MichiGen

One more time about the DLSS and unnecessary hysteria around it. This is Katherine from KCD. She is the well-known Czech actress Kristýna Leichtová. The first image shows a photo of her. This is how we 3D-scanned her. We then manually adjusted her appearance and textures, because we don’t use any makeup during the 3D scan, and the in-game model has to meet a whole range of parameters. The second image shows her appearance in the vanilla game, the third shows DLSS5 when it’s set correctly (in my opinion), and the last one shows what happens when random idiot sets all the sliders to max. We can discuss whether you prefer the slightly “smoothed-out” original look from image 2 or the more natural one from image 3; in any case, in image 3, the in-game model is clearly the most similar to the real actress who plays Katherine and whom we scanned. It’s also much better lit, and the details of the nose, eyes, hair texture, and subtle shadows, or the bones on the neck definitely look more natural and realistic, and DLSS5 isn’t adding anything artificial there. Those details are present in both the model and the texture; it’s just that due to the engine’s lighting, they aren’t as visible, and DLSS5 “fixes” this fairly accurately based on the normal map and other factors. On top of that, this particular technology will not steal anyones job. So, for me, Image 3 is an improvement and much closer to how I’d wanted the lighting to work from the start and it was not possible. If we had this tech two years ago, and I would like the character to look "younger" but with DLSS5 shadows and lighting, we would tweak the model and made it so. Of course, this raises the issue of the uncanny valley. It sometimes starts to look almost too realistic—similar to the “soap opera” effect in movies when you turn on frame interpolation on a TV. As creators, we’ll have to deal with that. But it’s a new technology, and I’m absolutely certain it will improve.

After all the controversy about NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 being a terrible AI slop, I played around a bit with the leaked DLSS5 version in KCD2. First off—what was leaked isn’t even remotely what NVIDIA originally presented. It doesn’t alter the geometry of the models or the appearance of the characters in any way. I repeat: It doesn’t alter the geometry of the models or the appearance of the characters in any way! What it does is take existing normal maps and create much better skin texture and facial detail (examples 6 and 2) than the lighting model in the game. It also looks a bit like an attempt at subsurface scattering and other advanced skin rendering techniques. But sceptics could say, that its just a fancy version of clarity and dehaze filters which have very similar effect. I often criticized the character artists’ work when certain faces in the game looked lacking in detail and plasticity, and they’d often show me that it looked fine on their computers and that the problem was with the lighting in the game. Well, now it looks right in the game, too! This is how those faces were supposed to look. The AI isn’t making anything up. Above all, though, it makes ambient occlusion look like it’s on steroids. You have no idea how terribly—and I mean really, really—annoyed I was that in KCD2 we couldn’t render shadows from hats, hoods, and helmets on characters’ heads, or even shadows from small details on character models (buckles, laces, pouches). DLSS5 does this, and it does it absolutely brilliantly! (see examples 1, 3, 7, 8, and 11). On top of that, it improves the rendering of shadows in hair (5), so they finally have the right density and darkness. It doesn’t do much in the environment, but interestingly, it lightens shadows in some places and renders textures within them, while darkening them where it makes sense (10, 12, 13, 14). So there’s a slight improvement here as well. It also renders shadows in grass and vegetation better. Which is definitely a good thing. For me, this is primarily an excellent photo realistic upgrade to the character lighting model. The “minor” issue is that it cuts the frame rate in half :) But its not the infamous AI slop we saw couple months ago. I see huge potential here for the future, and it’s absolutely great that even older games lighting could be improved this way.