I already mentioned this in another thread, I even replied to you! So you can check it out for yourself.
There’s nothing new about this.
Our colleague @jimmy19846071 had already shared this information back in 2022.
But many people have forgotten.
Actually, no. What you have linked is from the artbook, the first image (knight) being an experimental model that has different textures and polygoncount, in other words, an being entirely different asset made to test the waters. The following images are indeed the baseline sculpted models which were used for our in-game ones, but not all of which make the transition, such as the Elephant one having extra traits we do not see in-game, being a potential alternative sculpt which may not have been given topology or textures.
What I have linked are in fact the same models as the ones in-game, and have been posted by an individual developer rather than being from the art companion book.
This goes to you too, @GorbMort , they may appear heavier on the poly count but have simply been triangulated (doubling visible quads to tris), which is ultimately how models are processed by the engine. Lighting is also presenting the textures in a more cinematic fashion, having localized and smaller sources rather than an all-encompassing overhead skylight. Take a closer look and you will see how low poly these models are, check for instance the crossbowman’s shoulder plate, his helm, crossbow or the flatness of all things. This is just a testament to how far you can go with textures alone.
The real difference lay in the quality of textures. It has always been my suspicion that they have access to higher quality textures, because developers don’t in fact make units originally compressed like so;
Having worked with character creation, it just makes no sense to dress up a character with low quality textures, and instead, you always start with a higher qual set which you then compress to match the necessary level for your project. This gives flexibility and is a nondestructive workflow which takes equally as long to conjure. You can tell this is the case, because while the textures from the models posted by Shih-Kai Chang are less blurry, they aren’t more detailed. See the archer, how his robe is just a flat woven pattern.
@jimmy19846071 Age of Empires 4 – Production works | Shih-Kai Chang
Another point of evidence is the textures quality of Knight, Horseman type units being of a higher level. I don’t quite believe they’ve gone out of their way to specifically make higher quality textures for them (with the exception of Elephants), but simply bake out a higher resolution for them as these units are typically fewer in number, bigger and closer to the camera to justify. So the logic follows that they have access to higher resolution textures for regular units too, that may not have been exported yet. Compare the Varangian Guard to the texture of a regular Byzantine horseman’s rider.
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What this suggests…
Is that they want to choose a lighter, less detailed, and less realistic artistic design, of their own free will.
The Company of Heroes games are extremely detailed. The Age of Empires 4 chose to follow a different path.
The question remains:
WHY?
Possible reasons:
- Just to have a smoother and lighter design, focused on a younger audience, considering it doesn’t even have blood?
- Or is it a limitation of the engine that wouldn’t support large armies with a lot of detail?
NOTE: Remember that TODAY the game already has some crashes, even with the lower-end models. However, these freezes do not exist in the Company of Heroes and Dawn of War games.
Texture resolution has been decided to keep the game running smoothly. I don’t quite know the size of their unit textures, whether it is 128x128, 256x256 or 512x512.
What I can tell, which I noted as an addition to my comment above, is that this disparity is clearly visible in Horseman, Knight type units, which clearly have one notch above regular infantry.
The point is, it is about performance, but I would have liked them to add higher fidelity options for those who wanted it. The only problem I forese did that their game may not be able to import such types of mods, and may not have the backend foundation to add separate texture DLCs without everyone having to download these packs as well.
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If that’s the case.
It’s something that was already discussed here on the forum itself, a few years ago. I don’t remember the topic title.
But it was said that the game opted to be this way to be able to support large armies (200 population with 8 simultaneous players). The Company of Heroes is detailed and well-animated, but with small armies. And since Age of Empires 4 wanted to make larger armies, it was necessary to worsen the overall quality of the game so that the Essence Engine itself could support it.
This explains why the new game, called Dawn of War 4, changed engines. They don’t want to use the Essence Engine because it would limit what they intend to do in the game.
Since the focus in Dawn of War 4 will be to increase the size of the armies, making battles on a larger scale, and still maintain a high level of detail and excellent animations occurring throughout the screen… ensuring that everything runs smoothly and without lag, they opted to use a different graphics engine.
I was referring to the ones you provided as being linked by the artist. The facial polycount in particular is higher than nearly any unit game features (from memory, J’eanne d’Arc is hightly detailed).
And yes, the texture detail is noticeably different. This is why I said it might be technically possible to create a new level of detail, above the ones we already have. I don’t know, right? I’m just trying to suggest something that might be feasible, even if it’s a ton of work and we’re not likely to see it happen all at once.
EDIT
So Geometry has give settings, and goes up to Maximum. Texture only has three, and goes up to High. It’s hard to say what each of these do without going in and testing them one by one, and I don’t have the time right now.
Concept art is always made to a specific level of detail; usually far higher than what ends up in the game itself. This is because it’s easier to compress than extrapolate upwards (trying to sharpen / increase the fidelity of images involves basically making up data, at the end of the day).
What we see ingame will always be a compromise. What matters is if the developers can continue to improve it, whether that’s by improving the outliers (see the infantry you provided screenshots of), or by doing some kind of more wide-reaching overhaul like they did with terrain rendering, or water detail.
Dawn of War IV is going to be several years newer than either CoH 3 or AoE IV. It doesn’t even have a release date on Steam, and the developer is actively soliciting testers for rounds of alpha testing.
It’s system requirements aren’t known.
I doubt it’ll be as hardware accessible as AoE IV. But that’ll be up to the developers to decide (r.e. available hardware for consumers these days + potential market + retail price of the game itself).
I’ve done the curtesy of going through the editor to verify my claims and even found some additional quirks. No, the facial polycount is not in fact higher. It is the same model, and the reason I noted differences in texture presentation, is because it gives the wrong impression to an untrained eye. Below you will see the actual wireframe from the actual in-game model.
And here, a comparison of the in-game’s model’s feet with the image from Shih-Kai Chang showing the same wireframe. Trust me, these ARE the exact same models. I would give you less messy examples, but it easier to see in the editor than to present it due to overlapping lines. You noted the faces, and I tried to give you a clear view, and though difficult, you can quite clearly see this is the same model. These are all of the models from which Shih-Kai Chang released a wireframe version from, so I think it is safe to say that the rest are the same as well.
I’ve even pulled up some other stuff. Below, we have that model riding a horse, and its independent form. You can tell one has a higher texture resolution than the other, it becomes particularly clear by his bracer and other details. I tried seeing if there is a significant difference in the detail by the texture file or by some in-engine compression by having at their UV resolution. To my eyes, they seem quite similar, so I’m almost tempted to say that both have access to the exact same texture file, but they clearly have different resolutions. So perhaps Horsemen type units simply compress the texture files in-game. Though, that would suggest that regular infantry already have access to higher quality textures but are not utilized even in settings, so it is conjecture on my part.
Anyway, for a final piece observation, here we have the Varangian Guard with the same UV pattern that demonstrates the resolution. For those unfamiliar, more dense = more resolution. Since the Shield and weapon are called and are separate from the unit itself, it has its own material (same with horses, allowing for the reusing of assets). What this shows though, and not to nitpick on the developers or the 3D artist themselves, is that even against an already low resolution shield, the unit themselves go beyond that. The point being that the texture resolution was really low for units in AoE4, again, for technical reasons.
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Appreciate you doing the legwork for the polys. Honestly didn’t realise they were that high ingame these days.
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Yes, models are on low resolution during the game.
For example i never seen this quality and realistic colors
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Regarding these high-definition models.
Could we dream of the possibility of an Essence Engine update that would better support, or of meticulous optimization work that would result in a future release with this graphical improvement?
I say this because
Some indie games tend to update their engines during development and drastically alter the resolution quality of their textures and even replace texture packs with better ones.
Here are some examples of games that have radically changed their quality since their initial early access:
If indie games can drastically change the quality of their textures with engine updates or well-crafted optimizations, it would be great to see that in AoE4.
There are a good number of players who would like a visual improvement for AoE4.
It would be perfect if they announced it along with the release of some DLC; it would be perfect for marketing!
AoE2 just got access to individual waypoint flags for each civilization. It is a small thing that adds so much charisma. I would very much like to see some of this kind of detail in addition to the other things I have mentioned above added to AoE4.
Not to mention the new additions of fauna and berry bushes and hunt-able/fish-able animals. We’ve made progress, but I hope to see more! Fingers crossed for the future of AoE4 and its continued funding & development.
Actually Age of Empires 4 has a new berry bush its desert berry bush looks like cactus but ofcourse we need more.
This looks bad all the flags are red.In AoE 4 it can be done better if the devs want it.
I suppose they’re red because of the player’s color, not because of the flag itself.
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Which is why I noted “We’ve made progress”. Here is hoping AoE4’s future is bright.
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Yes, that’s a different story… if AoE 4 looked like that, then I’d say it looks like a 2021 game, it even looks better than 3DE and that’s saying something…
Yes, we miss the flags on the buildings of the cities like in Age of Empires 3…
Yes, exactly… if they can do it in AoE 2 and 3, I don’t know how difficult it would be to do it in AoE 4…
while this shows the higher poly models and higher res textures for those models do exist, what we don’t know is not necessarily performance cost but rather if any of these are in usable state beyond static renders, for all we know they are ridden by glitches of all kinds, even current ingame assets already suffer weird problems in many instances, that would probably be only made worse with higher poly counts and potentially even higher res textures as those glitches start standing out even more
would i like to see a proper quality upgrade for current assets, yes, but its a slippery slope
i’ll use red dead redemption 2 pc port as example of that later added higher quality setting actually turning out to be completely broken thus unusable, in that port the parallax occlusion mapping was given a setting that scales above console settings, but that setting causes artifacts and weird glitchy look basically on every square meter of the map in multiple ways, same with couple others that don’t work properly because they were added after og team already moved off the project and wasn’t playtested extensively enough to catch everything, and even areas that were fixed post launch could still have weird issues, in fact, quite a few current glitches are a result of post launch crew trying to optimize some performance aspects, like dx12 breaking at least 2 locations on the map due to some files being corrupted on that api while everything is intact on vulkan api
thats probably why such upgrade hasn’t happened with aoe4 yet, for all we know those models are broken, and higher res textures wouldn’t play well with how much vram this game already eats (far too much for the quality on display)