Yeah, can't really tell if there is tessellation present or not unless you see it moving.
The environment shadows look great. So do the models (except the large racetrack enclosure... Not overly thrilled with that. Low poly and some old tricks used to flesh out geometry with texture maps pretending to be geometry. But a team that small putting out a game this fast that looks this amazing... Nor prob. Just being hyper critical. The reason it stands out so much is directly due to just how outstanding everything else looks. ) and textures.
But the shadow where the large track enclosure meets the "land" area is really old school. Would be nice to dial down the "photoshop drop shadow effect" there.
Now I'm excited to see the vehicle models.
So glad they chose a realistic art direction.
Not sure what you are seeing with the racetrack overhead, it is simple, but by design, its supposed to be a trapezoid, and Im not sure what you are seeing with the textures trying to emulate geometry, as it appears to be completely smooth slabs of concrete beams in the shape of a trapezoid. If it was trying to shave polies, it would do it on the perfectly round er... air conditioning units on the underside. Why is the track air conditioned? In the open desert? Does anyone know what else those units could be? Anyways, another reason I dont think this is a low poly shortcut is because in several instances down the track it switches from the trapezoid to a perfectly smooth half dome.
A good example of what I think you were talking about can be made note of with the trees in the background, especially the trees on the nearest rock, as they are close enough to see that they are, in fact, completely flat like billboards, but given the illusion of being full trees by very well done lighting and shading.
As for the photoshop drop shadow, if its what I think you are talling about, the strip on the left side of the track, thats actually not a shadow at all. From where the light source is (sun) overhead and on the left side, and seeing how the shadows of everything is casted from left to right, and rather long indicating time of day/angle) we can tell that the sun is rising (assuming the track is heading south, as it doesnt look like a setting scene) we can tell that there in fact, should be no cast shadow at all there, as that is the side and direction the sun is on and coming from.
So, what is it? Well, its an approximation on global illumination called ambient occlusion. As opposed to a shadow, which is cast by an object blocking light leaving a shadow in its shape, what we have here is the simulation of bouncing light not making it into that corner.
The majority of the light hits the ground, bounces off and up, and hits the concrete and reflects away, leaving a portion of the ground now without as much light.
*update* Megaphenix asked shin en about tesselation and got a response, good job phenix!
@ megafenix64 2d
@ShinenGames wow, the geometry looks
so real and shadows seem to respect the
bumpy areas of the silhouette,must likely
tessellation work
View details ·
Shin'en Multimedia
@ ShinenGames
1d
@megafenix64 @ShinenGames We used
a lot of 3D scanning. Great results but
hard to work with >1GB files for a single
mesh...
So it is indeed ibl, thanks for the confirmation phenix. Fantastic ibl results, the ibl looks really great.