@Arkanius: Some of us haven't had the time to imbibe the entire internet.

Spartan1308™

Real life doesn't have bump mapping

Snake726

Well, the first pic is news to me and I'm thankful it was posted. The fan art was good too and I think it will make a cute desktop.

Mohrdikai

My guess on the punchline was that everyone else kept talking over him...

supercrap

I thought you were saying that was a realtime game shot from Half Life 3... But I suppose this is cool, too.

bobtheduck

No, but hell, I expected Kotaku to have posted this... 3-4 years ago
Posting it now is kinda disappointing on their part I think.

It's still news to a lot of people, so I won't complain, but I'm still surprised that this is news to the Kotaku editors

Arkanius

@Arkanius: Yes, after all, everybody on the internet sees everything at the exact same time, right?

And after it's been seen, one must never speak of it again.

*sigh*

ShaggE

Never saw it before.. So thank you Owen for posting this very exciting, yet (apparently old) picture.

kumuasata

Didn't someone turn this into a screamer?
I seem to remember one...

Tannrar

VERY old, but still cool.

Wolfgeist

News to me aswell and I'm a huge HL2 fan.

Diesel_Power

...Well I have never seen it and thinks its cool... :(

Quicksilver4648

news to me too

Hulkamaniac

I never thought I'd see this picture again

noodles90

@Arkanius: @Winterbringer: Not everyone who reads Kotaku knows about this, it's still new news to me.

Emiat

Holy crap, this is old. It's the actual Half Life 2 model used in the game, the guy just gathered lighting data from the place he takes the background image and implements it on to the model in a 3D image editing suite.

This picture has been around since 2005 or 2006...

Winterbringer

mmm...normal mapping and HDR lighting...

kyuzo

I'm digging the Klingons on the couch in that gallery.

Cirno

@WEGGLES90: And what exactly are your eyes doing down there!?

Arttemis

Oh my god
Talk about old
4 Years old
Excelent news Kotaku...

Arkanius

@Gene-ius:

IT'S NOT LUPUS!!!1

jello44

It's an alright shop. Didn't impress me all that much though

mfwahwah

One, the cartoonist is good. Two, that Gordon Freeman looks a whole lot like Hugh Laurie. ;)

Gene-ius

I thought it was real too, but there's some funkyness around the bum, the texture stretched. Quite a good shop nonetheless.

WEGGLES90

...I looked.

trelantana

That picture is at least 2 years old. I remember seeing it on the Garry's Mod forums when I used to play it.

Fadakar

@ara: were == weren't; >_<

ara

There's a few more pictures in that guy's deviantart gallery...but yeah, these are a few years old for sure...they still impress me though.

BenKenobi88

@Gravnar: If I remember correctly the model and textures are lifted directly from HL2 game, they certainly were made to look this realistic to begin with. This is just a good example of what HDRI lighting can do even for simple models. Ambient occlusion and contact shadow for the bed would have notched the quality up even further.

ara

Yay, Kotaku posted something I submitted! Well, the second pic anyway which I still think is hilarious. First one I actually had as my desktop back when it was new. Still a pretty cool render, nice little slice o' combine life.

Absent Blue

@Arttemis:

I didn't even read Kotaku back in 2004 :uwah

Arkanius

@Emiat: Guess what. The Titanic sank.

Clarke

Never seen it. Even if I had, who cares, it's the weekend. There's no actual news.

Cyanotic

@Winterbringer, Arkanius: Keep in mind, there is a submission acknowledgment at the end of the post.
On a site with heavy user-tip dependence, maybe you could feel free to pass things along when you find them instead of lambasting them when they're late.

Arttemis

eh... It really didn't look that real to me... the textures on the armor just don't look realistic to me.

Gravnar

@NoBullet: He was the new guy in HL1. He hadn't found anyone to talk Digimon with.

wanion

I didn't realize the Combine soldiers were made of plush. Very huggable.

wanion

Yeah, that combine render was one of the first widely spread HDR render demos I saw in the web. At least it was used as demo, don't know what it was originally made for. And when I say HDR, I do not mean that pathetic bloom that's in videogames, just using HDR image as light source in rendering.

ara

That comic would be funny, if there was a girl in the first game. So whats his excuse in HL1?

NoBullet

This exact photo was on G4's Attack of the Show back in like 2004.

Babylonian

I lol'd.

bluegene

Half-Life 3 when????

bennifer3000

i havent seen this before, pretty awesome. good comic

TheNocturnalSun

I remember seeing a thread on the old Facepunch(Garry's Mod)forums which had this picture along with others, where real HDR data was used (from taking a photo with a shiny sphere in it) in rendering models from HL2 so that they could be superimposed on photos realistically.

At the time everyone was excited about how HL2 would look with the new HDR lighting system.

dangerman_

@Spartan1308™: I wouldnt try it. Ever watch Freakazoid? It was a cartoon about a kid who knew all the internet. He went crazy for obvious reasons.

robbie158

this is a "A link to the past" omage folks - I bet Owen is hinting at a new Zelda game :)

CraiZE

The combine pic is pretty old, but if you can find the gallery that it comes from, there are some more amazing things in there.

Kamakazie

If you're complaining/crticizing Kotaku for "old" news...

Weekends have always been painfully slow, be happy with the fact we're getting something.

I mean, back before Owen came on board, Kotaku was all but dead on weekends.

Coquiton

I am more similar to Freeman then I thought...

Ganonmaster

@ara: The way this article is talking about it, it is apparently supposed to be life like in look. Which the textures just don't look real. It doesn't matter if they are from an old game. They were claiming it looked real. It doesn't.

Gravnar

@ara: Ambient occlusion would be pointless. It is a low cost substitute for true global illumination which this image is using.

housewarmer

Uh, bit late to be showing this, a few members on Facepunch studios have been creating these, and no they aren't made in photoshop, it's all 3DS max. They rip the models from the source engine upgrade the textures a bit, pose him, put a picture behind him and wallah.

Floreum

@Gravnar: The kid who made it had followed Paul Debevec, and did this purely on his own. He did a series of really amazing renders... and its really more about the realistic lighting than the texturing on the model (which, in my opinion, looks fine anyway)

Anyone slightly interested should check out [www.debevec.org]

I've been in awe of this man since learning about him in school.

tehGloom

Wait, is he hunched over, sitting on the bed, or taking a dump on the bed. It's hard to tell what he was going for with it. Definitely doesn't seem like he's sitting, since the bed has no impression marks.

Darkest Daze

@Gene-ius: Half life movie..... OMG it could be epic with hugh laurie, without the fake hobble of course.

deathtastic

"Chewbacca in the kitchen" sounds like some crazy sex move. Not sure I wanna know what it'd entail, though.

Doomstalk

Yea, might be old to some, new to me. Looks cool.

@deathtastic: I have had countless convos about casting roles for a half life movie. Hugh Laurie is an excellent chioce, although if you looked at Edward Norton, you will be amazed how he can pull off Gordon. Plus side to, is that Norton is younger and more built than Hugh.

In the end though, do we really need a half life movie? unless a peter jackson or someone super dedicated would do it, there is no point. The game is better than most movies. where's my ep 3?

Shabat0ge

@Chunky-MonkeyLOL:
Careful, the banhammer is swift and just.

Darkest Daze

@Arkanius:

Seriously, I mean what the fuck. How is this news?

Chunky-MonkeyLOL

I think it's time for a refresher post of the Kotaku rules. Those guys are gonna get banned and aren't even gonna know why.

I have never seen this pic.

Billkwando

From the original thread back in 2005:
[img115.imageshack.us]

And the original thread (very long and not very full of images):
[forums.facepunchstudios.com]

karmaghost

I played HL2 last week for the first time, so this pic is in the center of my interests.

artistpavel

@Billkwando: Do they really need to know the rules? It's something that anyone with common sense should be well aware of. Unless, of course, they have just arrived on the internet. I'll forgive them if that were the case, which it is not. I need to start noting names for the next big "Monday", too many people have gotten away with bannable offences over the course of E3.

Libo

was going to mention isnt this really old ? ohh well pretty much puts it for nerds out there when talking to girlz

slyzxx786

Can't say I blame him, Alyx Vance is a total babe.

Graham

It's the sort of thing that, once you know that it's graphics, you can easily see it.

Moonshadow101

Relics of the internet! I seriously remember this ongoing project back when HDR was becoming the big thing.

Ackart

Jesus. All of you "OMG OLD, NOT NEWS" people need a swift kick to the IP address.

InsidiousTuna

Remember seeing that "back in the day" when HL2 was first coming out, there were quite a few others as well that were pretty badarse.

PlasmaMachine

@Arttemis:

Nothing! I swear!

I was looking along the edges for signs of a shoop and saw stretched textures :)

WEGGLES90

@Libo: While most of the rules are common sense, "not news" being common sense is debatable.

Kotaku is a news blog, and conceivably, one who doesn't know any better might suggest to Kotaku that something is "not news" in a misguided effort to save them potential embarassment for posting old news.

It may seem unlikely, but the potential is there.

Billkwando

Older than McCain

DismantleRepair

I don't think it's a shop, in sense of someone compositing two images.

I believe they used a program like 3ds max, and used GI with an HDR map of their room.

Googl0rs for the tutorials on how to do this.

balls187 upside yo head

Wow this is some nice graphic skillz! I never saw this before.

mindf1ow

@housewarmer: If it's a MentalRay render, as I understand, then FinalGather is the method used here, and generally speaking it's way coarser than AmbientOcclusion. To get good result you usually have to do AO pass to catch all the details and then FG pass to get actual lighting. Though you are right in that the model is so rough there are not many details to be caught with AO pass, but from the looks of it, the right side of the helmet could benefit from it.

ara

Its a decent render but the textures could use some more work aswell as the bumpmap.

Freduardo

I like the helmet, that's pretty believable. The suit is where it gets obvious, without looking at the stretch.

Couldn't you have opted out on the deviantart thing, Owen?

MaxChallie

Hahahaah thats why!!!!

HDgam3r

I would just like to say.

I find it humorous how short a lifespan of something must be before it's called "Very Old"... Most of you were very old by the time you started drinking from a sippy cup by these standards!

But really. Old or new, I haven't seen it before - so I admire it.

Dennen

I know the theory but not the name of the technique. Those HL2 renders are done with a photo of basically a chromed sphere - it shows the PC all it needs to know about angles and intensity of light in the shot so the 3D model blends in naturally. I'd love to mess with it some time but I'm lazy...

The comic makes perfect sense... Freeman's a geeky physicist, right?

Though I think under my control it would be more like "wow... how can she not notice all the stuff on top of her head? Maybe if I toss this... woah! It didn't topple! That must be 200lbs of junk and she's acting like it's not there! Girls are weird."

fuchikoma

I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT AND I THINK IT IS NEAT.

Don't worry Kotaku, I got your back. ;)

leetXcore

Interesting pic. Needs more shop around the bums though... :P
Could make an epic cosplay too...

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

OLD OLD OLD OLD OLD

Ariel_Wollinger

guys, this is actually OLD!!! this was a test done by a kid using HDRI light rendering techniques.

Ariel_Wollinger

The guy that started it all rendered that image. His name is Nick Bertke. He used to have a website, but all I could find was his DeviantArt: [pogon.deviantart.com] <-- More HL2 renders there. He's pretty damned good!

DrBroccoli

the pics are still fun, even after all this time. just surprised it's news now though

cihx

@wanion:

Yeah, I thought it was a plushie too! Until I realized its outline and definition weren't QUITE agreeing with the bed.

Noble-Asthmatic

@PlasmaMachine: Indeed, my favorit ones were the ones with a creepy realistic DOG in various places.

BlackMage66652