Shenmue Dojo

As several have mentioned, I am curious as to why there are so many models floating about. I personally like January's Ryo best, and am wondering if maybe the footage shown at this presentation was indeed dated before the January screens.

Something I found in an ERA thread relating to the THQ Nordic stuff coming out.



45 devs at Ys Net. I guess that's Ys Net alone, rather than including partner studios.

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Separate to this, the reason why the models might not always look the same could be simply down to different lighting, and different angles. We saw it a lot with the E3 '15 and Gamescom '17 models.

the new footage look great, the improved Shenhau model appears to be the one from January but with shorter hair at the back; so my guess would be the model from this new video is a slightly older model than the January 2018 screenshot, but newer than the old progress trailer from last year.

all looking fantastic as far as I'm concerned; also very happy with the extended development time. Especially with the Shenmue 1 & 2 HD release this year. Everything is falling into place perfectly with maximum benefit for Shenmue 3's release.

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MJMW wrote:
Ideally, I'd want her to look as close to this as possible:

don't we all! but still, the current videos show improvement. Quite why they can't go back and re-scan or get the source models for these renders we'll never know.

Spaghetti wrote: Something I found in an ERA thread relating to the THQ Nordic stuff coming out.



45 devs at Ys Net. I guess that's Ys Net alone, rather than including partner studios.

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Separate to this, the reason why the models might not always look the same could be simply down to different lighting, and different angles. We saw it a lot with the E3 '15 and Gamescom '17 models.

Nice find, and right in line with my estimation. Neilo is providing the additional team members and based on the size of their office, I'd put that number around 25-30 staff.

http://retaildesignblog.net/2015/01/31/ ... kyo-japan/

Here's the quote from the presentation that refers to the extended development period and the future announcement of the release date.

...the upcoming release of Shenmue III has been moved, and will now release in 2019. The extra time will be used to polish the quality of the game even further to the high standards it deserves, and release the product in the best possible time frame. For now we will say 'coming in 2019' and will update you at a later stage with an exact release date. And we hope that when players get hands on it, they will ultimately think the extra time was well spent.

The two parts I bolded are ones that jumped out at me. First, setting aside from the matter of "polishing" the game: "The extra time will be used to ... release the produce in the best possible time frame." So in other words, aside from continuing to develop/improve the game, the extended development time is at least partially due to a desire to position the release date strategically. What this means is completely open to interpretation. Personally I would think they might try to avoid the annual September-December flood of AAA titles... however, they might have their own market research that says that this would be the best time for Shenmue III, so it's anyone's guess.

The second phrase says that they "will update you at a later stage with an exact release date." Unless he said anything more specific elsewhere in the presentation, this could also mean anything. Will the announcement be at the next public event? Five public events from now? It's completely open-ended.

Ryo and Shenhua models are looking better and better!

One more point I'd like to make regarding team size.

The upcoming action-adventure game Days Gone has been in development by a team of only 50 staff. It is only in the past 18 months that additional resources have been added to the game which had then brought the total number of staff to 100, still a very modest team size in today's day.

Seemingly the same build, just different lighting conditions




EDIT:

interestingly enough, only the part where Ryo and Shenhua walk together is from a new build.
The scene where they're looking at each other, and the one where Shenhua is pointing at Bailu village, is straight up taken from the Gamescom trailer (Old models 'n all)

Alright, I've softened a lot on Ryo's face. The facial animations are actually much improved, as well as the walking animations. They all look much more natural than before.

I might make a youtube video that displays captions of the improvements but for now I've made a webm to show some examples.


https://giant.gfycat.com/FastLividHermitcrab.webm

Someone was using this as a "LOL LOOKS BAD" gif on ERA, but I can't be alone in thinking this shows quite a lot in the way of facial animation improvement?



Eyes following Shenhua instead of facing just forward, kind of a smile going on, then dropping to neutral when looking ahead.

Posting that thread in Era with the title "New Shenmue 3 Footage" when 95% of the footage is from last year is a terrible idea and I can see why people would be confused and think there aren't any improvements...

Seriously why even post it like that? At least cut out the old scenes or something... Now a bunch of websites are gonna take this old trailer and label it new, resulting in more confusion.

Case in point: https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer- ... -surfaces/

Spaghetti wrote: Someone was using this as a "LOL LOOKS BAD" gif on ERA, but I can't be alone in thinking this shows quite a lot in the way of facial animation improvement?



Eyes following Shenhua instead of facing just forward, kind of a smile going on, then dropping to neutral when looking ahead.

Yeah it's actually much improved. Before the faces were all stiff but now it has a lot of nuances. Like how his right eye raises as he he looks up. Also the blinking and mouth animations are much more natural. The walking animations have also been improved. Looks like they actually did some mocap.

There's a lot of stuff that comes out in video that I thought looked weird in the still pics. But overall, despite the model change animations as a whole are much better.

To be honest it looks almost the same.

I think that the latest we got are the high res pics we they showed in Monaco.

Always showing the same stuff, with different quality, tonemapping (or just the video quality), makes everything kinda frustrating to be comparing.

I guess it's because most games just show X trailer to the press and that's it, not much people will care to look around for these kind of media "releases" (the same with the monaco/press only media).