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[01011001]

"Yes, but how many polygons?" An artist blog entry with interesting numbers

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Idroid - 526 polygons Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes XOF Soldier - 11,768 polygons Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Snake - 18,210 polygons XOF soldier is a surprise, could pass off for much higher, Impressive job from...

forum.beyond3d.com

SOFTIMAGE|XSI Case Study: Konami - METAL GEAR SOLID 4 news

Softimage Case Study for Metal Gear Solid 4. It's a long article, but it's packed with great information and plenty of tricks for using Softimage for game production.

www.moddb.com

SOFTIMAGE|XSI - Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1

The model in the reveal trailer was far superior with about 60,000 vertices just to simulate hair. The final game is basically the Wii version of that:

honestly, there has NEVER been a console before or after the PS3, where developers and the manufacturer themselves lied so much about the capabilities of the system...
soft self shadowing... like... damn we barely got this on Xbox One and PS4 in that quality.
"this is all still in development, it will get much better from here" is also an amazing sentence in that video lol

 

[OCASM]

honestly, there has NEVER been a console before or after the PS3, where developers and the manufacturer themselves lied so much about the capabilities of the system...
soft self shadowing... like... damn we barely got this on Xbox One and PS4 in that quality.
"this is all still in development, it will get much better from here" is also an amazing sentence in that video lol

To be fair back in those days just slightly blurring stencil shadows (like in ICO or the SH games) or using filtered shadow mapping was all it took for shadows to be called "soft." Nothing like the contact hardening variety we see in games like RDR2.

 

[PaintTinJr]

"Yes, but how many polygons?" An artist blog entry with interesting numbers

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Idroid - 526 polygons Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes XOF Soldier - 11,768 polygons Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Snake - 18,210 polygons XOF soldier is a surprise, could pass off for much higher, Impressive job from...

forum.beyond3d.com

SOFTIMAGE|XSI Case Study: Konami - METAL GEAR SOLID 4 news

Softimage Case Study for Metal Gear Solid 4. It's a long article, but it's packed with great information and plenty of tricks for using Softimage for game production.

www.moddb.com

SOFTIMAGE|XSI - Metal Gear Solid 4 part 1

The model in the reveal trailer was far superior with about 60,000 vertices just to simulate hair. The final game is basically the Wii version of that:

From the article, the text I've bolded isn't written correctly and fails to clearly state that the head is restricted at 5K - 10K by grammatical choices. In the demo TGS 2005 they stated the cinematic head model hair used 60K, with the moustache using more polys than a MGS3SE enemy solder.

The reason we know the text below is wrong, because looking at the accompanying image, we can see that there is roughly 10 large quads wide across the chest by 10 down - around the two curved upper torso shapes, and each of these is a 5x5 quad mesh meaning just that front facing section (80cm by 50cm) has 2.5K quads, or 5K polygons if strictly using the 2 tri-polys per quad description to compare to other model's geometry metrics on that beyond3d page like the HL2 female character.

Just multiplying that number by 3 per waist and legs, and doubling for back of model gets 30K polys without including the head, which will be 5k-10k quads, so probably another 20k, meaning the whole model is in the 50K - 100K ball park given my under estimate of character surface area.

Most of the characters that are animated on the console, including the main character, Snake, have been restricted to a data size (including the face model) of about 5,000 to 10,000 polygons. Further, characters are used that have the same polygon resolution in both the game action and the event demos. This means that the game screens and video clips are seamlessly connected, making it easier for players to become emotionally involved.

/edit
also in the video, they describe all the extra HDR, and depth of field stuff done on the CPU(SPUS because general cores are too slow for graphics), and soft shadowing the game, which was way beyond the Xenos 8bit integer precision hardware, with the lack of 70GFLOPs of SPUs. The video and final game really do show how the 360 would have lost too much of the presentation, by downgrading to bumpmaps from normal maps, halving polygon counts, no soft shadows, no HDR, no depth of field, lower grade texturing due to lack of SPUs to decompress on demand, and the halved polyon counts would have impacted shadow maps even further with facetted silhouette edges, even putting aside whether the octo camo could be implemented on the xenos

/edit2
When I originally asked for a link to the model, I was expecting an RP3 cell emulator extraction situation with the model loaded in blender with it doing the count.

 

[OCASM]

From the article, the text I've bolded isn't written correctly and fails to clearly state that the head is restricted at 5K - 10K by grammatical choices. In the demo TGS 2005 they stated the cinematic head model hair used 60K, with the moustache using more polys than a MGS3SE enemy solder.

The TGS model is not the same model as in the final game. That's the point. The retail game is a massive downgrade from the original.

The reason we know the text below is wrong, because looking at the accompanying image, we can see that there is roughly 10 large quads wide across the chest by 10 down - around the two curved upper torso shapes, and each of these is a 5x5 quad mesh meaning just that front facing section (80cm by 50cm) has 2.5K quads, or 5K polygons if strictly using the 2 tri-polys per quad description to compare to other model's geometry metrics on that beyond3d page like the HL2 female character.

Just multiplying that number by 3 per waist and legs, and doubling for back of model gets 30K polys without including the head, which will be 5k-10k quads, so probably another 20k, meaning the whole model is in the 50K - 100K ball park given my under estimate of character surface area.

Assuming your calculations were right (which I doubt) that model is probably the one you see during the installation screens, which is not the same one used in-game.

/edit
also in the video, they describe all the extra HDR, and depth of field stuff done on the CPU(SPUS because general cores are too slow for graphics), and soft shadowing the game, which was way beyond the Xenos 8bit integer precision hardware, with the lack of 70GFLOPs of SPUs. The video and final game really do show how the 360 would have lost too much of the presentation, by downgrading to bumpmaps from normal maps, halving polygon counts, no soft shadows, no HDR, no depth of field, lower grade texturing due to lack of SPUs to decompress on demand, and the halved polyon counts would have impacted shadow maps even further with facetted silhouette edges, even putting aside whether the octo camo could be implemented on the xenos

Again, that video is about the TGS 2005 demo which is far superior to the final game. Here's an article describing some of the things they did in the demo but had to be cut down:

ＫＯＮＡＭＩ、「METAL GEAR SOLID 4」関連セッションレポート

MGS4 3D engine post mortem [translation needed]

So here's my summary of the Game Watch article for one of the MGS4 sessions at CEDEC 2008. http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20080912/cedec_mgs.htm First this pic http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20080912/mgs04.htm from another MGS4 session about its artistic design...

forum.beyond3d.com

Here's the difference in action:




And that's without considering the obvious differences in resolution and performance (1080p@60fps vs 1024x768@30fps).

/edit2
When I originally asked for a link to the model, I was expecting an RP3 cell emulator extraction situation with the model loaded in blender with it doing the count.

There's a noesis plugin for MGS4 if you want to check it out:

Releases · Jayveer/MGS-MDN-Noesis

Noesis Plugin for Metal Gear Solid 4 Model (MDN) and Animation (MTAR) files - Jayveer/MGS-MDN-Noesis

github.com

EDIT: Found a wild ride, 13,500 triangles:

metal gear solid 4 raiden - Download Free 3D model by sentientshoebox

raiden as he appeared in mgs4: guns of the patriots - metal gear solid 4 raiden - Download Free 3D model by sentientshoebox

sketchfab.com

 

[PaintTinJr]

The TGS model is not the same model as in the final game. That's the point. The retail game is a massive downgrade from the original.


Assuming your calculations were right (which I doubt) that model is probably the one you see during the installation screens, which is not the same one used in-game.


Again, that video is about the TGS 2005 demo which is far superior to the final game. Here's an article describing some of the things they did in the demo but had to be cut down:

ＫＯＮＡＭＩ、「METAL GEAR SOLID 4」関連セッションレポート

MGS4 3D engine post mortem [translation needed]

So here's my summary of the Game Watch article for one of the MGS4 sessions at CEDEC 2008. http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20080912/cedec_mgs.htm First this pic http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20080912/mgs04.htm from another MGS4 session about its artistic design...

forum.beyond3d.com

Here's the difference in action:




And that's without considering the obvious differences in resolution and performance (1080p@60fps vs 1024x768@30fps).


There's a noesis plugin for MGS4 if you want to check it out:

Releases · Jayveer/MGS-MDN-Noesis

Noesis Plugin for Metal Gear Solid 4 Model (MDN) and Animation (MTAR) files - Jayveer/MGS-MDN-Noesis

github.com

EDIT: Found a wild ride, 13,500 triangles:

metal gear solid 4 raiden - Download Free 3D model by sentientshoebox

raiden as he appeared in mgs4: guns of the patriots - metal gear solid 4 raiden - Download Free 3D model by sentientshoebox

sketchfab.com

Your Raiden model is very interesting as a marker.

For him to be a non-playable character and be at 13.5k still leans me to think sanke uses far more with his geometrically demanding octo camo -because it probably has thickness too - so would expect at least double that amount in game IMO, because Snakes animations are smoother - because they aren't cyborg like Raiden's - typically needing more geometry for blending between other animations smoothly, and to avoid artefacts. Raiden's model at lower LoD also presents less problems for shadow under-sampling, self shadow issues or facetted silhouette edges because his game involvement is completely directed, so his placement can be set to avoid issues in advance.

Snake is always on camera and in the foreground occupying far more fragments per viewport. The model in article looks consistent with the in-game model IMHO. I was completely blown away by snake's on screen model and didn't even notice the final gather resolution was below 720p because is IQ was strikingly good, even compared to everything else in-game, which was also still great.

 

[OCASM]

Your Raiden model is very interesting as a marker.

For him to be a non-playable character and be at 13.5k still leans me to think sanke uses far more with his geometrically demanding octo camo -because it probably has thickness too - so would expect at least double that amount in game IMO, because Snakes animations are smoother - because they aren't cyborg like Raiden's - typically needing more geometry for blending between other animations smoothly, and to avoid artefacts. Raiden's model at lower LoD also presents less problems for shadow under-sampling, self shadow issues or facetted silhouette edges because his game involvement is completely directed, so his placement can be set to avoid issues in advance.

Snake is always on camera and in the foreground occupying far more fragments per viewport. The model in article looks consistent with the in-game model IMHO. I was completely blown away by snake's on screen model and didn't even notice the final gather resolution was below 720p because is IQ was strikingly good, even compared to everything else in-game, which was also still great.

Octocamo is a shader effect, no extra geometry is used for it.

 

[PaintTinJr]

Octocamo is a shader effect, no extra geometry is used for it.

No, I'm not still talking about the octo camo fx, I'm talking about it as part of the model - inactive fx in oil black- when animating the model movements. the camo animates with snakes body, and in animations is at risk of self intersecting geometry when the muscles move, which is why I think it has thickness below the top layer and used an offline cloth(rubber) physics simulation to animate correctly, and the would have implications of the shader fx for transparency when the camo is self occluding other parts of the camo by camera angle or animation limb arrangement.

 

[01011001]

Here's the difference in action:

god damn. if this had physically based rendering it would look like a PS4 game

 

[RaduN]

god damn. if this had physically based rendering it would look like a PS4 game

I honestly think ps4 would have a hard time rendering those pristine graphics at 60 fps. They really got overly enthusiastic with that demo back then.

 

[OCASM]

No, I'm not still talking about the octo camo fx, I'm talking about it as part of the model - inactive fx in oil black- when animating the model movements. the camo animates with snakes body, and in animations is at risk of self intersecting geometry when the muscles move, which is why I think it has thickness below the top layer and used an offline cloth(rubber) physics simulation to animate correctly, and the would have implications of the shader fx for transparency when the camo is self occluding other parts of the camo by camera angle or animation limb arrangement.

Can we see in video an example of what exactly you're talking about?

 

[PaintTinJr]

Can we see in video an example of what exactly you're talking about?

Sadly, no. My PS3 is still setup, but the time it would take me to install, and play to get to such a moment and then setup my AVerMedia capture equipment and use a macrovision stripper is with the best will in the world unlikely, with family commitments.

If I can find the time, I will watch through some youtube play thru videos and see if I can find what it is I'm trying to show in someone else's footage, but without being able to pick the camera position I'm not confident in finding a good example.