How To Make Triple A Graphics

A small look into how triple a studios do their graphics

Music: Bluesy Vibes - Doug Maxwell

[garbaj]

TIL that the "wood" on the mp40 is actually bakelite

[musikalniyfanboichik]

expected a meme about lots of motion blur, lense dirt, bloom, camera shake

[C-CW]

Yes, crank up bloom/glow will directly boost your game from AA to AAA

[TheItchyDanil]

I've been a 3D modeler for over 10 years.

3D models always start with high detail in a modeling software.

The bump map and other detail maps are rendered from the high detail model.

Then, the actual 3D model is simplified to reduce resource requirements.

And when you apply your maps, it gives the simple 3D model a detailed appearance.

This is actually how the industry has been doing it for decades.

[angrygeri]

I finally know why Cyberpunk took half of my fucking memory.

[BloodyMobile]

"Roughness" basically describes how "not-shiny" a part is, as in something with 0 roughness can be mirrorlike (depending on other factors) while something with 100% roughness is basically as reflection absorbing as it can get.

[maxemore]

there's also animation, particle design, special effects, LOD effects, post-processing, performance optimization, environmental ambient occlusion, lootboxes, elephants, continuous delivery, corporate meetings and a coffee maker, all of those are important when making a 3d model

[Rexotec]

So, lets go, its physics theory time.

A roughness map is there to simulate the microsurface detail of an object. When light hits a surface it gets scattered, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. How much depends on the overall roughness or smoothness of the surface. This creates the specular highlight, that white dot in the eye, the rippling sheens across a fancy car, the anime shine of glasses, the shing of a sword catching the sunlight etc. etc. etc.
A smooth surface, like a mirror, will reflect almost perfectly, whereas a rough surface, say, a cloth shirt, will not reflect the highlight very well at all. Hence the roughness map, black means it's completely smooth, white means it's completely rough, so no highlights for you >:(

Moving on to specular maps. They're kind of the reverse of roughness... kinda... you see you have to know what the metalness map works to know how these maps change things, because you generally don't use metalness with a specular map. So metalness maps... let's go.

When light gets reflected, it will generally be the colour of the light source. Except with metallic materials, then it will be the colour of the object. To explain:
- Orange Light hits Blue Non-Metal surface: Orange Highlight is reflected
- Orange Light hits Blue Metal surface: Blue Highlight is reflected
That's where the metalness map comes in, to explain what is metal and what isn't.

Now comes in specular maps. While they're kinda the reverse of roughness maps, what they allow you to do is manually decide the colour of the specular highlight.
- Orange Light hits Blue surface with Green specular data: Green Highlight is reflected.

This gives you more control over how your objects look, but can be finnicky... and often reality breaking... unless you wanted to do like, pools of oil or something... but it's more versatile, which is its strength. A quirk of specular maps is to make a metal, the albedo (or diffuse, it's just the colour map really) must be black, with the colour going into the specular map instead.

Hope that clears up... stuff...

[Erstus]

Using the "glow" effect to achieve a high budget look is a nice joke. :D Most games(including AAA) do the "glow" so badly, it's shameful.

[Rolandfart]

Specular maps are paired with the roughness maps, the specular map shows how reflective the object is. The ambient occlusion map is for indicating where self shadows are because it's much more efficient to have it baked in to a texture.

[jonas]

I've learned everything and nothing at the same time

Great video though

[canoe]

"Don't ask me how this works because I don't know." This is every class in physics and chemistry

[partiallyk]

followed steps. have become a triple a graphic millionaire but all I want to do is make everything look like a ps1 game

[fab]

Ambient Occlusion models the fact that where two surfaces meet at a sharp angle, there is shadows. Specular Highlights are the bright spots on reflective materials. The other maps are sampled by the shaders on each point of the model (either texel, or vertex), and it blends between the two shaders (one metallic one rough etc) where white is one shader and black is the other.

[swishfish]

one step closer to my outer space minecraft mmo with guns and realistic graphics that's coming out next month

[TheSonicfanx]

This is actually a really good “textures for dummies” video. I kinda wish you touched more on AO though since we use AO maps to as a mask for a lot of detail like scratches and dirt/grime.

Ambient Occlusion is basically the shadow that appears when two surfaces are super close to each other. For example, if you had two walls making a corner, that corner would have AO.

[proatgaimz]

ambient occlusion maps is basically defining the shadow of an object's crevasses, and usually gives the object/mesh some additional depth detail.

[gabeshootsfilms]

holy shit first time i've seen someone use godot outside of a tutorial
i applaud you

[tbcalfa]

Finally I realized the use of these images, I literally ignored it

[TNPThanapong]

I love how you simplify stuff and not going into too many details that it actually kinda good for newcomers or student who want to get into graphic design and let them know what are these things gonna use for :D