About the character design

[Three Blades]

its probably quicker to start again from scratch than trying to re-use old assests.

Sure. But that's no excuse for the characters to look like different people. If they can't use the models as they are, they should still use them as reference to build the new model's faces and make them look exactly like the way they did before, only nicer looking (ie, better skin textures, more polygons and whatnot, but still the same facial features as before).

[life_247]

its probably quicker to start again from scratch than trying to re-use old assests.

Sure. But that's no excuse for the characters to look like different people. If they can't use the models as they are, they should still use them as reference to build the new model's faces and make them look exactly like the way they did before, only nicer looking (ie, better skin textures, more polygons and whatnot, but still the same facial features as before).

Agreed - can't say Im thrilled with the visuals. Environments are nice enough but the HDR (Bloom) is ramped up far to much for my liking. Shenhua looks ok, but Ryo just seemed off. But they're targeting a December 2017 release (which in game development speak is April 2018) so Im pretty sure its a proof of concept that they quickly knocked up. Personally i'd prefer it if they hadn't shown anything new or just some stills.

[Esppiral]

Here are some of the polycounts, I couldn't find were I have stored Ryo's model from Shenmue I.

I don't know if anyone posted this or not but the character models used in the original Shenmue Engine are wierd. They're split into various parts with the head, body, arms, legs, feet and hair all being seperate models which are stiched by the movement engine.

Its not a simple import job to copy the old assets into the game (textures aside), also the assests are 15 years old - we've moved on. It will have to be done using the particular way the unreal engine handels character models, this gives them maximum flexability and its probably quicker to start again from scratch than trying to re-use old assests.

Back when Shenmue was developed the gaming world - especially on consoles - were using custom engines for everything. This isn't practical in this day and age where the development of these engines can outstrip the amount of time spent on a game!

Yes the models are split as you can see in the first pic of RYo's model I posted, and some joints are missing so the total amount of polygons should be higher.



As I've said before, even if they have lost the original assets they can always rip them from the game files, I'm pretty sure they can develop better tools to do it than the ones the community has done in the past years, and even If it weren't the case, they could use the community tools, rip the models and use them as a base for the new ones, that's exactly what I've done, and I started doing it with 0 knowledge in 3D modeling.

I fixed the faces and gave the characters new bodies trying to stay as close as possible to the original ones.

Ryo.








Xiuying.










I am pretty sure they can do a way better job. It is fastest and cheapest than creating new models from scratch that look worse than the originals. And the passport faces looks absolutely stunning, with a few tweaks, honestly.


I just want to be clear, I am not complaining at all just talking about what I think is very important for Shenmue III over things like open world, extra content etc, number one priority should be stay closer to the original characters designs otherwise it would look lke I am playing a game with some people cosplaying shenmue characters, in fact that's how it looks it its current state.

[killthesagabeforeitkillsu]

I think the in game nozomi looks better despite the lack of resolution

[Esppiral]

Yes, that's because her facial animations ingame are way better than the ones in the passport, It is always a mixture, of art, animation and modeling to get the better appearance, even with lot more polys, the ingame Nozomi feels alive and has feelings, the passport one is a doll in comparison.

[Yukupo]

That's awesome. That poly count was pretty impressive for those days! I wouldn't mind getting my hands on some of those Shenmue models. Any idea where I could get them?

[johnvivant]

shenmue had some very impressive poly counts for the time.
the main character in Omikron the nomad soul - a contemporary of shenmue - only had 350, whereas ingame Ryo has over 3000.

[Esppiral]

That's awesome. That poly count was pretty impressive for those days! I wouldn't mind getting my hands on some of those Shenmue models. Any idea where I could get them?

I will release all of them here.

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=47268

Once I finish something I'm involved on right now ;)
Including updated ( fixed and fully rigged) models of those already posted in that thread .

No eta, sorry.

[Gen]

its probably quicker to start again from scratch than trying to re-use old assests.

Sure. But that's no excuse for the characters to look like different people. If they can't use the models as they are, they should still use them as reference to build the new model's faces and make them look exactly like the way they did before, only nicer looking (ie, better skin textures, more polygons and whatnot, but still the same facial features as before).

Agreed - can't say Im thrilled with the visuals. Environments are nice enough but the HDR (Bloom) is ramped up far to much for my liking. Shenhua looks ok, but Ryo just seemed off. But they're targeting a December 2017 release (which in game development speak is April 2018) so Im pretty sure its a proof of concept that they quickly knocked up. Personally i'd prefer it if they hadn't shown anything new or just some stills.

Absolutely agree about the bloom. It bothers me that bloom became a trend that doesn't seem to go away, because it's very often overused in games and can completely ruin an otherwise good looking game. It doesn't look realistic either when used too much. the character design looks bad aswell but I wouldn't worry too much about this video, it's obviously something they threw togehter quickly for the kickstarter. And we know Yu has an excellent sense for visuals and esthetics. I believe he also wrote the shading program for Shenmue.