2008-04-13 12:08:49

Lots of games have level-of-detail (LOD) models for their characters as well. In fact most games have it. Load up Gears of War and you will see alot of popping on the characters when they more more than 5 meters away from you.

... These images are not the real deal. Coming from a 2d animation background I'm positive the characters in the front are handdrawn. There are many giveaways:

1. No polygon cuts AT ALL.
2. Just look at how the lines comes to a pointy end. Defenitively not ingame rendered.
3. Imperfections in linewidth.
4. No Aliasing whatsoever on the main chars, however on the background there are loads. This is just not how the technology works.

However, I'm not so sure about the backgrounds. They could be ingame, but it could also easily be faked in Photoshop.

---
Playing: Foza2, Ass.Creed, GH 2+3,
Just played: Halo3, CoD4, Zelda Phantom Hourglass, HL2 ep.2, Portal
Will play: ME, PGR4

2008-04-13 17:11:54

calling people fools or telling them to stop talking is not a good argument.

It's borderline abusive. Cut it out.

2008-04-13 17:23:26

These are the most blatantly fake bullshots i have ever seen, stop deluding yourself i understand that you want this game to look this good but it just ain't happening.

reizo that so called "gameplay" video you posted looks nothing like the "screenshots"

Snoopers won't be eating a tree anytime soon :)

2008-04-13 18:39:41

just found this vid,

http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_5756_en.html

it all looks ingame to me and as good as screen 3, shame it's only half the resolution and framerate of the game.

2008-04-13 18:52:23

ok sorry for my previous comment, maybe it was a bit harsh, but mentioning 2d animation background, yet not seeing these aren't handdrawn was just a bit too much for me.

And the gameplay vid looks everything like it, its just in a very shitty resolution and bad bitrate.
Also, this might not mean much to others here, but cc2 has NEVER used bullshots in the past for naruto games, all 7 game announcements showed everything that was ingame.
and once again, just by going back to the youtube vid i posted earlier, you can see how good cc2 is at making these games.

If we talk about some simple specs, i remember the ps2 having like 6.2Gflops of total performance, while the ps3 had something like 2061.2Gflops, thats 333x the power theoretically.
Now think about that video and remember its on a ps2, then try to image the same engine on a ps3, what do you get? those screens^^.

2008-04-13 19:43:17

....Please kind in mind that I'm only questioning the characters, and not nessecarily the background art....

Let's be fair, the trailer looks awesome. but please pause the movie at where you zoom in on naruto in the street, and compare with image 4 in this news item. They don't compare at all in detail.

The only image of these that could be only remotely close to game quality is image 3, and I still am unsure about it being undoctored (especially Naturo, the background could be geninue)

Another giveaway that these are handdrawn is in image 5 - Naruto's drapery is perfect. It's stretches and folds where it's supposed to. No realtime engine is able to reproduce this kind of quality drapery. Hell, not even Pixar movies has this kind of control, which you would only find in a handdrawn image - be it a still or anime.

The game looks good, no doubt. Just not THAT good.

---
Playing: Foza2, Ass.Creed, GH 2+3,
Just played: Halo3, CoD4, Zelda Phantom Hourglass, HL2 ep.2, Portal
Will play: ME, PGR4

2008-04-13 19:53:13

You don't have to believe me, but i'll keep saying its realtime

Also about the drapery, do you have any idea how easy it is to reproduce this? you just need to animate it, so the engine does nothing else but play the animation when necessary, which in turn is as intensive as a running animation...
This same drapery happens in the gameplay vid too, at the very end.
Then give the clothing physics proporties and voila, "realtime drapery"

2008-04-13 20:14:00

Fine. We have different opinions. let's keep it at that.

---
Playing: Foza2, Ass.Creed, GH 2+3,
Just played: Halo3, CoD4, Zelda Phantom Hourglass, HL2 ep.2, Portal
Will play: ME, PGR4

2008-04-13 20:19:40

anyone know if it's scheduled to make some sort of appearance at the sony event in may?

2008-04-14 01:40:44

I think its safe to say some people can't be reasoned with.
It was the same with the Killzone 2 CGI trailer...
To say the actual characters are in-game is just being ignorant. We have pretty much seen what can be achieved with cel-shading this gen with Eternal Sonata and Naruto:ROAN, which both look great.
Screenshot 1 should be all the proof that you need that these are hand drawn characters inserted into the pics of in-game environments. Sakura and Sasuke, which are in that image, look more than likely to be the real in-game character models.
As for people saying CC2 have never released bullshots before, very true. Difference with this game is that it's aimed at the US audience and Sony of America are handling the media side for this game, and we all know what they are like in that department...
You must understand that Naruto is pretty huge in the US and Europe. Sony can't let 360 dominate that market with Ubisoft's game so they've got one of the Japanese studio's making this game designed at the US audience and obviously they want 12 yr old Naruto fans to see these screens, not have the knowledge to know these aren't in-game, and go buy the game based on them...
Finally, lol @ the guy who said PS3 is 333x more power than PS2 and thus means games can be made that look better than the actual animated series... ^_^

2008-04-14 07:17:03

lol, you guys are seriously misguided. The fact that the pics of the SAME locations look so diffrent (just compare pic 3 and 4) and the fact that Narutos dresses have diffrent colors should get everyones alarm bells ringing.

Also the outlines of all the cuts in the cloths aren't possible with cel-shading as this is a process that is applied after the model is actually rendered. The tech actually hasn't come that far as to render anime quality 3d models.

2008-04-15 02:10:49 In reply to Snoopers (2008-04-12 05:07:13)

2008-04-16 02:34:52 In reply to BooMMooB (2008-04-13 12:08:49)

I can't be kind to others, so my post has been lost.
Next time I'll be banned for being a Big Fat Meanie.

2008-04-16 04:05:57

Wow, just...wow.

2008-04-16 06:23:20

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/32842.html

so was that trailer above bullshots? because it looked pretty real time to me, not to mention just as fantastic as these screens suggest.

2008-04-16 06:47:41 In reply to chartwel (2008-04-16 06:23:20)

2008-04-16 10:06:20

@ chartwel )

hmm.. seems like that version eats "rise of a ninja" alive, well graphically that is

2008-04-17 05:07:13

To end this

Have any of you watched the show? The characters in the screens look identical to the show and a cover of any of the mangas.
The videos show some really nice animation, but nothing in them have these bold lines or exact replication the way these do.
The only way this would be possible is if the studios who animate the show produce the cutscenes as well, which would be the only explanation other than inserting blatant fake imagery into gameplay.