This paper was created to study the model of 'Kazuya Mishima' from 'Tekken 6'. You may download and view the paper for free, and use it for purely educational purposes. The link is below. Click to view, or right click and save to save the PDF to your computer.
Next - Current Generation Game Character Texture Handling (April 2013) - Ricky Thomas
Friday, 26 April 2013
Thursday, 18 April 2013
Tekken 6
Tekken 6
Playstation 3 / XBox 360
• Model Data
Many current generation games are catching up with eachother in terms of polycounts for characters. 1vs1 fighting games no longer hold higher-polycount characters, simply because they don't have too. All games (within reason) often have character made up of 12k - 20k tris now, no matter the genre. For example, 'Uncharted 2' had between 15k - 27k polys per character at their highest LOD. Tekken 6 is the same, and a great amount of detail is conveyed through this. It is getting to the point where higher resolutions are almost unnoticeable, and thus, a waste of time and memory to make them.
'Asuka Kazama'
14,779 Tris
• Extremely high detail modelled into her face in particular, allowing for great animation. Edge-flow wise, her entire body is very good for deformations. The bandana around her head is modelled straight out of the back on her head: the physics engine in-game will make it fall naturally. This is something that we see all of the time nowadays.
• As Namco often or always did even back in the PS2 era, the character has around 10-15 textures. The model is split up into many different bits that all get their own texture space, usually of a size around 128-512, depending on importance and model size. This method also appears to be quite common practice in most games now.
'Steve'
18,360 Tris
• His model is very well detailed, with edge-flows following all of his major muscles. While this is clear, it is hard to tell if this was originally all quads, or if it was triangles that made up such details in the first place.
• Having every major muscle outlines with polygons does make sense for flexing each muscle, but this is not the case in-game. In a way, it almost seems wasteful because normal maps could convey the information for less memory cost (not that I'd imagine the console would be struggling with memory in such a game).
• Again, just like 'Asuka' above, he has several textures. One thing I notice is that the specular maps *appear* to be red. Maybe this simulates a fake sub-surface scattering effect? I'm not sure, but soon I will try to apply all of the textures to one of these models to see what the outcome is: that should answer that question.
• His boxer shorts have a problem at the bottom whereby there are two polygon groups overlapping. I'm guessing this is how they make the models still look right with backface-culling on, whereas other games often just turn it off on characters. This way is technically more efficient though.
Overall, the models are extremely detailed. I have several more characters from the game, but these are just examples of two of my favorite ones. They are interesting to look at up-close: you notice all kinds of weird practices that suddenly start making sense. In general, it seems characters in most games will stay this high resolution for some time now. I don't think more polygons are needed on current character, just better texture resolutions now. A possible future for characters I guess would be real-time deformers for muscles, wrinkles, etc, but for now, normal maps work for this just fine.
Playstation 3 / XBox 360
• Model Data
Many current generation games are catching up with eachother in terms of polycounts for characters. 1vs1 fighting games no longer hold higher-polycount characters, simply because they don't have too. All games (within reason) often have character made up of 12k - 20k tris now, no matter the genre. For example, 'Uncharted 2' had between 15k - 27k polys per character at their highest LOD. Tekken 6 is the same, and a great amount of detail is conveyed through this. It is getting to the point where higher resolutions are almost unnoticeable, and thus, a waste of time and memory to make them.
14,779 Tris
• Extremely high detail modelled into her face in particular, allowing for great animation. Edge-flow wise, her entire body is very good for deformations. The bandana around her head is modelled straight out of the back on her head: the physics engine in-game will make it fall naturally. This is something that we see all of the time nowadays.
'Steve'
• His model is very well detailed, with edge-flows following all of his major muscles. While this is clear, it is hard to tell if this was originally all quads, or if it was triangles that made up such details in the first place.
• Having every major muscle outlines with polygons does make sense for flexing each muscle, but this is not the case in-game. In a way, it almost seems wasteful because normal maps could convey the information for less memory cost (not that I'd imagine the console would be struggling with memory in such a game).
• Again, just like 'Asuka' above, he has several textures. One thing I notice is that the specular maps *appear* to be red. Maybe this simulates a fake sub-surface scattering effect? I'm not sure, but soon I will try to apply all of the textures to one of these models to see what the outcome is: that should answer that question.
• His boxer shorts have a problem at the bottom whereby there are two polygon groups overlapping. I'm guessing this is how they make the models still look right with backface-culling on, whereas other games often just turn it off on characters. This way is technically more efficient though.
Overall, the models are extremely detailed. I have several more characters from the game, but these are just examples of two of my favorite ones. They are interesting to look at up-close: you notice all kinds of weird practices that suddenly start making sense. In general, it seems characters in most games will stay this high resolution for some time now. I don't think more polygons are needed on current character, just better texture resolutions now. A possible future for characters I guess would be real-time deformers for muscles, wrinkles, etc, but for now, normal maps work for this just fine.
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