Take a look at the difference, it's pretty obvious to say the least! 8) I'd say it's long overdue.


Old Shadow Armr Set Vs. New Shadow Armr Set.

Nice thing. I wonder how will it work with my old fashioned (sounds better than crappy, doesn't it?) PC. At first glance is see more polygons and some shaders effects (it looks like 2.0 for me).

Definitely more polygons, can't tell definitively much on the lighting/shader though. Seems MA's still using the same current engine, so min. spec. requirements shldn't change much. Just that older PCs may have to tone down the eye candy abit.

Actually it probably is not more polygons. the new cry engine uses low poly technology for performance issues. You should check out a program called Z brush it shows how you can get this kind of quality increase and actually reduce the number of polygons by up to 50%.

I was looking at ZBrush 3.1 but couldn't find the poly reduction tech, any idea what's it called? 50%'s really alot, I'll like to take a closer look. As for CryEngine, it's Polybump but EU isn't going to use CryEngine for the next VU 9.0 yet, that'll have to wait till mid next year at least. I don't believe the Gamebryo+AGEIA engine EU's using currently has any poly reduction or poly boost tech.

This is what I'm worried. MA just added new effects and additional polygons to old badly optimized engine. I hope there will be option to choose between low and high resolution models.
The thing is that tessellation (feature which allows engine to create additional triangles in real-time) is hardware accelerated in DX 10 graphic cards (as far as I know XboX 360 has this feature too). This means that only way to create model with high level of details is making one manually, which makes it harder to render than with tessellation. So in the end we may end up with badly optimised engine which is forced to render enormous amounts of polygons (just imagine PA in rush hours).

And about polygon reduction techniques, proper shaders and other techniques can make miracles but it is hard to get smooth edges. In picture edges are quite nice so polygon count must be higher than it used to be for old models.

It looks to me the new model is rendered in 3DSMAX and not in the current EU engine.

3ds Max is mainly just an art tool, not an engine, and Gamebryo actually supports 3ds Max plug-ins for its rendering. It's still the same engine. :wink:

not bad.

Jenny Wrote:3ds Max is mainly just an art tool, not an engine, and Gamebryo actually supports 3ds Max plug-ins for its rendering. It's still the same engine. :wink:

3DSMAX has an internal rendering engine.

Witte Wrote:3DSMAX has an internal rendering engine.

Exactly... A game engine is more sophisticated than just a graphics renderer... A game engine needs to do more than just a software that models and animates! 3ds Max is incorporated into or supported by other game engines but by itself it's at most just a graphics tool.

Jenny Wrote:

Witte Wrote:3DSMAX has an internal rendering engine.

Exactly... A game engine is more sophisticated than just a graphics renderer... A game engine needs to do more than just a software that models and animates! 3ds Max is incorporated into or supported by other game engines but by itself it's at most just a graphics tool.

I think you miss my point. What I mean to say is that the picture you see above is not how the new models wil look in EU, but instead is a concept preview rendered with the 3DSMAX internal engine. TBH i dont think the current graphics engine in EU is capable of such quality.

Witte Wrote:I think you miss my point. What I mean to say is that the picture you see above is not how the new models wil look in EU, but instead is a concept preview rendered with the 3DSMAX internal engine. TBH i dont think the current graphics engine in EU is capable of such quality.

Seems to be you missing what I've been saying... The current EU engine supports 3ds Max plug-ins, meaning the current game engine can render such models and may even improve on the 3ds Max models. Thus, where those preview pictures were taken from doesn't really matter at all... :roll:

Wonder what non helmeted sets will look like e.g. Pixie.

Jenny Wrote:

Witte Wrote:I think you miss my point. What I mean to say is that the picture you see above is not how the new models wil look in EU, but instead is a concept preview rendered with the 3DSMAX internal engine. TBH i dont think the current graphics engine in EU is capable of such quality.

Seems to be you missing what I've been saying... The current EU engine supports 3ds Max plug-ins, meaning the current game engine can render such models and may even improve on the 3ds Max models. Thus, where those preview pictures were taken from doesn't really matter at all... :roll:

The 3DSMAX internal renderer is capable of producing much better image quality then the 5 year old gamebryo engine. So it matters a lot where the previews are taken from.