More on the Engine

Deformation

What's this deformation business then? Real time deformation refers to the fact that Messiah's characters are not animated generically. Sometimes when the people or animals in a game are generically animated it can look unnatural, as if they're sliding along the ground when their legs look like they should be running. Over compensation for this problem by game developers can result in a "robotic" kind of motion. For instance, the players in many 3D games such as Quake or NHL can look "canned" in their movements. No matter how detailed you get with rendering or textures, the motion of characters will always be an impediment to a true feeling of realism in a game.

Skeletal Animation

Shiny tries to improve in this area by building the characters from the inside out, starting with a definite skeletal structure, attached by muscles with skin and clothing textures pulled over the top. (This same system is evidenced in Half-Life, and many of the upcoming anticipated games.) The engine then animates the characters based on the rendered anatomical features. There will be a blend of traditional animation and motion capture, but the skeletal/muscular aspects will allow the software to "interpolate" movement by the characters. This interpolation makes the character animation smoother so they don't look as robotic.

You'll actually be able to see the characters' muscles bulge and clothing fold and crease based on their movement. This results in a much more realistic game with people who look and feel more lifelike than in other 3D games. Shiny also boasts that the body structure is stored in parts, which will make gory death scenes (ripping limbs off, etc) a definite possibility. No more generic flying body parts!

Volumetric Lighting

Shiny didn't stop with tesselation and deformation to make the game more graphically pleasing though. In addition to colored lighting, Messiah promises to feature "real time volumetric lighting." In other games, the objects on screen do cast shadows, but they're not done realistically. In Messiah, the shadows cast by the characters are completely dependent on positioning. If a character sticks an arm out into the light while hiding in the shadows, only the arm will be lit and only the arm will cast a shadow.

Check out the cool shadows

Nice butt, Bob