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...Badass! Now what I want to see is something that makes this obvious it's real-time gameplay do a mock battle and let's see someone play it. Hell if they even just used one of the existing battle systems they've got just to see it in action.
Though from a 3D artists point of view... this is real-time lol
From as far as I can tell, this is as real-time as it gets. Though it would be a bust if the presentation video was 'pre-recorded'. Though, it seemed like they were using their own scripted version of Autodesk Maya and the real-time render was probably made specifically to support the Luminous engine.
A little late, but here are the thoughts I promised.
I would definitely not mind if this was indeed for a project that would become FFXV. The concepts presented in even this short tech demo were very intriguing. The nature of magic seemed to be a little different than the usual superpower it is in FF. Agni's lightning magic burned her arm, and her healing magic seemed to cause her great pain. What this says about magic in this world is very interesting; does it come with a price? Is it something mortals aren't even meant to wield?
And the men that were shooting down the group summoning the dragon. What is their motivation? Are they performing a religious cleansing? Is the cult dangerous, perhaps? I have to say the bearded man's chant did not scream 'good guy' to me. And if the cult is dangerous, what does this say about Agni herself and the creature that they summoned? The cityscape at the end, illuminated beautifully and in direct opposition to the shabby shanty town that most of the trailer highlighted was a further curiosity that had me wondering what this world was like.
My only reservation about the demo was that it didn't have a visual feel that struck me as Final Fantasy. This alone would not be cause for concern if it weren't for the fact that several of the designs struck me as just plain bland and generic. The design on the hyena monster is an especially bad example of this. Visually, I've always treasured Final Fantasy for an art direction that is rivaled by few others and didn't see as much of that here.
Impress Watch contributor Zenji Nishikawa has posted a report on Square Enix's Luminous Engine and the Agni's Philosophy demo that debuted at E3 last week. As usual, the report is full of exclusive details via a developer interview. It also has some new pics of the demo and the engine's various tools.
The interview was with Square Enix CTO Yoshihisa Hashimoto, Square Enix Technology Division Lead Artist Ryo Iwata, Square Enix Visual Works Chief Creative Director and Senior Manager Takeshi Nozue, Square Enix Technology Division Lead Engineer Hiroshi Iwasaki and Square Enix Technology Division Senior R&D Engineer Remi Driancourt.
Hashimoto said that the goal of the Agni project was to offer in realtime visuals that would normally be shown prerendered. He served as producer and director, directing both the content and the technology and also handling management and quality checks.
Iwata was lead artist on the Agni project. He designed the main character, Agni. The world view, setting and framework were created during discussions between himself, Nozue and Hashimoto. He also worked on the pipeline that was used by artists to convert the Visual Works pre-rendered CG movie data into data for the real time demo clip.
Nozue headed up script writing, art direction and event/stage direction. He also directed the pre-rendered CG that would serve as the base for the real time demo video.
The Agni's Philosophy realtime demo uses pretty much the same content data that was used in the pre-rendered footage that Visual Works created. The realtime demo runs on a high spec PC with 64 bit Windows 7. The PC was made from standard off-the-shelf parts bought from a PC shop. The staff would not disclose the maker or specific specs, but Hashimoto said to consider it at the same level of specification as the PCs used by other developers when they show their technology demos.
The graphics specifications of the realtime demo include 1920x1080 full HD resolution, variable framerate between 30 and 60, FP16 (16 bit floating point) format for HDR rendering. A single frame as between 5 million and 10 million polygons. This includes unseen polygons used in post shadow generation and post processing
A little late, but here are the thoughts I promised.
I would definitely not mind if this was indeed for a project that would become FFXV. The concepts presented in even this short tech demo were very intriguing. The nature of magic seemed to be a little different than the usual superpower it is in FF. Agni's lightning magic burned her arm, and her healing magic seemed to cause her great pain. What this says about magic in this world is very interesting; does it come with a price? Is it something mortals aren't even meant to wield?
And the men that were shooting down the group summoning the dragon. What is their motivation? Are they performing a religious cleansing? Is the cult dangerous, perhaps? I have to say the bearded man's chant did not scream 'good guy' to me. And if the cult is dangerous, what does this say about Agni herself and the creature that they summoned? The cityscape at the end, illuminated beautifully and in direct opposition to the shabby shanty town that most of the trailer highlighted was a further curiosity that had me wondering what this world was like.
My only reservation about the demo was that it didn't have a visual feel that struck me as Final Fantasy. This alone would not be cause for concern if it weren't for the fact that several of the designs struck me as just plain bland and generic. The design on the hyena monster is an especially bad example of this. Visually, I've always treasured Final Fantasy for an art direction that is rivaled by few others and didn't see as much of that here.
In terms of design, if you have a look at the end credits, you can tell where all of it came from.
Brian Horton - Senior Art Director of Crystal Dynamics, currently working on the new Lara Croft game. Mainly works in character concept art (women )
Brenoch Adams - Concept Artist at Crystal Dynamics. Does alot of concept art of slum-esque backgrounds and monsters (and weird dogs). This guy should be responsible for the major design of the monsters in the tech demo. So blame him for any trolls u have in mind
Isamu Kamikokuryo (that's a mouthful...) - Square Enix Art Director - Did the background designs for X/XII/XIII. Probably responsible for the city landscape near the end of the tech vid.
Kenichiro Tomiyasu - Major concept artist from Inei Inc. Probably worked together with Isamu and Adams to finalize the background concepts.
And Toshitaka Matsuda... not much to mention here though
A lil research first may help you realize something big~ But anyways, I think this was Square Enix's response to the growing Western market... maybe they learnt that mimicking the western design didnt work, so they GOT western designers and made a 'Wasian' tech demo...
A little late, but here are the thoughts I promised.
I would definitely not mind if this was indeed for a project that would become FFXV. The concepts presented in even this short tech demo were very intriguing. The nature of magic seemed to be a little different than the usual superpower it is in FF. Agni's lightning magic burned her arm, and her healing magic seemed to cause her great pain. What this says about magic in this world is very interesting; does it come with a price? Is it something mortals aren't even meant to wield?
And the men that were shooting down the group summoning the dragon. What is their motivation? Are they performing a religious cleansing? Is the cult dangerous, perhaps? I have to say the bearded man's chant did not scream 'good guy' to me. And if the cult is dangerous, what does this say about Agni herself and the creature that they summoned? The cityscape at the end, illuminated beautifully and in direct opposition to the shabby shanty town that most of the trailer highlighted was a further curiosity that had me wondering what this world was like.
My only reservation about the demo was that it didn't have a visual feel that struck me as Final Fantasy. This alone would not be cause for concern if it weren't for the fact that several of the designs struck me as just plain bland and generic. The design on the hyena monster is an especially bad example of this. Visually, I've always treasured Final Fantasy for an art direction that is rivaled by few others and didn't see as much of that here.
I agree. The visuals looked like a mash of Uncharted and Final Fantasy to me (i.e. Desert landscape, armed men). Those wolf monsters reminded me of Resident Evil also, and they were drug-enhanced by a syringe stuck to them. I'm interested to see further news about it, but right now I'm not going to rise my hopes any further. :'P
"We wanted to make sure that we would appeal to the Western people more with this demo."
This explains why I found so many of the designs lackluster.
It shows a pretty severe misunderstanding of the complaints people tend to have with their usual style, which generally revolve around their characters looking too anime. And that's generally it, so I'm not quite sure how they manage to interpret it so broadly.
__________________
Keep an eye on me, I'm going to do some scheming. Here I go--
[20th January 09:05:11] Aurelia I don't speak diva. I speak human being.
It shows a pretty severe misunderstanding of the complaints people tend to have with their usual style, which generally revolve around their characters looking too anime. And that's generally it, so I'm not quite sure how they manage to interpret it so broadly.
I didn't mind the anime characters. After all it's a JAPANESE company with JAPANESE people working in it, making JAPANESE style games for an audience that's consisting mostly of JAPANESE people. Anyone buying this games and complaining about japanese stuff, like anime looks is fucking stupid. The Japanese are just a too polite nation, else they would have protested and burned down SE's HQ long ago -.-
__________________ Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
it's a JAPANESE company with JAPANESE people working in it, making JAPANESE style games for an audience that's consisting mostly of JAPANESE people. Anyone buying this games and complaining about japanese stuff, like anime looks is fucking stupid.
Japanese game development is in a bad way, number one. Number two, one of Square Enix's primary goals is to strengthen its position in a global market. Number three, depending on the game, western sales outperform Japan. NA+EU FFXIII sales made up almost two thirds of total worldwide sales FY2009. Some of the KH games have sold better in NA than anywhere else.
So no, you're fucking stupid. Go sit in a corner while the adults talk.
__________________
Keep an eye on me, I'm going to do some scheming. Here I go--
[20th January 09:05:11] Aurelia I don't speak diva. I speak human being.
Last edited by Agent Dunham; Jun 28 2012 at 11:06 AM..
Japanese game development is in a bad way, number one. Number two, one of Square Enix's primary goals is to strengthen its position in a global market. Number three, depending on the game, western sales outperform Japan. NA+EU FFXIII sales made up almost two thirds of total worldwide sales FY2009. Some of the KH games have sold better in NA than anywhere else.
So no, you're fucking stupid. Go sit in a corner while the adults talk.
Bitch please.
__________________ Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
Square Enix's Agni's Philosophy Final Fantasy tech demo was one of the more pleasant surprises of E3 2012. Essentially Square Enix flexing their muscles for the next generation with an incredible-looking concept example of what their next-generation engine can achieve, it also offered an interesting glimpse at what the future of the Final Fantasy series might hold
Yoshihisa Hashimoto, Chief Technical Officer at Square Enix and Producer/Director on the demo sat down with some of his team to give us a live demo to prove the demo was indeed in real-time followed by a lengthy chat about what it's like to work on such a project.
RPG Site: So, first up - the aesthetic of a lot of this, the guys with the guns, all that stuff - it looks very Western, but mashed against all these Final Fantasy elements - Agni looks totally Final Fantasy, for instance. It seems kind of East-meets-West - was that deliberate?
Yoshihisa Hashimoto: Yeah! Yeah - we were very conscious about it. We wanted to make sure that we would appeal to the Western people more with this demo.
Luminous Studio is a deliberately multi-national technology development team
Members of the team still work on regular games including Final Fantasy XIV
Luminous Studio tech will also feature in games such as Final Fantasy Versus XIII
RPG Site: I know you guys have a very large number of Western staff members for a Japanese-based team. Has that helped?
Hashimoto: Yeah, that's true. Especially because one third of our engineers are now non-Japanese.
The members who are making the story or the look and feel of this are Japanese, but outside people, they have helped us with the plot.
Also, Square Enix Visual Works put together an unreleased CG version of the movie for us to work to. Our goal was to achieve the same quality between CG and the real-time.
[We're then shown the CG and real-time demos running side-by-side. The two are impressively close.]
RPG Site: Do you feel that when this tech starts making it into games there'll still be a place for pre-rendered CGI? This is getting pretty close.
Hashimoto: We think so, yeah. I think there'll be a big technology leap to allow this sort of quality to be used in a real-time game - this is essentially a movie - a cutscene, after all, so CG can still accomplish things we can't. I can express my opinion - but it may be better to ask someone who is responsible for real-time CG that question.
The strength of Square Enix is that we have an excellent team that is very highly capable of creating excellent CG - and also we now have a real-time engine. So using the assets that we already have and combining the two, we are in a very good position to create very interesting games.
RPG Site: So you're saying assets created for CG can be bought straight down into the game and the reverse in this new engine?
Hashimoto: Yeah, that's what we're expecting to do. For the backgrounds used in this - the mountains, the houses - we are using exactly the same assets as are used in the Visual Works CG version.
Of course, it's too massive of a data to use in a game as-is, but I think the look and feel will probably remain. If we had time, we could've compressed the data even smaller. We didn't have time to do that, so we just used the same master data - but it can definitely be reduced.
RPG Site: Do you think that disc space is going to be an issue, then, even on Blu-ray?
Hashimoto: Yeah, that could be a challenge. There's a possibility that just one Blu-ray may not be sufficient.
RPG Site: Back to the PS1 days!
Hashimoto: [laughs] Yeah. We have to really consider the mechanism of compressing the data carefully.
RPG Site: You've mentioned before that Luminous is being used on other games; can you talk about that?
Hashimoto: It's not going to be that this engine is going to be in every single game by Square Enix; it will be a team decision. It's going to be one of the options that the teams can decide depending on the game they want to create. Right now, I can't really talk about what might be using this engine.
East-West collaboration: This dude ( the old priest ) was the work of Tomb Raider's Brian Horton. RPG Site: Having come from a more international team, is the vision that we'll see Eidos games - that we'll see something like a new Deus Ex running on this engine?
Hashimoto: I think it will enable us to create movies and games that can be more acceptable to the Western people from lots of different internal studios.
If the creators were only Japanese that may have been difficult to do, but I think that's more possible now.
Akira Iwata, Lead Artist: For example, Brian [Horton], who is the art director of Tomb Raider - he was a part of this project too. He gave us some opinions and comments also.
And the old priest character was created by him - he was the creator of that major character. Also, the background in his scene - that was designed by the Tomb Raider team as well. So probably because of that, it's more adaptive - it can be more widely accepted. [Hashimoto pulls up some of Horton's original sketches, alongside Iwata's, on his laptop and shows us.]
RPG Site: The previous tech demos Square did - they were based on previous games - FF6 for N64, FF8 for PS2, FF7 for PS3 - why did you choose to create something entirely original this time?
Hashimoto: Of course we feel that the past Final Fantasy - all those games are excellent, too. However we wanted to see what we can present to the world - especially to the Western world - as something new. We wanted to create something more acceptable; something that appeals more to them.
Also, we can propose to make a new Final Fantasy - something different from before. This is not a game - it's a tech demo - but just like in creating a game we wanted to start with a concept, story and also a look and feel - so we had the same challenges as if we were creating a full game.
This is a three and a half minute demo video, but actually it was the same quality level as a triple-A game - the way we felt about this, the commitment - it felt the same.
RPG Site: Is it kind of hard to then think you're going to walk away from this work on a concept and a universe without releasing an actual game in it?
Hashimoto: Well - that's true, yeah. However, because it's not a game it did give us more freedom - we were kind of liberated. We could think about different things.
Having said that, in the beginning of creating a concept, we started to discuss and really consider "What is Final Fantasy"? The theme of the demo was Final Fantasy, we wanted to have a Final Fantasy demo - we wanted to share an idea of what it is first of all. We took some time doing that.
Assets from the visual works CG team were used directly without compression for elements of the background of this scene. RPG Site: From a technical standpoint this is, as you say, getting very close to a CG movie. How do you think the visuals are going to hold up once you pile AI and gameplay systems on top of it?
Hashimoto: This time, a lot of power was expended on graphics because we wanted to show something really visually impressive. To be clear, it hasn't been optimized yet. So we should be able to optimize AI, graphics, the animation, audio - all those things - to slot together.
Of course we, the team, created this engine - but definitely we are going to raise the bar for AI, animation, audio and physics - everything. Utilizing all of that, Square Enix will be in a position to create and present really interesting and exciting games, I think.
RPG Site: Obviously you have it running in real time here, and I can see the PC right there - can you talk about what hardware you're using and how you feel it'll slot into what Sony and Microsoft are doing?
Hashimoto: We've always got an eye on the future, and so we're trying to get ready for the next console generation always. This is our goal - if we can create games to this level, I think we'll be in a very good position. That's what we're really working on always - preparing for the future.
What we were using today for this demonstration - it's of course high specification, but all the parts are also things readily available in the PC market right now. The graphics board you could probably buy without driving too far from here. It's very realistic that in the near future people can play a game with visuals of this quality.
RPG Site: Can you say what the board is?
Hashimoto: Er... Well, I have to be careful about it! [Laughs] What I can say is that what we're using is about the equivalent as what is being used by any other companies for their tech demos. That's the extent of what I can say. I'm sorry!
RPG Site: How long did it take the team to create this tech demo?
Hashimoto: Well, it took us about half a year to come up with the plot, the story and also how it's going to be deployed and so on. Also, we were doing some other duties too - some other work. It took us about half a year to come up with the plot.
To then create assets took about another half a year or so. Probably you'll be surprised, but just for this three-and-a-half minute demo - half a year!
The density of this is enormously different to a game. If you really pay attention to this closely, there's so many different scenes - it's not just that it's three-and-a-half minutes, but that it has a lot of scope in that time.
This gave us a really good experience. That's why we decided to have this density - by trying out different things we were able to see how we create, how we generate and also what kind of machine performance is necessary - we could identify those.
RPG Site: A big thing that was a problem with Final Fantasy XIV that's currently being fixed was scalability. How scalable is this - will it run on lower-end hardware like the Wii U?
Hashimoto: So, first of all I have to let you know that I'm also working with Mr. Yoshida trying to fix the problems, the scalability problems on Final Fantasy XIV. I'm the technical director on the new version.
For Final Fantasy XIV, because of the time pressure we're using a different game engine - not Luminous - but we're trying to make sure it'll run very smoothly on both PlayStation 3 and PC.
In the case of the Luminous Studio, we're probably not going to be bound to any particular platform. PC already - probably PlayStation 3, Mobile, iPad - tablets - also browser and cloud as well. Not just next gen, we can scale.
Square Enix has been keen to gather feedback on what players think of heroine Agni. RPG Site: You guys have a nice little logo, shirts with the studio name on it... that seems pretty big for a tech development team. Is this a team we may see develop actual product later down the line?
Hashimoto: Well, the team will remain a research and development team that will be able to offer and propose a game engine and technology to internal people and studios.
We probably won't create a game - we'll continue to work on R&D that will give a better capability to our company.
But even doing this it's important to remain an engine team that is capable of creating a triple-A product - a game.
We even have a flag! [Pulls out a 'Luminous Studio' flag] It's not just limited to a t-shirt! We want to make sure to work on the branding as well so our technology is known.
RPG Site: You guys are tech experts - what is it you want from the next generation of console hardware? Better graphics, better input, 60 frames per second locked? What's your vision of the future?
Hashimoto: Of course enabling 60 frames per second - that is somewhere we'd like to aim, definitely. The sort of high speed processing required for that is definitely inevitable eventually. To make games at this quality level it's also the minimum.
Another thing is that the AI, animations, physics - all that - in all levels, encapsulating that - we want to continue to raise the bar so that the quality will be even better. I think this vision can be achieved on any hardware, any platforms - just to varying degrees - so that's where we're aiming.
Hashimoto: Let me ask you the last question! If we had a game like this, would you like to play it?
RPG Site: [laughs] For me, I've liked less, perhaps, the direction the Final Fantasy series has gone in over the past few years. Artistically, I think this looks better than XIII did. Visually it's stunning, too. Obviously we don't know how this would play, but based on how it looks, yeah, I would.
Hashimoto: When we discussed the concept of 'What is Final Fantasy', we tried to narrow down what has to be there to be Final Fantasy. We filtered some of the things that we felt not necessary to remain - we just excluded them, and kept only the core, essential things needed to be Final Fantasy. We also added some things that were not there before, and this was the end result.
I'm apologize in advance for double-posting, but this is news related.
Quote:
Square Enix is holding a "making of" session for its next generation "Agni's Philosophy" tech demo at the CEDEC developers conference today. The session will be hosted by producer/director Yoshihisa Hashimoto, creative director Takeshi Nozue and lead artist Ryo Iwata and will cover such areas as concpet work, pre-rendering CG creation, real time work flow, and real time CG technology development.
For those who can't attend CEDEC in Yokohama, show organizer CESA will be doing a live broadcast of the session. View it at Nico Nico live. The session, which is fully titled "Making Of Agni's Philosophy Final Fantasy Realtime Tech Demo -- The Future of Real Time CG Imagery," runs from 14:50 to 15:50.
