Your Least Favorite Graphics Effect(s)

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

Hello fellow BlenderArtists…
I’ve been feeling a bit curmudgeonly lately and I was thinking about a few of the various CG effects I’ve taken a dislike to for various reasons, and I was wondering which ones you guys hate. I wonder how much overlap there will be? Also I hope to stir up some debate here. If you like of the dissed features, I’d love to hear what you like about it.

Here are mine:

  • Depth-of-Field for Games Who got the idea that this looks good? It doesn’t look good, it looks ridiculous. I don’t see the world this way, and anyone who does should go to the eye doctor. It’s just eye candy, and it’s eye candy which obscures things at that.
  • Ambient Lighting I’ve never figured out what this is actually good for besides destroying contrast and making your image look absurdly flat and unrealistic.
  • SSS I don’t hate all SSS, but I think it’s often used where it’s not needed or overapplied.Let’s hear some gripes and rebuttals!
2

DOF is great , i can see it Kewl in Shadow of destiny and Metal Gear Solid 2 …
but there are stupid effects really that have to be Turned of usually , it depends on the game

3

good ol’ brown and bloom. or as EA calls it, “Next gen”

4

1 from a specific game,
the heat refractions on C&C3. It looks like freaking water is flowing out of engines. It would look good if it was toned down a bit.

5

Lens flares that are humungous and in the way of the image. People use them to cover up mistakes it seems. They are just annoying and distracting.

I think bloom can be ok, just not all the time.

6

photoshop filters of any description. you made a nice crisp digital drawing. why do you want to make it look like a f**king painting? you should have painted it!

7

traitor: LMFAO! Thanks you for saying that. PS filters are the worst thing anyone can use. Period!

BgDM

8

You got my vote with lens flayers.People say that they add lensflayers to games to give it a “Real look” .
The only time that is real is if you walk around with a camera attached to your face.

9

Constant, massive amounts of light bloom hurt my eyes while simultaneously driving me freaking crazy, especially in games like TES IV: Oblivion. Seriously, everything looks radioactive.

10

this isnt a graphic effect at all, but more like a game mechanic that i hate, and it is double jump, pain in the fawkin ass, trying ot shoot some crazy korean gamer that is absolutly insane at Unreal tournament nad is defying physics by jumping twice in mid air, stupid, dam

just like ot add- its all marios fault

11

ya i would have to say bloom sucks as well as hdr lighting and i think oblivion portrays this hate perfectly. Last time i checked peoples faces did not emit so much light(or any for that matter) that i was blinded every time i tried to look into there eyes but hey maybe Bethesda thought that if they blinded the fans of TES then they wouldn’t be able to see the serious lack of content oblivion has

o ya and my walls dont glow either

12

Aw, man! I meant to mention those in my first post, and forgot, if you can believe that! :no:

NodeRanger, what’s “brown”?

13

He can correct me if I’m wrong, but EA games often have a filter on them that makes them more brown in color, because everyone knows realism=brown.

14

I was not impressed by Oblivion at all.
The normal maps where totally overused without the correct specular maps.
The metal shader looked like it was made out of painted wax to me.
The lighting also really bugged me.
I boxed it back up and sent it to my nephew after 3 times playing it.

15

“gave away a game cus it wasnt pretty” wow dude, just wow

i hear people say it all the time, games with shitty graphics, suck, but u no wat, most of the time they dont. examples
my man mario, as much as i hate him for taht dam double jump. it still look liek shat but was good

16

hey…i think bloom is cool if used conservatively…

17

True, but this rarely happens.

18

I was not impressed by Oblivion at all.
The normal maps where totally overused without the correct specular maps.
The metal shader looked like it was made out of painted wax to me.
The lighting also really bugged me.
I boxed it back up and sent it to my nephew after 3 times playing it.

Hey, the main thing about Oblivion is the gameplay, and that part REALLY rocks!

19

Hmm…Crappy Particles. Youll have a nice short, with coolio animation, and then they try to make some particle effect behind a ship or something, and it just looks so terrible. Completely ruins it.

I’ll think of more later. Peace(and in nearly all cases, I gotta agree about the pshop filters. Especially when applied directly to an image)

Drew

20

My least favorite type of game effect is normal mapping. Not that it’s really a bad technique, cause it’s SOMETIMES used very very well. But to me it ends up making stuff look SO HORRIBLY fake. Doom 3 is a perfect example. The models looked decent, but my god everything was made out of molded plastic. Most games use it like that… really heavy-handed and over done. Oblivion’s usage of them for instance, where face wrinkles look like small canyons and every dent in armor looks like a crater.

For pre-rendered stuff i agree with free_ality… crap particles kill a good short.