vert1 Dec 20, 2011 (edited May 18, 2012)
After watching the first 8 seconds of the footage from the RE4 Holy Sh*t Action Replay Moments I witnessed aesthetic perfection. I witnessed black bodies surrounded by red and orange particles. This got me thinking of posting a thread where we talk about really impressive visuals in video games. The beauty about games compared to movies is that you are the director. A lot of work goes into wowing viewers in the gaming industry. Here are two excerpts found on page 94 and 95 of Japanese Game Graphics: Behind the Scenees of Your Favorite Games:
Creating explosion and smoke effects created a difficult problem, but this was resolved with an innovative idea. "The explosion as seen in the front is divided into three different categories, which overlap in the order of brightness, such as dark, intermediate and highlight," Mizutani explained. "Making this many pieces in a group helps blend the colors in each brightness level. Therefore, its connection to the entire cloud frame can be seen in all its complexity."
In an animated explosion scene, the colors of the characters are not considered, rather several frames clearly distinguish the lit side as white and the opposite side as black," said Mizutani. "Likewise with a toon, a designer is able to distinguish the areas. Let's say, if you create a two-tone black-and-white palette, and look at the light source from an explosion up close, the spot becomes white and the back surface becomes black, producing a real-time animated stage in the game.
That is talking about Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner. A game that is very very visually impressive for what hardware it was running on. Other notable games listed in the book were Steel Battalion, Resident Evil Zero, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Virtua-On Marz, Soul Calibur 2, and Contra: Shattered Soldier.
So please find a clip of game footage that impresses you, post the link to the footage, and talk about it in depth.
