whoa ... somebody should team up with this guy
category: general [glöplog]
Smash / Xenusion: can't agree more.
Fairly common situation: you get talking to an artist, discuss demos... they seem interested. You suggest doing a demo. Which of these scenarios do you think would get that artist producing awesome demos?
1. "Make some awesome stuff in <3d package of choice>, and we'll bring it into the demo with some great effects"
2. "Start by learning to use this procedural-based demo tool, what you can do with it is pretty limited and it's nothing like maya but we can't afford the disk space. We'll need textures too.. how good are you with perlin noise?"
That's a bit extreme, but it's what it comes down to. They want to integrate cool 3d stuff into HD video? Sorry.. They want to build an awesome 3d world with tons of stuff going on inside? They can build half, then spend the time reducing the poly count and texture quality...
1. "Make some awesome stuff in <3d package of choice>, and we'll bring it into the demo with some great effects"
2. "Start by learning to use this procedural-based demo tool, what you can do with it is pretty limited and it's nothing like maya but we can't afford the disk space. We'll need textures too.. how good are you with perlin noise?"
That's a bit extreme, but it's what it comes down to. They want to integrate cool 3d stuff into HD video? Sorry.. They want to build an awesome 3d world with tons of stuff going on inside? They can build half, then spend the time reducing the poly count and texture quality...
im excellent with perlin noise, gimme a ring!!!
I've always took the 64MB more or less as a joke, thinking no one would actually get up to that.
Size limit in demos make no real sense. Like it's been suggested, display the size, and the crowd will take care of thumbing down the absurdity.
The only thing that is irritating is when everything is generated in a 3D package, fattly stored, and then played back in your demo engine. 40 MB for a bunch of cubes and an animated AO map is an absurdity. 40 MB of awesome hand-made modeling and animation is not. :)
Trends need to be broken. Rules can be broken too. Debris is a good example: there is no official 177k intro category, still they didn't care and did it. Anyone can make a 512mb demo and release as Wild (if there is a size limit at the party they release it, i mean, it's not like the 64mb was the official definition of demo).
So stop complaining and do it, make a demo!
Size limit in demos make no real sense. Like it's been suggested, display the size, and the crowd will take care of thumbing down the absurdity.
The only thing that is irritating is when everything is generated in a 3D package, fattly stored, and then played back in your demo engine. 40 MB for a bunch of cubes and an animated AO map is an absurdity. 40 MB of awesome hand-made modeling and animation is not. :)
Trends need to be broken. Rules can be broken too. Debris is a good example: there is no official 177k intro category, still they didn't care and did it. Anyone can make a 512mb demo and release as Wild (if there is a size limit at the party they release it, i mean, it's not like the 64mb was the official definition of demo).
So stop complaining and do it, make a demo!
So you guys had your carrot for dissing on me by keops, hope it makes you happy. nevermind...
Nystep: sharing one's opinion from experience != dissing.
barzoule: debris must have been a ton of work, would they have risked doing all that for the wild compo? That's where it would quite likely have ended up if it was way over the size limit instead of way under. You'd have to be crazy to spend a lot of time on a major demo when it's likely to get disqualified... I see your point, but I think most people would like a rule change and enter their demo in the demo compo :)
debris was a nice gimmick, still they couldve wasted 512mb more on urban decals like graffiti and the likes :P
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let me ask a question: what is a demo to you? is it about being cool in realtime or about being cool in a certain size?
The former. But what is realtime to you? Baked lighting, animation? If-it's-too-slow-just-upgrade? You have to question at one point or another what the realtimeness adds to the production. I don't like the idea of sizelimits to "enforce" realtime effects, but they do give a clearer picture of what realtime is supposed to mean.
When you do baked lighting on a scene you seem to be accepting that the limitations of realtime graphics are an obstacle to making things look their best. Same way that tracked modules grew and grew until the "tracker" aspect was really just "in the way" and now all we have are streamed compos (and streamed music in demos for that matter). How long before realtime graphics are just an obstacle, if we're already losing track of what a realtime effect is in a demo.
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there is no official 177k intro category, still they didn't care and did it
Or they were originally making a 64k intro but somewhere along the line decided they couldn't go where they wanted to go in 64k, but didn't want to drop the whole project either. ;)
Nystep : " no need for UV " " most texture based on perlin noise" : please take me with you to wonderland !
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When you do baked lighting on a scene you seem to be accepting that the limitations of realtime graphics are an obstacle to making things look their best.
I'm sorry, but that's rubbish. The demoscene cheats - we cheat all the time, with everything. That thing called "Phong shading"? Environment mapping. Cheat.
What diff does it make if someone bakes some lighting for the background of a scene because it just doesn't make sense to do it in realtime because the killer effect you're going to put _in front_ of that background demands all your fillrate and GPU memory bandwidth? Should one just stick that in front of a black background instead, because baked lighting or animation is "not realtime enough"?
In addition to realtime, there is a certain degree of "making it look good" that goes into a demo.
Oh.. and the irony of it all.. Frameranger - realtime lighting all across the board (which is why it's "slow", which of course people cannot stand either). Can't please everyone. :)
if you dont precalc you get ppl like doom to complain it only runs at 2fps on their 4yo gpus :D
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I'm sorry, but that's rubbish. The demoscene cheats - we cheat all the time, with everything. That thing called "Phong shading"? Environment mapping. Cheat.
Yet if all we do is cheat, then the whole "realtime" thing is pointless. So it's about finding reasonable limits. But the point is you won't find any limits if "looking good" or "allowing the graphics artist to express himself" is all that you want to base them on.
A certain ballet dancer from TBL springs to mind. And something about a tree.
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What diff does it make if someone bakes some lighting for the background of a scene because it just doesn't make sense to do it in realtime because the killer effect you're going to put _in front_ of that background demands all your fillrate and GPU memory bandwidth?
It makes the same difference as if that fancy foreground effect were just streaming from an AVI because doing it in realtime would demand too much fillrate and bandwidth.
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Oh.. and the irony of it all.. Frameranger - realtime lighting all across the board (which is why it's "slow", which of course people cannot stand either). Can't please everyone. :)
Which means it's pushing the limits a bit too much, maybe.
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if you dont precalc you get ppl like doom to complain it only runs at 2fps on their 4yo gpus
Hey, it's barely a year old! And I just overclocked it last night. Rarrr power!
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Or they were originally making a 64k intro but somewhere along the line decided they couldn't go where they wanted to go in 64k, but didn't want to drop the whole project either. ;)
exactly my point: you do an intro, it can't fit, you enter it as a small demo.
you do a demo, it can't fit, you enter it as real-time wild.
what's the diff? the fame, the prestige? if you stuff is ground breaking you'll get all the fame you deserve.
The goal is making cool stuff. If you cheat too much it aint cool. If it runs only on hardware of the future it aint cool either (but might be cool at some point). If it's got only coder art.. good luck to make it look cool.
An impressive demo is one that can stay cool within the limitations (small team, real-time, made-in-spare-time, etc). It can be done. There are tons of them already.
I think too many people think the scene is only about coders these days and that every production has to be some kind of technical achievement. They forget that there are artists, musicians and general demo fans involved in the scene too.
What's impressive to a coders (1byte intros etc) is not impressive to an artist, and vice versa.
In my opinion, the demo competition should be medium ground between the 64k and the Wild competition, where coders and artists can come together and put on a good show.
What's impressive to a coders (1byte intros etc) is not impressive to an artist, and vice versa.
In my opinion, the demo competition should be medium ground between the 64k and the Wild competition, where coders and artists can come together and put on a good show.
"artists"
return of the graphician
i think demoscene artists and musicians (imho same shit, and coders are code artists :P) versus democoders arent THAT black and white as you put it, wade, you perhaps dont understand shit of the code involved, i am quite sure many artists do, to a certain pseudo-code degree.
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i am quite sure many artists do, to a certain pseudo-code degree
this pseudo-code degree is below the level of counting polies, i assume? :)
that's called "earx culling" :D
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