SIII Character Model Discussion

Vivi-gamer said:
Great compliation of images - Curious to where the 2nd image to the left of Ryo came from, the environment behind him also looks very different from what we've seen before.
Click to expand...

The environment from the second image is from unreal's engine editor from what I know.

And about Shenhua, the fifth model I think is the newest one.
It's nice to see the evolution of the graphics, on the contrary to most games which usually suffers from downgrades.
 
Vivi-gamer said:
Great compliation of images - Curious to where the 2nd image to the left of Ryo came from, the environment behind him also looks very different from what we've seen before.
Click to expand...

I believe that environment was identified as an Unreal Engine example asset. Edit: Sorry, I didn't see that hazuki00 had already answered that!
 
I'm new here, so I'm sorry if this has already been mentioned, but is anyone else bothered by Shenhua's scarf being gone? It was a big part of her look and they just apparently removed it.
I get that the graphics are new and the characters are gonna look a bit different. But shouldn't they at least have stuck to the character designs as closely as possible, at least for big important details? Ryo looks pretty darn good, and so did Landi and Ren in the last trailer I saw (a while ago). But I can't look at Shenha and think, "this is Shenhua". Her model is good-looking, it's just that the details make her not really look like Shenhua to me... at least, compared to the other characters.
 
^
I agree with you.

My wild guess is that the "floating clothes parts" are tricky to animate properly.
I hope we get them in the end, but they may be used less, for this reason ?
(Do anyone know how much Unreal engine can handle clothes-physics ?)
 
UE4 can handle cloth physics fine like any other major game engine can.

To some degree it feels like they're trying to freshen up her image. I can see the logic, as Shenhua's old outfit is really quite plain and might be a bit boring to go through most of a whole game with. I'm pretty keen on the idea that the old outfit was her hiking clothes, and the new outfit is more her day-to-day attire. They might retcon an outfit change in that way, if they address it at all.

I guess there's also the chance the old outfit or the scarf is included in some capacity, but they just haven't shown it. There's so much we haven't seen of the game, that it feels pointless to write much off for now.
 
Pretty easy to retcon, just have Ryo ask and Shenhua say the scarf must have gotten snagged on a rock on the way out of the cave. Considering that they had just witnessed a magical sword begin floating in the air to reveal two giant magical glowing mirrors, I'd say it's pretty damn reasonable to assume that the scarf would not be her biggest concern on her way out!

Anyway, imo, it's a non-issue. Now... if Ryo's band aid mysteriously vanished, I riot!
 
Continuing discussion from https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index.php?threads/shenmue-iii-will-be-playable-at-e3-for-press.1150]this thread[/url]:

Jigen said:
Yeah Dou Niu the outlandish embodiment of a 1980's cartoon villain and Congo a Mongolian who looked almost like a literal human ape hybrid totally belonged. I guess we can disagree however, he is only one non-essential character anyways.
Click to expand...
reminisce said:
Shenmue does have its quirky characters...

View attachment 2783

View attachment 2784

View attachment 2785

View attachment 2786

View attachment 2787

View attachment 2788
Click to expand...
GhostTrick said:
250

Shenmue never had any comic/cartoonish looking characters. Ever.
Click to expand...

All of you are completely missing the point.

Nobody is saying that Shenmue never had any cartoonish-looking characters. Literally nobody is saying that. You're arguing against something that nobody is saying.

However, all of these characters look like they're from the same game. Chai looks weird, but he looks like a weird character in the Shenmue universe. Enoki didn't even strike me as being any different from any other character when I saw him.

The closest you can feasibly get is Dou Niu, and even then side by side he's obviously in the same game as Ryo:

douniu.jpg


Yes, he looks cartoonish. Nobody is saying otherwise. But he still looks like he exists within the Shenmue universe. Meanwhile, this guy:

maxresdefault.jpg


He looks like he's wandered in from a cheap Pixar-knockoff and decided to make a cameo. It's not the fact that he's cartoonish, it's the fact that he's in a completely different style to the rest of the cast.


Hell, if it's only about cartoonish characters existing then I guess there's absolutely nothing wrong with this, right?

Shenmue-Cartoon.png
 
DigitalDuck said:
Hell, if it's only about cartoonish characters existing then I guess there's absolutely nothing wrong with this, right?

Shenmue-Cartoon.png
Click to expand...

No I don't think he looks like Shrek or some Pixar character, he is just a human who is absurd beefcake. It's no different that Dou Niu's absurd overweight he can fit just like any other silly character before, I am not even a huge fan of his design and I think it's a stretch to compare him to Shrek or Mickey Mouse.
 
The first thing I thought when I saw that dude open the door in the MAGIC 2019 trailer was "now THAT'S a Shenmue NPC!" ¯\(ツ)/¯

Huber's reaction was sort of similar to mine, so I'm hopefully not alone on this. A huge amount of this discussion just comes down to subjective taste, and what your tolerance is on the more exaggerated designs. Personally, I have a huge amount of affinity for them because they look interesting, and they have, well... character.

On some level, I think it's pointless even referring back to the Dreamcast games because how the hardware squeezed both ends of the design spectrum for characters closer together. Now a 3D artist can replicate a 2D design with huge accuracy, that spectrum just widens, even if Ys Net are trying to develop a unifying aesthetic.

The question remains "is it Shenmue?" and I'd probably say yeah. Referring back to the old 2D designs of characters helps support the case, but the fact remains that Shenmue III has both the series creator and lead character designer among the staff. I'm not a big believer in "death of the author" mentality, so anything they create or at least put their stamp of approval on is as legitimately Shenmue as the old stuff.
 
DigitalDuck said:
Continuing discussion from https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index.php?threads/shenmue-iii-will-be-playable-at-e3-for-press.1150]this thread[/url]:




All of you are completely missing the point.

Nobody is saying that Shenmue never had any cartoonish-looking characters. Literally nobody is saying that. You're arguing against something that nobody is saying.

However, all of these characters look like they're from the same game. Chai looks weird, but he looks like a weird character in the Shenmue universe. Enoki didn't even strike me as being any different from any other character when I saw him.

The closest you can feasibly get is Dou Niu, and even then side by side he's obviously in the same game as Ryo:

douniu.jpg


Yes, he looks cartoonish. Nobody is saying otherwise. But he still looks like he exists within the Shenmue universe. Meanwhile, this guy:

maxresdefault.jpg


He looks like he's wandered in from a cheap Pixar-knockoff and decided to make a cameo. It's not the fact that he's cartoonish, it's the fact that he's in a completely different style to the rest of the cast.


Hell, if it's only about cartoonish characters existing then I guess there's absolutely nothing wrong with this, right?

Shenmue-Cartoon.png
Click to expand...


Sorry but I dont see your point indeed. There's a visual cohesion here, namely in the skin shading, the way the light reacts to character model and such. It's in no way out of place.

Hence why your comparison makes literally no sense.
 
GhostTrick said:
Sorry but I dont see your point indeed. There's a visual cohesion here, namely in the skin shading, the way the light reacts to character model and such. It's in no way out of place.

Hence why your comparison makes literally no sense.
Click to expand...

Clearly one of us is seeing something the other doesn't. I see a character that doesn't fit in the same universe as the rest of the characters. Mr. Muscles is stretching it a bit but this guy looks like when Earthworm Jim made a cameo in Battle Arena Toshinden.
 
DigitalDuck said:
Clearly one of us is seeing something the other doesn't. I see a character that doesn't fit in the same universe as the rest of the characters. Mr. Muscles is stretching it a bit but this guy looks like when Earthworm Jim made a cameo in Battle Arena Toshinden.
Click to expand...


Explain how ? Is it the modelisation ? If so the Shenmue serie has multiple exemples of characters with grossly exagerated facial features.
If not, I cant see your point indeed. The shading is clearly in the same realm. The way how the light reacts to the character and material is the same.
 
GhostTrick said:
Explain how ? Is it the modelisation ? If so the Shenmue serie has multiple exemples of characters with grossly exagerated facial features.
Click to expand...

It's the modelisation. And it's not the fact his face is exaggerated, it's that it looks like it's made of clay. A kid pulled on his face and it didn't go back to how it was before.
 
DigitalDuck said:
It's the modelisation. And it's not the fact his face is exaggerated, it's that it looks like it's made of clay. A kid pulled on his face and it didn't go back to how it was before.
Click to expand...


The lighting and PBR gives you this feeling. It's the same for Ryo depending on the light setting.
 
I have to sort-of sympathize with DigitalDuck here. Except for me, it IS a matter of cartoonishness. I feel like each game has gotten more cartoony and colorful than the last, and Suzuki himself has admitted as much that they have a modeler/animator that is stronger at creating "disney/shrek" style characters than what he considers to be Shenmue esque. He lets him do what he's best at, and then they attemp to sort of patch the models up to make them fit in a little better with the rest of the game.

Personally, to me, I'm not saying cartooniness and the general tone-direction of the series is a bad thing, it's just an observation and I think for the most part it's intentional. Shenmue 1 felt extremely realistic to me, so much so that when Chai appeared it was shocking and weirdly supernatural feeling (which I think was the point, to hint towards a much larger and unseen world than you were initially led to believe existed). I feel like S2 anted it up further, and S3 even further than that just based on what we've seen (the true ratio in the full game could be different, of course).
 
Yu said this during his interview with SEGASaturno:

I think the characters that appear in the game should be distinctive and memorable. I've made several unique characters that will appear.

Being Shenmue, they're not all attractive though - there are some rather unbecoming middle-aged men and women, and elderly men and so on.

Personally, the woman at the reception desk of the hotel at which Ryo stays is one of my favorites.
Click to expand...

There will probably never be a consensus on this character because, well, they're meant to be ugly by design. Not specifically saying that for anyone here, but generally I dunno if people will get their head around it.

There's a spectrum of variety though, and this guy is clearly on the extreme end of it.
 
DigitalDuck said:
It's the modelisation. And it's not the fact his face is exaggerated, it's that it looks like it's made of clay. A kid pulled on his face and it didn't go back to how it was before.
Click to expand...
Okay other models in there earlrier forms did look like they were made of clay, this guy could still likely be revised. I thought Mr. muscles looked like he was made out of clay at first too, however he looks much better now.
 
Maybe I feel that way because I am an new fan and have seen many better games graphically wise before I played S1 and 2 for the first time. So these games always had a cartoon look. And that is what I like. I like this look much more than the realistic approach other games do. Shenmue 3 looks to me like a modern take of these old style aesthetics .

And I also do not get what is wrong with the one NPC you discuss here. To me this dud just looks a fatter version of the NPC you encounter in Hong Kong when running a Lucky Hit stand. Nothing special about this dude.
 
Jigen said:
Okay other models in there earlrier forms did look like they were made of clay, this guy could still likely be revised. I thought Mr. muscles looked like he was made out of clay at first too, however he looks much better now.
Click to expand...

This is true, Mr. Muscles looked a lot weirder before and now he kinda fits, so there's a good chance that this guy will get some more work and fit in better.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top