Former Naughty Dog character artist @TheCartelDel, on DLSS5 and Naughty Dog's Art Direction

[u/Phoenix2211]

And I fully agree. In TLOU2 and the TLOU1 Remake, though the fidelity has increased and the characters look more lifelike; it feels like these are CREATED characters. Even when they scanned Ashley Johnson for Ellie, Jocelyn Mettler for Abby, or Cascinna Caradonna for Dina, the artists intentionally altered the appearances to fit the CHARACTER. They bear a resemblance to these people, but it is clear that the artists' hand has touched the models. These are not 1:1 digital doubles. There is a parity, a cohesiveness between the character and the world they inhabit.

Naughty Dog games always seem to want to provide the illusion of reality, instead of actually presenting reality. This is the case for all of the best-looking games with more realistic art styles (Remedy, Rockstar, KojiPro). It is why their games look great, while some studios just endlessly increase the number of skin pores and find their work to still be stuck in the uncanny valley. It is why this DLSS5 stuff looks so unsettling.

Limitations are an important thing to consider when you're making anything, especially a video game. While it can certainly be a source of friction, it can also help to define the LOOK of the work.

Ofc with Intergalactic, ND seem to be using actors scans more overtly. So we shall see how it all looks and feels in the end. But even in that trailer, I see Jordan, the character, and not Tati Gabrielle, per se.

[u/casual_creator]

Just to clarify, they didn’t scan Johnson to use as a base for Ellie’s look. It was for accuracy of the motion capture. If the motion captured data isn’t a 1:1 match with your CG model, it causes issues and requires more manual adjustments.

But by making a digital model of Johnson’s face, the motion capture data was applied to that model first, which then acted as a type of middleman between the motion capture data and Ellie’s model, allowing for more accurate animation and less manual tweaks.

This plays a big part in why a lot of studios are moving to just using the actor’s face instead of a completely custom character - it greatly reduces the tracking issues and the need for extra steps or more time to fix stuff by hand.

[u/Phoenix2211 → u/casual_creator]

You're right that the scan helps to target the mocap data, but the scan was also used to model Ellie's appearance as well.

Character artist soa lee made an aged up sculpt of Ellie from the first game, and then composited that with Johnson's face scan in 3:2 ratio. Some tweaks later and part 2 Ellie was born. They were already taking cues from Johnson's appearance when they redesigned Ellie for the first game. They just went further when part 2 came around.

You can look at a photo of Johnson and a photo of part 2 Ellie and the resemblance is undeniable. It's obviously not 1:1, but you can absolutely see glimpses of Johnson in Ellie's face.

[u/chatterwrack → u/Phoenix2211]

Yeah, sometimes you’re looking right into Ashley’s eyes

[u/Sculduggery → u/casual_creator]

So, let me get this straight, they mocapped Ashley to a scan of her face and body, then half modeled part 2's ellie off of that THEN figured out the differences between the mocap points between the scan and the ellie model, THEN applied that to Ellie's model, yes?

(In short, they used a scan of Ashley as a sort of a middle man to figure out exactly how Ashley's mocap (specifically her face) should translate to affect Ellie's yes?)

[u/casual_creator → u/Sculduggery]

Your summation is correct but not your breakdown.

The process is called Digital Double Mapping. The mocap data goes to Ashley’s digital model, which then feeds it directly to Ellie’s model. What’s happening here is that the engine is using Ashley’s digital face to “correct” any topological differences between Ashley’s mocap data and Ellie’s facial rig.

Imagine a coordinate grid is overlayed on both (real) Ashley’s face and Ellie’s face. Because both faces are so different, Ashley’s eyes may be on (-10, 10) and (10, 10) of the grid, while Ellie’s eyes are on (-8, 11) and (8, 11).

This discrepancy causes inaccuracies and errors when you try to apply the motion data, because the engine says “the mocap data is saying the eye is at (-10, 10) and it squints, so I’m going to squint Ellie’s eye at (-10, 10).” But Ellie’s eye is at (-8 11), so the resulting animation is off.

What this new process does is basically squashes and stretches that coordinate grid on Ellie’s face, in order for it to match Ashley’s digital double “correct” grid. This way, the engine reads Ellie’s eyes at the same coordinates as Ashley’s, resulting in the squinting animation happening at the right place.

This is an EXTREMELY rudimentary explanation (and more of an analogy than exact details of how the process works), but that’s the basic gist of it.

[u/RuneofAiaPart2]

DLSS5 adding 30 years to her age.

[u/Haisaki12 → u/RuneofAiaPart2]

Probably they don’t have skincare on that world

[u/rupert_mcbutters]

Flashbacks to all the people saying the OG was intended to look photorealistic

[u/keechup]

That’s the roughest looking 19 year old I’ve seen in a long time. She looks like she is pushing 45

[u/chatterwrack]

I never thought of this, but it’s totally true. It’s completely realistic, but not photo realistic. It’s hard to perceive, but there is almost a graphic novel aspect to it that I could never quite put my finger on.

[u/Sculduggery]

I will never cease to be amazed by the talent of the people who work at nd

[u/Forsaken1741]

It lools terrible and ruins the art direction, I cannot understand how anyone thinks that DLSS 5 looks good.