Eli5: How does cgi go from a grey ball to something hyper realistic
In: Technology
The “grey ball” is the model. They make polygon models of everything, and they can make them move in realistic looking animation. A ball is really simple, most models are much more complex, made out of millions of triangles. Really small triangle “polygons”
Once they have their model. They dress it all around in “textures” this is flat artwork that wraps all around the model, making it look real. Instead of a grey ball model, they put a texture on it to make it look like a realistic basketball, orange with the stitching, etc… or they put color on the clothing, they put green on the grass, etc.
Nowadays, they use “photogrammetry” where they take high resolution photos of real life objects and use that to make the artwork textures, super realistic looking. Slap that on a realistic model polygon and you got something great going!
Next is about lighting and effects. This does way more to make the game look realistic than most people realize. If you fuck up the lighting, the best poly and textures in the world will look fake.
Finally, you handle the animations/motion to look real. Tie it all together, render it, and you get insanely good looking CGI.
Animations are underrated. Some games like Ubisoft games have great graphics and lighting, only to have robotic animations and stiff lifeless characters so it looks terribly fake. And BORING! Meanwhile, Rockstar games does maybe the best in the industry for animations and it makes their games so immersive and lifelike. It’s extremely hard work to get animations right which is why Ubisoft and others just dont invest in it and let their games be boring and robotic
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