where each new generation of graphical intensity requires such an investment of time and resources and money that it becomes an untenable process.
I would have thought we were getting pretty close to that point.
Also, really emphasises the growing divide between the AAA cutting edge and the ‘rest’
You can pretty up lighting effects and improve texture resolutions all you want, but there are, as ben mentioned earlier, other aspects of animation that need to catch up sophistication-wise.
Extensive leaps in use of motion-capture and incremental improvements in technology might aid this, the tech used in LA Noire might help, but in order to keep animations dynamic in nature, there’s still a lot of work to do before it gets it right.
Anon
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:42 PMThe technology already exists and is frequently used in Hollywood. I wouldn’t be surprised to see partnerships between game publishers and movie studios becoming the norm. Many movie studios already have gaming arms like Warner Bros, Disney and Lucasarts.
N3RD1001101
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:45 PMThis is great progress, however we are still a while away… while this demo is able to run in realtime, there is no environment, objects, or other character and art assets present. I assume in its current state it is very GPU intensive, whilst the texture work and all is quite amazing, applying it to a low poly model is going to make it look very average. im estimating about 90k polygons in this model…
Might be feasible for a fighting game .
Meteors
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:46 PMSo they shaved and videoed Pacey off Dawson’s Creek, so what?
Aydin
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 4:59 PM+1 hahahaha
Sam Timmins
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 7:11 PM+2 The pudgey bastard has some weird gigs outside of Fringe!
Chris
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 8:21 PMSurprised no one mentioned the lack of hair. No eyelashes, the eybrows looked completely flat (when they were in shot at all) and the shaved head.
Until the hair is there, and the whole thing is moving, not that interested.
Neon
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 8:32 PMThe only thing I could think about was the music whist watching this video.. I don’t know about you, but I was waiting for him to turn into some sort of giant transformer robot. But none the less, looks pretty good from where I’m sitting.
Wolvieboy
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 9:41 PMDo you know where that music is from? Because to be perfectly honest, that’s what I spent most of that video wondering…
Lucas
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:56 PMhttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/5226139/music.mp3
;)
inshuu
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 9:14 PMI wonder how it will handle hair… and movement.
nightFlarer
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:14 AMWhy would it handle hair and movement? SSS is a rendering feature.
Darren
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:13 PMLooks good. Now lets animate it to Garry’s Mod!
Lucas
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 10:55 PMFortunately the guy put the source on github, which means the music was there along with it. I converted it to mp3 for your listening pleasure.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5226139/music.mp3
BlipittyBlopitty
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:19 AMIf we didn’t have consoles it might look better than that.
nightFlarer
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:21 AMSSS is Subsurface scattering, so Separable Subsurface Scattering should be SSSS lol
Not sure why all the hate though, they are showing off real-time SSS, nothing to do with hair and animations. It’s still going to work with lower poly models and smaller textures. It won’t look as perfect as the demo, but it’s going to improve how skin is rendered in games.
nightFlarer
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 12:26 AMI missed the point that SSSS is mentioned in the vid, and not in the article XD
Sam
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 7:26 AMThat’s great and all, but I don’t think a 6670 could render such high detail at 1080p comfortably. For consoles to run that, the detail would have to be held back greatly.