Witcher 3 Graphics

[Kiobi]

The color bleeding is simply the increased bloom. It does NOT bounce upwards onto other objects in the scene.

This is what GI would look like (very approximate, painted in Photoshop):

No GI
Faked GI

And in actuality, the non-cutscene image has more "indirect light" in the form of the blue tinge from the sky. This is usually called a skylight. You can see the skylight here:

This skylighting is probably part of their IBL probe system.

If you want to try to understand IBL, think of a grid of mirror balls that perfectly reflect the environment. These are called "probes". They take a snapshot of the lighting in the area. If you take it at high resolution and don't blur it, it can be used for reflections. If you take a lower resolution and blur it a lot (called convolution) you're left with the general colors from the reflection.

Here are some links to help you understand:

Wolfire Games (the uniform ambient vs IBL and the blurred cubemap image)

Ambient Cubemaps (UE4)

Ambient Cubemap Off

Ambient Cubemap On

You can see by the way it lights up the undersides of the trees that it's very much like GI. But it's not.

CryEngine Environment Probes

Black Ambient (No IBL)

IBL

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Anyway, I can assure you there is no GI in The Witcher 3, or at least your images do not demonstrate GI. They have a dynamic IBL system and that is it. Just think of IBL as a super approximate GI. IBL gets the general lighting of an area and applies that to all the surfaces. GI actually bounces lighting between surfaces.

So it goes like this: Uniform Ambient > Directional Ambient (one color per XYZ direction) > IBL > Dynamic IBL (using probes) > GI

Thank you for your explanation of IBL. I will use dynamic IBL term. in my future observation in video! ( sorry for misunderstanding guys )

So you say that IBL technique can affect Geralt's hair and body, dynamicly, regarding dynamic sunlight and environment?
Because you will see that real color bleeding is in game ( cut scene ). Geralt's white hair is receiving some orange tinting from
orange building facade, and floor also. ( my video observation will come hopefully tomorow ) Also color bleeding doesn't have
anything with bloom imho. Please Google "color bleeding"

I'm working with Cinema4D, Vray and Octane, unfortunately i'm not so familiar with terminology of game engine.
So maybe different terminology makes harder to understand each other

Anyway, so they took down IBL from real game, man i hate Geralt's flat face, especially at night.

Thank you once again

 

[essenthy]

thanks for the detailled explication ! that was truly interresting.
also, don't be affraid of using super complicated stuff, especially if it's engineering related ^^

---------- Updated at 03:01 PM ----------



hmm very interresting. i bet you could also find controls for the wind strength, and rain precipitation rate.

yes very easily, here are all the settings that you can edit in one weather preset :

name;probability;windScale;blendTime;skybox;fakeShadow;backgroundThunder;envPath;envBlend;occurenceTime;1_effect;1_priority;1_prob;1_strength;1_type;2_effect;2_priority;2_prob;2_strength;2_type;3_effect;3_priority;3_prob;3_strength;3_type;4_effect;4_priority;4_prob;4_strength;4_type;5_effect;5_priority;5_prob;5_strength;5_type;AH

 

[Vasilyevich]

PLEASE stop quoting posts with multiple images and lots of text

Looks good btw. Hope there is a way to get it to work properly

 

[jonwd7]

@jonwd7

hey jon since you seems to be very knowledgeable about lighting, can you tell us if this is GI in this video ? ( or at least a lower form of it, since its seem to eat a crapload or resources )

Well I have the uncompressed version of that video on my hard drive. It's about 5.5GB. I will take a look through it, but at a cursory glance I would say that there is no GI from what I can tell. But the lighting does look better, like the IBL probes are turned up to 11.

It's hard finding shots of the same exact cutscenes at the same exact time of day, but from what I can tell the released version uses a "studio light" in front of actors to make sure they are well lit.

DISCLAIMER: Comparison is at a completely different time of day. I also first saved the preview build screenshot as WebP to mimic YouTube compression because the release build screenshot is taken from YouTube. It would be unfair to compare the uncompressed preview vs the compressed release.

ALSO: The preview build had that extreme level of sharpening. So things just look less detailed in the released build shot.


Preview build:

Release build:

So, my assessments:

(Note: In the annotated images, I generally draw with a similar light color that I'm referring to)

Preview

Very obvious IBL. Here is an annotated image to highlight the telltale areas. Blue = skylight, Yellow = light from the ground. But this isn't bounced light from the ground like GI, but a captured and blurred cubemap (IBL).

Pretty boring background. Might be time of day and weather.

No neck seam.

Really bad eye shader. The area that blends the lower eyelid with the eye especially.


Release

Very obvious fill light or "studio light". Here is an annotated image to highlight the telltale areas. Basically imagine a giant light box sitting behind the camera to light up the actor's face.

Not so obvious IBL. Though I think there is some IBL on the left side of her face. It's just not very bright. Here is an annotated image.

NECK SEAM. Why?? What forced you to put that seam there when it wasn't there before?

Really good eye shader. Probably my favorite eye shader out of any game I've seen.

----

Anyway, I see IBL all the time in game. Like in this screenshot, the reason his left leg and boot are so blue looking is because they are being lit by the skylight. I *believe* Geralt might have his own personal IBL probe for his character lighting.

If anyone wants to investigate these two INI options, they can:

[Rendering]
EnvProbeLightsMaxDistance=200
ForceInstantEnvProbeUpdate=false

It's possible increasing the Distance value may affect objects further away from the probe, but it could also have other meaning. I'm guessing the instant update has to do with interpolating (transitioning) between probes.

 

[Witcherman]

hmm very interresting. i bet you could also find controls for the wind strength, and rain precipitation rate.

I'm pretty sure they're just weather sets like in an Elder Scrolls game if you're familiar with modding those, as in not so much a rate but a preset. Why would you want to edit them anyway?

I personally wish they had some kind of shader associated with the rain, it looks really bad as it is imo. The Witcher 2's rain was great in comparison, the game really felt heavy and wet when it started raining.

 

[LittleBigAlex]

her's how the swamp zone look with a different weather/lighting setting, sweetfx/reshade disabled

How did you manage to enable the cut scene lighting outside of cutscenes?

 

[jonwd7]

Also color bleeding doesn't have anything with bloom imho. Please Google "color bleeding"

Anyway, so they took down IBL from real game, man i hate Geralt's flat face, especially at night.

Your use of "color bleeding" is ambiguous as it's not a technical term. If you were using it to refer to light bouncing between surfaces, that is simply not present in the images you posted. What I'm saying is that I believe you think you are seeing light bounce when in fact it's just a super high bloom.


And no, they didn't take IBL out of the non-cutscenes. In fact, I could almost say the opposite. I have a hard time seeing IBL in cutscenes. See my previous post.

In addition to that post, here is another good example of IBL in-game:

A huge amount of the lighting contribution is due to IBL. I'm pretty sure Geralt has his own IBL probe for his character lighting.

 

[Witcherman]

Basically imagine a giant light box sitting behind the camera to light up the actor's face.

I have observed this using the freecam to fly around cutscenes There does seem to be different levels of lighting during cutscenes depending on how far you are away from a character. It happens unusually however, not all scenes have that light behind camera lighting. Also cutscene "cuts" where the characters kind of snap into a new position sometimes have different lights appear.

The general environment is always better though even if you fly far away from the focus of the cutscene. I also can't say I've noticed much of a draw distance on it either, which is strange since I'm presuming that the game only spawns these lights near your character or the camera based on your words. I don't really know how this works.

Also what is your understanding of more shaders being applied during cutscenes? It seems that more is going on with the cutscene graphics than your explanation implies, for instance HBAO+ being more thorough or Geralts face seemingly having more shaders applied to it(though I suppose this could be strictly IBL's?).

 

[Graelock]

The "dumbing down of PC graphics," as they call it, was an accusation that had found its origins with countless titles, starting with this generation of consoles. It happened with Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein, Dragon Age Inquisition...basically, all of them. At first, I seen it as being the case as well...but there is an overall picture:

This generation of consoles, represents the hardware equivalent of most PC gamers, right now. The average person games on a low/ upper-low end PC configuration. Whether, they are using something like an HD7950, or an HD6950...or some 2010 era high end card. The MMO community is worse....with many still using XP and DX9 cards, which makes evolving those games, tough. You develop games centered around capturing the largest audience. MANY gamers are console gamers and, therefore, would be fair to say that over the next couple of years, the console will be the Achilles heel of PC development, as the hardware rapidly ages and the core audience still being on console. I've lived in the PC "golden era," and that is now dying. PC gamers aren't as many and that's the whole purpose of Steam's initiative.

In times past, developers generously catered to PC gamers and made their games so that they challenged future hardware...but this made developing and optimizing for consoles a trick. With "bad ports," often being a topic of debate. What was not known, is how it hurt low-midrange PC gaming, as well. Theo nly thing you could do, was save up for that 350.00+ card. This time around, I'm seeing PC games looking great and playing well on midrange components, like never before. As a consequence, I am able to get my old high end cards from back in 2011, looking damn decent on newer titles. It's not a matter of consoles(at least, not yet), but a matter of what hardware configurations most people use. Development is centered around low-midrange gaming, and the high end perks are purely in resolution, filtering and maybe a decent bump in things like tessellation.

[sorry, edited for many grammatical mistakes lol]

 

[Mezziaz]

In times past, developers generously catered to PC gamers and made their games so that they challenged future hardware...but this made developing and optimizing for consoles a trick. With "bad ports,

Got any examples of bad "PC to Console" ports? They certainly can't be that many while the amount of bad "Console to PC" ports are too many to count.

 

[Witcherman]

This generation of consoles, represents the hardware equivalent of most PC gamers, right now. The average person games on a low/ upper-low end PC configuration. Whether, they are using something like an HD7950, or an HD6950...or some 2010 era high end card

Firstly, feel free to prove that. Secondly, what does that have to do with modern video games? People without gaming PCs aren't buying or playing modern games. It's a moot argument. PC's userbase is massive and diverse, only several million of the hundreds of millions will even glance at a game like TW3, Dragon Age, or whatever else is new and hip. Most people on PC are playing casual games and thus shouldn't be included in discussions of modern titles.

And it's wrong to say the MMO genre hasn't evolved, there are several MMOs that are about as graphically impressive than TW3 and they've got more hours of playtime in them. Among all fantasy games on PC, MMOs are improving at the fastest rate and graphically speaking they support the lowest end and the highest end. I really wonder what MMOs you're looking at.

PC also isn't dying, it's been growing exponentially for about 4 years and has never, ever, stopped growing. Steam releases hallmarks a couple of times a year to back that up and that's only a fraction of PCs entire userbase. Just google it instead of parroting silly things you've read, there are lots of articles. Hardware, software, and f2p revenue is all higher than all the consoles' revenue combined.

And finally the dumbing down of PC games happened long before this generation of consoles, just look at war games for instance. The gameplay in those has been going backwards because of the seventh "call of duty" generation. Graphically speaking, PC has been neutered since Oblivion perhaps? That's the oldest game I can think of that had major visual downgrades despite PCs being able to handle it, maybe there are older titles though. Most multiplatform games are similar to Oblivion in that they are "console ports" that look nearly identical to the console versions aside from expected bumps upwards. There aren't many that focus on the high end giving them exclusive tech, and the ones that do are usually thanks to Nvidia or AMD making their own technology.

 

[Kimonimo]

Let's just be honest here.

The Witcher 2 was a masterpiece for its time, graphically.

The Witcher 3 graphics are underwhelming and nothing to write home about. They failed to set a new standard.
The game itself is good, no doubt.
But graphically it's just not up to par with what we all expected from a group as CDPR.
And they lost quite some admiration when it comes to this.

We expected more from these guys. Maybe our expectations of them were too high.

 

[cruelflames]

Speaking of GI, Reshade's MasterEffect suite has SSGI (Screen Space Global Illumation) + HBAO. Looks nice when tweaked but the performance hit is quite noticeable.

 

[Witcherman]

@Kimonimo
Our expectations were right where CDPR wanted them to be, we got baited.

 

[Kimonimo]

@Kimonimo
Our expectations were right where CDPR wanted them to be, we got baited.

Many yes, but I cancelled my order so not me. It won't do much, but I am not buying the game until I see some genuine PC graphics.
What I see now is just nothing impressive.

 

[Zanderat]

Many yes, but I cancelled my order so not me. It won't do much, but I am not buying the game until I see some genuine PC graphics.
What I see now is just nothing impressive.

My observation is that unless you have actually bought the game, your opinion is less than valid as to how it looks or plays.

 

[Kimonimo]

My observation is that unless you have actually bought the game, your opinion is less than valid as to how it looks or plays.

You're entitled to that opinion. Do I give a sh*t? No, not at all.

Anyway, the graphics are underwhelming. Back on-topic please

 

[essenthy]

How did you manage to enable the cut scene lighting outside of cutscenes?

its not the cut scene lighting, its a weather preset from Skellige, but i cant load it on the swamp zone only, since novigrad and the swamp zone share the same weather preset ( i might be wrong ), so in the demo they must had a separate weather/lighting preset for novigrad and the swamp zone

@jonwd7 : thanks for the enlightenment , may the fire be with you, more seriously, i didnt know about the light behind the camera trick, that explain why sometime the skin tone dosnt fit the surrounding environment light

 

[Amioran]

I *believe* Geralt might have his own personal IBL probe for his character lighting.

Yes. This is quite evident in certain times of the day (especially during a storm). You can see clearly a beam of light (like a bulb) following everywhere you go and lightning the area around Geralt (with him being naturally the focus).

I dissected the E3 video a lot in the last week trying to recreate its color scheme for my preset and what I found is that the colors of the release and the preview aren't actually changed that much (just a little bit more blue on the preview, but it is almost imperceptible). The major difference is the lightning that was completely different. The only way to recreate a little that feeling with SweetFX is to add the fake HDR that contrast the image more and this added with other little changes can simulate that lightning, but it is a very very poor method and the result is neither close to it.

 

[zefs]

E3FX mod already has ambient lighting: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/23/
It costs around 10fps (on the example below) and looks like this (left image value 0 - right image value 15/20):