The years go by and I still find myself booting up Left 4 Dead 2 now and again. When I do I catch myself saying over and over again: wow these character models still look damn good.
Is it just me or is there something to the Source engines skin modeling ? It still to me looks convincing. Especially in comparison to other games actual in gameplay characters ?
Edit: and the lighting water effects also still pretty fantastic…
Not sure about skin rendering in L4D, but way back when Half Life 2 was new, one of the ways it pushed things forward was with the facial rigs and animations.
At least as far as I remember from gaming news at the time.
I remember reading that it was a big leap in terms of matching real facial muscles to the 3D rig face “muscles”, and in using those little dot things to capture actual facial movement of some of the line reads. I think Valve’s discovery and/or usage of the fact that real eye iris angles are offset by about 2 degrees was also something that was noted as a big move forward past the uncanny valley.
