Masterclass

Here is my work in progress for the 11 second club so far.



But this clip is more of a disguise because what I really want to share is this blog post and the information it contains. The Witness is what Jonathan Blow, Braid creator, is currently working on, and in this blog post he address the quality of most game texturing and how it often detracts from the beauty of the modelled geometry. I happen to agree. I think its the reason I love ambient occlusion so much, it describes a three dimensional object's form in the purest way:

Mr Blow goes on to reference a particularly important pdf of Naughty Dog's art direction presentation at GDC this year. As I was reading it I realised I actually didn't have much of an idea of what game geometry looked like and what kinds of detail were possible, it was fascinating to see how techniques like instancing, shader blending and all kinds of crazily innovative design methods allowed Naughty Dog to create what is probably the most stunningly beautiful game I've ever played. How they budget detail on everything from models to textures to lighting and rendering is what makes this presentation a masterclass in how to make a game look good in the most efficient way possible.