2023-10-11 05:54:15
Game News Very proud, Valve explains why this game’s character eyes are the best ever created
Published on 11/10/2023 at 07:54
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Half-Life 2 was revolutionary when it came out, and according to this developer, it’s still an industry benchmark in one area in particular…
Next to Nineteen years after its release, Half-Life 2 is still such an enjoyable game to play thanks to its gameplay and narration. But there is another area where Valve’s game is still very strong, even compared to recent productions: the eye modeling.
“The gold standard at that time was (and perhaps still is) Half-Life 2”
Joe Wintergreen, developerrecently published an exciting article on his blog Dev Scoops, about the eye modeling in video games. In particular, he attempts to explain the method of Half-Life 2, which presents eyes that are still as successful today. He says that years ago he was developing a stealth game and tried to take inspiration from Valve’s game:
At one point I was trying to improve my characters’ eyes, and the gold standard at that time was (and maybe still is) Half-Life 2.
Wintergreen explains that, Unlike many games, character eyes in Half-Life 2 are not rotating spheres attached to bonesbut rather on relatively flat elements with shaders to make them look like globes, with pupils and irises that move in the direction you want. According to him, this allows natural movements without the collision and rotation issues which are regularly found in other games. THE developer Ken Birdwell of Valvewho worked on these eyes, explained the process in detail to Wintergreen.
Three independent textures, and you will have the eye of Gordon Freeman!
Half-Life 2 really stands out from other games with its revolutionary eye modeling. Birdwell reveals that three main textures were used for the eyes in Half-Life 2: one for the iris, one for the sclera and one for the cornea. The sclera in particularallows the unique rendering of Half-Life 2. Its textures and shadows are managed independently of the rest, and part of this element is hand painted around the edges, to simulate the shadow created by the eye itself. There part of the iris is more or less a fairly basic projection of a plane texture on a spherical object.
The last element, the cornea, is one of the most complex to manage. According to Birdwell, it’s a mix of several methods. Above all, we creates a simulation texture that maps each light source to a point on the sclera. After that, 90% of the work is done, all that remains is to obtain the information we want about the way in which light reflects on the corneaand to associate this with the other elements of the eye in a sufficiently subtle way, depending on the direction in which the character is looking.
We then adjust these three textures with each other, to obtain an eye that will look very good to the players. This innovative approach in Half-Life 2 avoided many problems which we often encounter in other games. But Birdwell says, today, there are many other methods to do all this faster, simpler, and better. According to him, the calculations can be found in most books that simply talk about ocular anatomy. As for the code, Birdwell believes it should still be in the HLMV (Half-Life Model Viewer) SDK, even though this system has since been replaced by a shader that does all of this at oncein the game Half-Life 2. It was just a little too early to create such a tool at the time of the game’s development.
Half-Life 2 soon to be ray-traced!
Half-Life 2 continues to evolve, even today. During Gamescom 2023, we learned that Half-Life 2 would soon benefit from an RTX update. After the success of the Portal update, Orbifold Studios (which brings together Half-Life modders) set out to integrate ray tracing and DLSS 3.0 into HL2. The game’s textures have been revised to take full advantage of ray tracing. THE geometric details have been improved, allowing players to see models of items and characters they know like never before. The update is currently in development, and Orbifold is still recruiting experienced modders and 3D artists. For more information on this subject, do not hesitate to consult our dedicated article.
Half-Life 2 is available now on Steam.
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