Current Events > They massacred the Pokemon Go avatars

(+) Yeah! (+)

boob coffee, my favorite

Sad

Mizznox posted...

They're... not? I couldn't tell you why that post got removed, but the sub is still absolutely flooded with critical posts about it that are many hours if not a day+ old already.

The other ones posted here were all deleted.

Another demonstration of just how incompetently this was implemented. I didn't add notes for two of those images, since they speak for themselves.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/f97ab138.jpg

Again, long story short, this update is essentially a new set of Avatar shaders and replacing the male and female character meshes with a new unisex mesh. Except that no effort was taken to create adjustment morphs or re-rigging the clothing meshes and poses for the new character mesh and new morphs, instead settling for an auto-fit feature for all clothing. In addition, the old textures aren't compatible with the new shaders, hence the pale skin, muted or gaudy hair, and washed out colors.
Replacing separate male and female meshes with a single unisex mesh was not motivated by inclusiveness, but rather, an attempt to halve the costs of creating clothing and hair. Except that had Niantec done its research, it would learn that companies who tried this very approach found that the opposite was true, due to how exceedingly difficult it is to properly rig clothing and hair for that kind of 3D model.

In layman's terms, the male and female 3D models were replaced with a single unisex character, but no effort was taken to make the new character or the old clothing/poses compatible with one another beyond an automated cloth/accessory/hair-fitting program.

In 3D programs, the colors you see on a 3D model is a combination of shaders (procedural generation of colors, shininess, etc-- basically a similar concept to layer modes and paintbrush modes in Photoshop and GIMP) and textures (jpg or other image files that wrap around the 3D model) The problem is that the new shaders are not compatible with the old textures, so the skin and hair looks like crap and everything has muted colors.

The likely motivation has nothing to do with inclusiveness and everything to do with halving costs for clothing/hair/slider development by replacing separate male and female models with a single unisex model that has sliders for both male and female features. Except that companies who have tried this in the past discovered that the opposite is true because it's incredibly difficult to make functioning clothes for unisex models that have both male and female sliders.

--------------------
OR IN BRIEF SUMMARY, Niantic released a new, single 3d character model to replace the two original models while still in its very early beta phase.
Their motive for the unisex 3D model is to halve costs for clothing/hair/sliders. Except that if they had done any research on this, they would learn that this was tried by companies in the past and it didn't work.

Hyena_Of_Ice posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/f/f97ab138.jpg

Yo, they've got the gamer dent.

refmon posted...

Sweet baby Inc people were involved in this

Similar but they're called GamerX

They came for Gamers cute avatars

deoxxys posted...
""Sweet baby Inc people were involved in this""
Similar but they're called GamerX

Neither have jack shit to do with this, and you guys need to stop reading transphobic and gamergate sources like KotakuinAction, Fandom Pulse, Grummz/Mike Kern, and MiniEffPodcast, as those are the only sources making the claim that GaymerX and Sweet Baby Inc had anything to do with this shitshow of Niantec's.

Tell me, if inclusiveness were the actual goal here, then why did Niantec implement a shitty new skin shader that looks worse the darker your avatar's skin is?

Hyena_Of_Ice posted...

Similar but they're called GamerX

Neither have jack shit to do with this, and you guys need to stop reading transphobic and gamergate sources like KotakuinAction, Fandom Pulse, Grummz/Mike Kern, and MiniEffPodcast, as those are the only sources making the claim that GaymerX and Sweet Baby Inc had anything to do with this shitshow of Niantec's.

Yeah, people were quick to run with the fact that GaymerX advertises that they've consulted Niantic before - which happened in 2019 and I haven't seen anyone show a connection beyond that.

Here is some info on their possible motivations and bad choices based on my familiarity with 3D models.

The old models may not have been designed to take custom sliders, and it may not be possible to add a bunch of new morphs/sliders to the models and still have them look like anything other than polygonal vomit. The model's ability to handle new custom sliders always depends partly on how the 3D model was made in the first place, including the type of skeleton (3D model's frame), joints (points where the 3d models can bend, e.g. the elbow), and articulation vs deformation (e.g. if a morphable/slider region has joints or is solely shaped by local distortion of the 3D model)

Complex and morphable 3D models are very rarely created from within a game engine. Usually most of the 3D modeling is done in professional-grade 3D modeling programs such as 3DMax or Blender, while making sure to stick with mathmatical models (e.g. B-splines) that are most compatible with the gaming engine. After most of the work is done, it is then exported into the gaming engine, and whatever needed fine-tuning that remains is done from there.

Another very likely possibility is that Niantec lost or discarded the original 3DMax/Blender/etc. model files.
The thing is, while 3d models from professional modeling programs can be exported into other 3D modeling programs and game engines, the reverse is not true outside of a few rare examples.
In this scenario, there is no way to send the male and female Go! models back into Max/Blender/etc. as anything more than static (nonmoving, non-poseable, aka without any articulation or deformers) 3D models.
In this case there is literally no other option than to create a new 3D model from scratch in 3DMax/Blender. And Niantec being Niantec, it isn't going to bother creating two new separate 3D models with a buttload of sliders for each.