Ryo's face

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Ryo's face

Postby mjq jazz bar » Fri May 12, 2017 1:04 pm

First of all, I've never done any kind of 3D modeling and I'm not a particularly good artist.

Why has it been so difficult for them to get Ryo's face correct? I understand it's not their priority and obviously we haven't seen his face since the Photoshopped pictures from a few months ago, but I'm having trouble understanding how experienced artists and 3D modelers can't get the face to match the old face we all know & love.

Can someone with a little more technical/artistic expertise explain this to me? It seems almost crazy to me that no one on the team is capable of getting it right. I'm hoping there's a complicated reason why the best they've been able to come up with is a pretty poor Photoshop.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Centrale » Fri May 12, 2017 1:17 pm

I'm a 3D artist. I work mostly in video but do have a little bit of experience rigging and animating characters for games as well. Obviously I don't know any specifics about what's going on at YSnet. I can say it would be a fairly simple matter to build a new model based on the older model. Rigging it to enable more nuanced expressions and set up controls for the animators could be time-consuming, but certainly a reasonable task overall. My speculation is that it's just not been the highest priority yet, as they've been focusing on prototyping and developing the various types of gameplay. Ultimately I don't think it will be difficult to match the appearance of the previous Ryo, but I wonder if Yu Suzuki would like to evolve the art direction somewhat and that will lead to some iterations of Ryo's appearance as he works out his subjective opinion on the look.

(Edit for more bloviating:) I'd say this ties into another set of factors, which is the new engine running the game and the advances that have been made in materials and lighting. Even the original models would look somewhat different (in color balance and apparent material attributes) if imported directly into UE4. Take Ryo's jacket, for example. We've already seen some work-in-progress renders that show a more realistic material. Compared to the original jacket texture, it's a big difference. The original textures tried to convey characteristics like folds and shininess all within the color channel. These days those material attributes are broken up into multiple maps (bump maps and normal maps for details in the depth of the surface, specularity and environmental reflection maps to convey the shininess of materials, and so on). So the technical challenge of matching the exact geometric topology of Ryo's face is negligible, but the artisitic challenge of defining a new art direction that utilizes current tech while not diverging too much from the original style could be quite difficult.

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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Spaghetti » Fri May 12, 2017 2:00 pm

Centrale probably hit the nail on the head with it being a combination of art style updates, and not being the highest priority as of the last time we saw the game in March.

But I feel they're making moves in the right direction. Ryo's hair and clothing looked really improved from a technical perspective in the March update. Clearly unfinished artistically, but y'know, until they say "this is the finished model"...
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Hazuki00 » Fri May 12, 2017 3:14 pm

I want to add that in previous shenmues, even in the latest tráilers Ryo looked a bit different (the nose I remember) than the Final model. I would not worry about this, there is much time left to make Ryo look as we think.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby mjq jazz bar » Fri May 12, 2017 3:24 pm

I hope so, and I realize they haven't shown us much of anything up to this point, so I'm not REALLY worried. I'm just kind of curious how we're almost 2 years in and haven't seen the classic Ryo face we all know & love. I'll be satisfied if the final product is slightly different than what we're used to because of technological advances or artistic vision, but what we've seen so far has not delivered at all and I can't understand why they've had trouble matching the original.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby killthesagabeforeitkillsu » Fri May 12, 2017 3:27 pm

The face texture itself is irrelevant, we haven't seen any in game facial animation yet so I assume they aren't confident enough to showcase it. I believe that they already have a super pretty Ryo face but they haven't put everything together.

Also, if the game is dropping in December, there isn't that much time left. By September they should be in the post production stage.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby darksniper » Fri May 12, 2017 3:42 pm

I thought they did a good job on his Shenmue online model. Don't see any reason why Ryo's face could look something close to that.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Peter » Sun May 14, 2017 5:56 am

I understand people's worry, and subsequent anger if/when Ryos face is revealed and it doesn't look like Ryo etc.....

But,

For me, I've already made my peace that he isn't going to look exactly like Ryo we know and love, primarily down to the simple fact that he's being designed for a modern game with modern technology. It's impossible for him to look "the same", unless they were making Shenmue 3 with the old engine they used to make the first 2 for the Dreamcast.

Of course the Photoshop move was a bit stupid, but as the OP said, I think it's not too priority at the moment. The last shit we had of Ryos animations from 2 KS updates ago showed that not even his hair had been completed. He had short hair, so I guess the spiked elements will be added on in some way.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby badamn » Sun May 14, 2017 11:03 am

I've alway's thought that Ryos' face in the kickstarter trailer was just a matter of that being the best Yusan could do by himself,but it maybe,maybe......just possible that yu wanted it to look unpolished on purpose.He was asking for money to finish it after all.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Niowiad » Tue May 16, 2017 11:13 am

My impression is that they always tried to go for the most photorealistic look allowed by technology at time of development. If they again want to aim at photorealism, the final face could be a lot different than the original, which might looks sort of cartoonish compared to what is possible nowdays.
Same goes for Shenhua as far as I've seen.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Centrale » Tue May 16, 2017 11:46 am

I don't think I'd describe the style of Shenmue as photorealistic. Most of the textures are hand-painted (digitally, I assume) so everything has more of a painted or illustrated look, although the sheer amount of detail provides an aspect of realism. I think this has helped Shenmue age more gracefully than most other games of the era that used photo textures. Something that's thoughtfully stylized usually looks timeless in the years to come, while things that seem photorealistic now almost inevitably look badly dated ten years later.

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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Niowiad » Wed May 17, 2017 4:55 am

Centrale wrote:...although the sheer amount of detail provides an aspect of realism.

This must have been what fooled me then :king:
I'll trust your word on this. What you said about the textures makes a lot of sense.
I'd actually love to see the characters more similar to the original counterparts anyway.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Esppiral » Wed May 17, 2017 3:48 pm

As far as I remember the faces ( at least the passport ones and I bet some others too) Are digital scans from some handmade busts.

Image
Image


Those busts were used not only in the passport but in the Shenmue online trailer and official artwork.

Passport
Image

Shenmue online
Image

Artwork
Image


Passport Face ( tweaked +Into a new model)
Image


And as some of you may know I have used those passport faces as base for new models, they are fully rigged

Left original artwork, right reconstruction using the ripped face from the game.
Image


ImageImage

ImageImage




Image

Image


ImageImage

Image


Every single model uses the passport faces as a base.

Sorry for the overload of images, I know it seems I always try to post my pics when this topic surfaces....

Bu t my point is, the excuse of old models and new tech incompatible is... well... BS.

So the real reason why they aren't using faces close to the originals is beyond my comprenhension...

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Re: Ryo's face

Postby Gen » Wed May 17, 2017 4:04 pm

Yeah, The passport models look very good even today. Though I actually think passport Shenhua looks a little weird. I prefer the S2 model where her face is more like the CG artwork.
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Re: Ryo's face

Postby mjq jazz bar » Wed May 17, 2017 4:25 pm

Esppiral's post is what I've been worried about.

Why are they having so much trouble doing even that?
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