drakesfortune | Uncharted 3's cinematics animator on the challenges, rewards of 3D (Reply)

At E3 I had the opportunity to see new sequences from the upcoming Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception in a private screening room. The game looks fantastic, with the expected human emotion and amazing action sequences. I won't ruin any moments for you, but my heart skipped a few beats, and I may have almost teared up once. But I'm a softie, and a huge fan of the series.

An extended trailer for the game was also shown in 3D, and it looked amazing. The effects were subtle and effective, and they added an extra punch to the action. Sony is continuing to provide 3D games that push me closer to buying a new television, and this is just the next attack on my wallet. We spoke with Josh Scherr, the game's lead cinematics animator, about what it takes to bring 3D to Uncharted.

First, they had to play the game using a variety of 3D televisions, all using slightly different technology. Did that feel like creating a PC title, with all the different hardware standards? "A little bit," Scherr told us. "It's kind of annoying, to be honest."

The effect will also be adjustable. "In the final game there will be a slider that lets you adjust how much separation there is. If you want more 3D, you can crank it up. It's just going to be like brightness, contrast, 3D," he said, calling the variable 3D level a necessary feature for the comfort of the players. "You really have to do that," he said.

The move to 3D didn't change how they made the game, but it did impact how they developed certain things. "It's changed the way we do the cinematics. The thing is, there are certain things you should try not to do in 3D, such as constantly having things like...," Scherr pantomimes something coming out of the TV. If you have effects like that for an extended period of time, he explained, it leads to eye strain.

Creating 3D spaces in games is more complicated than you would think, especially when you do it right. "There's something called the convergence plane—it's sort of like where your eyes meet," he said. "Everything that's behind the convergence plane looks like it's in your TV, and everything in front of the convergence plane looks like it's sticking out. So what we do is keep the convergence plane right about where Drake is, because that's what you're going to be focused on. That way it's fairly easy on the eyes." He explained that adding 3D is five to ten percent more work than they're used to for most scenes.

This impacts the game's performance

I asked how much of a hit the game takes when going to 3D. "It is definitely a processing hit, but we have split-screen in multiplayer, and to do that we're essentially dropping the resolution a little bit, doing something with the buffers, and then bringing it back to 720p. And in doing so, that's how we're able to get the split-screen. It's the same technology we need to do the 3D, since we're rendering for two separate eyes."

To deal with the overhead needed to render the picture in 3D, they have to drop the detail in the textures, but it will be a subtle change.

In fact, Scherr says it will be nearly invisible. "You're not going to notice the difference. I've seen some 3D games that really drop the resolution, and we don't," he stressed. "It looks almost exactly the same. You'd have to really know what you're looking for to spot what we're not doing. It's a real testament to the talent of our programmers that we're able to pull it off. When we first talked about 3D we were like, 'oh shit, we're going to have to down-rez everything,' and we really haven't had to. It's kind of shocking, actually."

Still, why spend so much time and effort on something that most people won't see or experience? "That's what's fun about it," he said. "Everyone at Naughty Dog is a little bit crazy. What's really difficult to simulate? Water and sand. Let's make that entirely about our third game. And then 12 months later you get to see those demos."

The developers were skeptical about 3D at first, but when they played the older games using 3D technology, they were convinced. Scherr ran down up cheap ways of doing 3D with games. "You're sort of playing with the depth buffers, and it doesn't take a performance hit, but it looks like a Viewmaster. Everybody looks like cardboard cutouts. We realized immediately we didn't want to do that. So we're doing true 3D, and I have to be honest with you... it looks really, really cool."

There are other aspects to this, such as the promotional budget Sony is willing to give to games that have 3D support, and Scherr admits that 3D is incentivized when working with Sony. In fact, they were given a number of new, large 3D televisions to use when testing the game. Still, I know graphics, and I'm a stickler for detail. When wearing the passive glasses they used during the demonstration, I looked hard for the graphical compromises, and came up empty. The game sings in 3D, a testament to how much work Naughty Dog put into making a top-notch exclusive for Sony's system.

Scherr later joked that there needs to be a "cast-iron stomach" trophy for playing the entire rolling cargo ship sequence with the 3D enabled. After watching part of the scene in 3D, I would have to agree.

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