If you read a gaming forum daily you certainly have already seen the word Render when a very or almost too beautiful image of a game was published. In this article I'll try to explain what a render is, how to create one and will make a comparison between renders and ingame images of 4 games (PGR2, DOAX, MM3)
What's a render ?
A render is a high
resolution image created so you have a better idea of how the game will
on your TV. This image is not directly captured from the game but
generated specifically.
Renders at first were given to the press so they had very high
resolution images to illustrate the games previews and reviews. A half
page images requires at least a resolution of 1920x1440 to look good !
But since everyone started using the internet renders are also used to
give the best impression of a game, while hiding the most embarrassing
problems like aliasing or texture resolution.
It's also important to separate concept shots done very early in the
developpement of the game and renders, like we will see later.
How is generated a render ?
There are generally two ways to generate a render :
- Using the Xbox and the game engine : The game engine uses a
special mode without any display on TV and internally generates a very
high resolution image and puts it on a PC once done (PGR2). It's the
most common method, but it requires to put the game in a special stand
alone mode since you can't play. Team Ninja seems to use a variation of
that mode, they play the game normally and when they want they generate
the very high resolution image. The main point of the method is that
the 3d models / textures and game engine are used so there is no real
cheating, except that there is no mipmapping (the texture resolution
stays high even for far away models) and no aliasing.
- Using a PC (workstation method) :
This method is mostly used for a game being developped for multiple
platforms, where the developpers mostly use the PC for all testing and
just validate everything on each console from time to time. This allows
to play the game at very high resolution directly with a normal high
performance PC, and use true screen captures as renders. This method
allows the developper to truly cheat us by using more detailed models
and textures. This method is also used for early concept shots of games.
How do I identify a render ?
It's usually very easy to identify a render. If the resolution is higher than 480 vertically you can be 99% sure it's a render (with the 720p exception). If there is absolutely no aliasing then it's also a render. The Xbox can "only" use a 4x antialiasing that won't hide all jaggies on almost horizontal or vertical lines.
Comparisons between renders and final images
Here is how I did the comparison :
- Search for a render with an interesting setting and rather
simple to reproduce myself.
- Resize the image to 640x480 is needed
- Capture of the image from the framebuffer of the Xbox (internal
rendering)
- Capture of the image from my TV card
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Conclusion
Renders are now part of almost all games advertising. So it's getting
more and more important not to believe everything we get to see. After
seeing a screen of a game try identifiying a render and then think if
what you have is too good to be true or may be done on the Xbox with
some slights alterations. You may be surprised !
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