smash information 436 glöps
- demo Windows Square by Still [web]
- wow. that was one of the best demos ive seen in ages.
it leans heavily on an amazing soundtrack, one of the best tracks ive ever heard in a demo, but the visuals work with it so well. great direction and some remarkable shots particularly of the skyscrapers.
ok, i dont really like the pure 4k-like mandel scenes and some of the ray marches looked a bit toud. but i absolutely love stuff like the end with the still logo - now thats polish. and the blurred particles, the flares all over the place. great touches.
the best thing is the mood, the atmosphere it creates - the soundtrack, pacing, colours, camera movements, transitions, details all add up to this unique thing that makes you want to turn up the sound and switch off all the lights before watching. not many demos do that. - rulezadded on the 2012-09-29 21:01:06
- demo Windows Spacecut by Carillon & Cyberiad [web]
- the irony being the demo doesn't use the cpu much at all and would be quite happy on a single core .. poor guy, he cant even flame properly
- isokadded on the 2012-09-03 21:43:37
- demo Windows Spacecut by Carillon & Cyberiad [web]
- the released version of the demo has some sync issues which are highly dependent on the gpu/driver (and were also caused by swapping out the soundtrack for a mastered version at the last minute - protools added a small delay we didnt know about :) ). the video / recording shown in the compo is out of sync too - and worse than the executable.
we've been fixing a binary and exe which actually are in perfect sync on the different gpus. believe me, it makes quite a considerable difference to the show. - isokadded on the 2012-08-15 11:50:24
- 64k Windows qq by Quite
- oddly reminded me of struct by outracks. simple but very effective.
very nice visuals, although i must say youtube was very kind to it - the ao looks a lot rougher in the exe and the post is way overdone. - rulezadded on the 2012-07-10 10:12:15
- demo Windows Cortez by Gammel Opland Af 1891 [web]
- there's some good elements to this - e.g. i like the cube effect, there's some good scenes and it looks like there's quite a lot of effort gone into the models, which is great to see.. but some things drag it down.
for some reason the look really reminds me of happiness is around the bend, and i dont mean that in a good way - the texturing style, the over-contrast and in particular the nasty,nasty ssao with huge halos. - isokadded on the 2012-04-20 10:10:03
- demo Windows hexahedron by Fizzer
- Very good as a first demo or not. Some nice rendering here. Puts many established groups to shame
- rulezadded on the 2012-03-24 16:34:53
- demo Linux Windows Luna : Reactivation by vovoid [web]
- well, it looks like it was a shitload of work, so i feel a bit mean being horrible about it.
on the other hand, it's almost the textbook example of what's wrong with "storydemos", so i have to be a bit horrible :)
- bad direction, pacing, camerawork. the establishing shots at the start don't actually establish anything properly so it's totally unclear as to whats going on or why anyone should care; the only reason i have any idea whats going on is by reading the website that accompanies the demo. if you need a website to explain the story of a *storydemo*, that's a surefire way of telling the direction is off course.
meanwhile the dancing is cut to pieces so it fights against the very sense of grace and flow you'd hope to get from ice skating action. the camerawork there makes me suspect there's a lack of animations that had to be covered up and reused as much as possible, but that's just a hunch.
the tacked on end sequence is a bit pointless also.
- contrast levels are ridiculous - it's basically black with some bits of white glowing stuff for large parts of the demo. there might be some decent models and shading under there somewhere, but it's impossible to tell.
- the pretentiousness level is remarkable. (see: website explaining the demo; huge, overlong credit sequences; "epic" musical score), which is probably what motivates me to want to slate it more. pretentiousness is fine if you've got the meat to back it up, but if there's something shakey about the base material then it's a risky strategy.
- frankly the subject matter is unoriginal and unappealing, but maybe that's just because im old. :)
the problem with storydemos is (as you can guess from the title) you not only have to make a good demo on a technical and aesthetical level which is interesting to watch and has solid content, you also have to think up a good story and tell it well - which is way, way harder. doubly hard when you build in the restrictions of time, budget, resources and technical issues, and even worse when you try and make it character driven (ive been there and had the same problems, so i sympathise).
- isokadded on the 2012-03-19 11:42:18
- demo Windows fr-075: passing on by Farbrausch [web]
- i like the concept and music, but in motion the shading kills it. there's some good techniques out there for doing this kind of hatching well - they're not particularly easy to do, but it deserves some more attention than this. :)
maybe for a final? - isokadded on the 2012-01-03 17:31:24
- 64k invitation Windows epsilon by Mercury [web]
- grrrr.
some really good stuff in here - flames, scanning beams, the superb rendering quality, the dof (when its not overblown, which sadly it is much of the time). but most of the scenes are so simple and uninspired. grr.
the problem is you obviously had to stick to really simple scenes to get the rendering techniques to work, which kindof limits the impressiveness - if you could do it on content which you had to work smarter with and couldnt just brute force, it'd really be something.
besides, simple doesnt have to mean uninspired - i wish it had been more than "some traditional demo content with nicer shading". the first 3 scenes here are great, and it was shaping up to be awesome, and then.. tunnel. grrr.
good, but so close to something really cool. :) - rulezadded on the 2011-12-30 12:30:59
- 64k Windows Transplant by Brain Control [web] & Still [web]
- magic: no :)
hey, this is pretty good. a lot better than the previous bc 64ks in that the scenes evolve - it feels less flyby, there's more movement than just the camera and it holds interest a lot better.
but look, the problem for me is it still looks so "seen it all before". probably because it appears to be using all the same techniques for models, textures, shading, even the synth as the big names were using between 5 and 10 years ago, only with a worse director in control (you can get a lot of mileage out of primitives and modifiers when fiver or zoom is in charge).
this is still pretty good, but to make something top of the line in 2011 i think you need to move past the old way of doing things imo - we've seen it before and done better a long time ago.
- isokadded on the 2011-12-30 12:17:13
account created on the 2000-09-14 11:23:11