And speaking of The Sims, while Miles has individually rendered strands on the PS5, EA have only JUST started fixing textured hairs for The Sims 4 and trying to make them look less like blobs. And in the meantime, loose curls like mine have almost no representation in the game at all...
@@beckstheimpatient4135 For a series that's been around as long as The Sims has, it's really a shame that they're still having these kinds of issues. I know people said darker skin tones didn't look right either until the recent patch (I didn't play 4 so I can't attest to this myself but I remember it being a popular sentiment), and even then there are still some issues that weren't fixed :/
@@beckstheimpatient4135 Well as someone who worked on ts1,2,3,4 (I don't anymore) They can't please everyone. It is very difficult to please everyone. I can say for sure that they try very hard to be as inclusive as possible.
Here is a fun trivia question for all of the Sims haters out there: Name a PC game franchise that has made over a billion dollars that has never been successfully copied. Sims. Not because there isn't a market for it, there clearly is. It is because it is really really really flipping hard to make. They care and try thier hearts out to give yall everything you want.
@@jacebeleren429 I don't hate The Sims. It's a great franchise and I've played since TS1. I just think working on making sure everyone feels represented in the game should probably come before, like, letting your sims do laundry. Yes, it's hard, making a game always is, but if The Sims can have a range of white to tan skin tones that look good and straight/wavy hairstyles, there's no reason they can't also focus their efforts on doing the same for darker skin tones and curly/textured hair. But my criticism isn't for individual coders and employees, it's for the people in charge of deciding what content gets worked on, what gets the extra attention, and what falls by the wayside. It took 6 years after TS4's release for a skin tone patch, and that patch still didn't entirely fix the issues people had. Given there are fans making custom content to expand skin tone and hair diversity, I would imagine the issue isn't that "it's hard," but rather that it's not going to make as much money as a new expansion pack, so it doesn't get the same resources allocated to it. Yes, maybe this is a harsh reality of the game development world, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to take issue with it even though I like the franchise on the whole.
"Unless I'm playing an NBA 2K game, the bar for textured hair is pretty low" ok Josh, you can't just spit facts at the beginning of the video like that
Só vim pra dizer q é bom encontrar um conterrâneo aleatoriamente na internet, especialmente se o conterrâneo tem bom gosto como vc (Polygon e Contra Points). E a propósito, seu inglês é bom.
I’m happy that it’s easier now but creating presentable low fidelity textured hair has been possible since at least 06 (that 2k fade with the waves has been around for a while) and modders have been showing out on the Sims 2 since it came out. It’s really down to whether a company cares enough to put in the effort.
maybe you need to take a trip down the memory lane, because the quality of textured hair back then are horrendous compared to what can be achieved now. It was complicated to make textured hair. People need to understand that company doesn't just make videogames for fun. They do it for making money. Think about it this way, why would a company waste their money and time to produce a single textured hair when they can produce multiple texture-less hairs for the same time.
@@fartyfat6539 Idk what your point is here. Back in the early and mid 2000’s no one was asking for the high end hair rendering techniques that are available today. Everyone including white people got a version of helmet hair that was a rough approximation of the hair they had. All kinky haired folks wanted was a representation of the hair that they had with the tech that was available at the time.
3d is such a big and intimidating thing to do, and the more i learn about it the more in awe i am of people who make life-like 3d moving things. Here's to development of hair technology and hope for more textured hair in future video games!
Big thing to remember is that development of new technology isn't really needed. They can do it now, it just isn't given the man-hours in most games. It's a conscious decision to leave textured hair out of games.
I highly suggest you try to get into it as a hobby. There's something so incredibly satisfying about finishing your first render of a tasty donut while following Blender Guru's beginner tutorial. From there it opens up massively and things start to become more understandable. You don't need to be an amazingly technical modeler to be creative.
"Once the design and the Polygon budget are nailed down, an artist can begin actually creating the assets" - Josh, an artist, while he creates some Polygon assets.
I love that this video came out on the same day I got my first haircut since quarantine. I've got long curly hair (3b or 3c), and I understood that on some level curly textured hair is difficult to make realistic. However, I've always been disappointed in games that don't even try. Sometimes there are no textured options other than "afro". Lately I've been seeing more options, which are: short afro, big afro, almost bald, wavy but not curly, and sometimes big fat cornrows (cornrows come in many styles and variations, but the game will give you one). I'm not asking for the textured hair to look amazing in a low-poly or cartoon-style game, I just want the choice. I just want to make my avatar look like Donna Summer.
great video, love that this is a series now and that we’ve got more learning about how games are made to look forward to! all the topics have been so interesting and getting an in-depth dive into hair textures is no exception. (also just as a side note, tara’s credited twice as a story editor)
@@nekkowe an entire generation can just play that line like an mp3 file in their heads that precise recipe of vhs players being affordable (or at least widespread by the late 90s/ early 00s), and the tapes still being pretty expensive meant most kids had around the same twenty or so VHS tapes doubling as childcare that everyone else did. Not to get all “kids today”- kids today will have a far more varied set of cultural reference points, and that’s good. but they probably won’t experience the almost complete universality of those few movies. Or be able to set up the drinking games
In the Sims 4 (I am a real gamer), there has been criticism of the blocky afros in Create a Sim. EA tried to fix it recently enough, but it still wasn't right. Interesting video Josh!!
@@thwipthwap8870 That's probably exactly why there's such great diverse CCcontent though! It's going to take a lot of time and effort. If EA tried to charge for this extra time with a textured hair pack, people would understandably be very angry. Spending a bunch of time on a free patch/content versus spending that same amount for something people can buy... well the higher ups will go for monetization every time- they have monetary goals that are setup by the even higher ups after all. But a CC creator doesn't have a project manager telling them what they can and cannot do with their time, so we see these labor of loves in cool diverse new hairstyles, clothing, behavior mods, etc
Hair in ts4 is really low poly, they chose this "clay"-like style with no individual strands defined. It's still possible to make decent textured hair with a low poly mesh (some TS2 CC looks great on meshes under 10k) but TS4 textures are just fucking ugly...
honestly, I never even knew this was a problem (likely because i'm white and therefore wasnt aware that this was a problem for people of color) but I'm glad to learn about strides being made to fix this! and will keep an eye out going forward hoping that the strides continue to be made! I'm glad that even if slowly, people of color are starting to be able to see themselves more and more in the industry. it's about damn time.
I understand why the texture itself would be more challenging, but shouldn't textured hair be easier to program overall? It moves more as a single unit then as individual strands
It is! Particularly when working with physics, it is _so much easier_ to make a curly style look good compared to a straight style, and takes way less resources from the physics engine for a frankly better-looking result. When textured hair moves in clumps, it looks like textured hair, but when straight hair moves in clumps it looks like.. well, lasagna with hair painted on lol. Very exciting to see how next gen can potentially remove the polygon ceiling for curls _and_ the lasagna effect from straight hair!
@@jonmiller6787 Was gonna say this, a Curl is a three dimensional object that looks different from all angles, unlike straight hair. So in order to really look accurate it's actually harder
@@titaniumvulpes Straight hair is unsurprisingly EASIER than curly hair. It has less geometric volume overall so it'd be easier to calculate the physics of the mesh. Plus a lot of game engines already have a good engine regarding the physics for hair.
4:56 Hi, game dev here! I'd also note that the way that hair cards work really relies on the texture. The texture uses an alpha mask to tell the engine where to show texture and where to not show it. That's how there can appear to be individual strands of hair, but the geometry itself is still quite blocky.
I feel like this is the universe telling me to get a haircut lmao Especially that quote at the end like "I know barbers are expensive but it's a sign of maturity and care" like okay, I'm gonna! Thank you Josh
Creating textured hair in games: almost as hard as delivering the line "getting clowned on in the group chat" without a hint of youthful trauma. Well done both Insomniac and Josh.
this video really shows how representation matters and how we need to praise creators who take their time to make it accurate. thanks josh for giving us your perspective, hope to see more videos like this
Me: Hey, Bioware, can we maybe get some fades? Bioware: Fade? You guys want The Fade? Sure! We'll include several lengthy story quests set in The Fade in EVERY Dragon Age title! Me: No, I mean, like... black - Bioware: Blackwall? The Black Emporium? The Black City? Black runestones? Me: - hair. Black hair. Bioware: Ohhhh... Bioware: ... Nahhhh.
This. I've been struggling with Bioware's character creators for years. But the options they added in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition are a step in the right direction. I can actually make a Shepard that looks a bit like me now lol
What was your initial guess? I thought it'd be either Jenna (because of her previous videos talking about animation in videogames) or Josh (because it was about Miles Morales).
LOVED this vid, Josh. Thank you! I'm glad that we are entering a time where the only thing holding the character representation back in video games is the companies themselves....will easier to weed out who we don't want to keep throwing money at and uplift those who would let all be seen in games!
It's a side effect benefit, but those in-process colour coded shots of the hair cards look brilliant for painting reference and I'm definitely screenshotting them for later.
This was so cool! Now I have way more understanding of and sympathy for the game designers who kept making me choose between a lumpy afro sphere and locks. I’m really excited for processing power to catch up to my coils! Seems like it’s on the horizon.
This video was so so so good!! Josh is doing amazing work :D And, dang, when the view switched to the PS5 footage and you could see the way the light hit Miles's hair so much more clearly? So good. I hope more games put in the work to make textured hair look good, because it's so worth it!!
This is really fascinating as an artist, and as someone with curly hair, I am really excited to see where the next generation of game engines and consoles takes us because it is really frustrating to never see hair like mine in games(and I mean I'm white, it's gotta be way worse for people of color). I really hope one day we have the means to make sure that everyone can make a character who looks like them in the games they play, it's long overdue.
The difference between straight and textured hair in video games is something that sort of occurred to me on a peripheral level, but not something I considered fully, so I'm really glad this video is here to teach me! It's absolutely fascinating to see the different processes that go in, and valuable to see how important it is to overcome potential technical limitations to make sure we have inclusive representation. Thanks Josh!
Josh! Thank you for making this video! As a black person with textured hair I always wondered why I never saw much of it in video games and your research makes me finally understand! Also glad to see your new haircut/fade and beard shape up since the reserve mowawk live stream cut.
Sorta related, the Sims 4 just released it's latest game pack "Dream Home Decorater", but when me and seemingly most other started the game after downloading the pack, we got a bug in several hair styles that removes the teeth? Or not "remove" exactly.. When you put on some of the hair styles that came with an earlier pack, part of the upper teeth row goes completely dark like most of the mouth. When you see your Sim's open mouth from a specific perspective, part of the teeth row looks red like the tongue so maybe the teeth's see through, but when you turn the Sim so you it's open mouth from the side the side the teeth are still dark even though the background is blue???? AND ALL OF THIS JUST BY PICKING A HAIR STYLE! A HAIR STYLE NOT EVEN NEAR THE TEETH!! This pack cost 20$. The base game and all dlc's combined costs over 600$. If you wanna see the bug yourself it's shown in "The Sims 4's new update is certainly... something" by Plumbella. If you got any idea what caused this bug I'd love to know, this is all super facinating to me
LOVE this!! Hugely great topic to address, great video, great shirt, and how delightful to get to film somewhere that isn’t just your greenscreened apartment... hell yeah! 💚
i think the real answer is “yes it’s difficult. all hair is difficult to make. BUT people find non-afro hair easier to make because white people were always center stage. more effort was put into creating technology and base meshes for non-afro hair. people think its more difficult because the game industry never learned how”
The mere fact of white people being put center stage would not explain this since many white people have curly hair. It is less about white *people* and more about normative whiteness. Curly hair was treated as an afterthought by most companies, if it was included at all: because it was seen as a deviation from the norm. It was seen as something fewer people would want so less effort was put into it. Although if one actually took a count of all the curly-haired people in the world, there’s actually a decent chance you’d find there are more of us than there are straights. People from every continent can have curls, although it is obviously rarer the farther north and east you go. The assumption of most game developers of course was that an average white man would be playing their game, and an average white man was assumed to have straight hair. This is how racism in media tends to work. The creator, regardless of their own background, is usually assuming a white male audience. Unless of course they are creating in a genre that is primarily associated with women or non-white people. Or possibly that they are deliberately searching for a different audience (because of lagging sales, perhaps), although that can just as easily lead to awful pandering. Getting across the message that many types of people enjoy all genres of media is one of the big challenges of our times.
@@sophiejones7727 Its about who is spending the money. The buyer of the product. Make up commercials dont have men. Even tho its mostly men making the make up and designing it. Same with games.
@@docvaliant721 Not the case, white people don't dominate the buying gaming market. Hispanics, black and white people play video games with generally the same frequency. www.statista.com/statistics/819353/share-consumers-play-games-frequent-ethnic/#statisticContainer
@@neonbarnowl That's the frequency of people in each group who play games. White people still make up a larger percentage of the population overall (60ish percent) and are more represented.
This guy is great! In the post-Brian era, I still find that most videos on polygon have (ironically) become a little too flat. Theyre not BAD by any stretch, but they feel... formulaic. Theres no distinction in style between different creators. I think polygon should let each creators flavour come out a bit more, you know? Anyway this is a good video. Interesting topic.
I agree. On one hand: I can literally guess which creator made the video by the name of the video alone with a 90% accuracy, yet the videos themselves are very formulaic. Meaning: You can see the personality of the creator in the title and the topic that they chose, yet they steel feel samey.
Yeah all the vids recently (aside from Overboard) have just been like informative videos about some aspect of gaming. Which is cool and I do enjoy watching them, but it's probably not what most of us subscribed for. It seems like they used to be able to make more creative videos, like Game Ogre, Filmbreakers (I'm sad we didn't get more of that, it was hilarious), Awful Squad, We Fought a Zoo, Please Retweet, and of course Unraveled...but now all the videos kind of feel the same, except for Overboard and the new Versus series. It seems like Brian was allowed to make fun, creative videos because Unraveled was a cash cow but now he's gone and they're not making any new fun videos to replace it. It's a shame because the video team is so talented and funny but I guess they're just not allowed to take chances anymore, so they just make the same type of video over and over. Even just recording their twitch streams and uploading them here would probably help bring in more viewers, a lot of people don't even know they have a twitch!
There was an interview with one of the game writers where he took credit for making sure the art director went back and fixed Miles fade. Great video, really comprehensive.
really liked the video! hair in video games can sometimes be a make or break in the game and seeing just how difficult it is, made me less quick to judge.
10:45 - 10:50 that transition from miles' hair in the ps4 to the ps5 absolutely blew my mind. it went from flat to actually looking like hair. the amount of coils and strands is crazy, it's almost like i can feel his hair just from looking at it.
Loving the way this was presented. The way you maintain focus on both the technical aspects and the importance of representation made it really engaging.
Now THIS is the stuff that makes me so excited to 3D model. The science and tech that replicate everyday physics are fascinating, and the obvious joy people get out of finally being represented is games is so worth every hour
when somebody didnt need to do a full tutorial and you happen to understand just everything XDDDD just needed the recipe to understand which layers go from which sides SO THANKS A LOT THIS HELPED ME
Really great video, Josh! As someone with textured hair it was really nice to have an explanation for why most of the hairstyles for people like us look wonky most of the time.
I recently watched a video about the evolution of animation, specifically Disney movies, and how during the production of Brave, they had to make new tech to make Merida's hair stiff but bouncy and behave like naturally thick and curly hair. I wonder if stiffening the movements and making the hairs shorter on that system would mimic an afro?
I think it’s wild that in 2024, the best they have been able to do for Afro hair is Kilmongers, side dreads and a fro🙄… like really?? And all of them are guilty of this. I’m searching high and low on how to make better Afro centric digital hair assets… and there’s barely any good vids in the matter.. smh
This was such an interesting watch and answered a question I've had for AGES. It's driven me crazy for a long time that some games do such a bad job at curly or textured hair.
It's weird how Miles inspired him to make this video on hair, considering how short and static it is. I guess I haven't played enough black characters with fades to notice how impressive it was.
It's been so cool to see Joshua join the team at Polygon. I just love how much this channel allows each of the hosts to pursue topics that are meaningful to them. What kind of gaming channel runs the gamut of topics that Polygon does?
It’s almost like most game devs have been making all their characters bland white men with straight brown hair, and treated natural African hairstyles (for instance) as an afterthought, and now the video game industry is finally starting to wrestle with its history of passive racism!
@@chrismanuel9768 black person co-signing. “Racist” is a bit harsh, but I feel like that’s bc ur coming here with the idea the racism automatically is intentional and malicious, when really most racism is just ignorance. Black ppl only make up 2% of the industry, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that they’re an afterthought in the process. It’s just a blindspot.
actually informative... thought provocative and inspirational...id not only recommend this video to those who wanna game design...but also artists and animators...as not only the detailed explanations... but the visual examples and the questions asked ..and then answered...bring up great ideas for the future... even added this to a private playlist for future reference... Definetly deserving a like..more views and ..if i wasn't already subscribed... XD
Gotta give some respect to Guild Wars 2. When their Path of Fire expansion came out in 2017, it came along with a bunch of fantastic hair and beard styles.
i think about hair all the damn time in video games. It really can make or break the "damn, this is a well made game that looks great" for me. I'm glad someone's finally talking about it.
I'm so glad I found this awesome channel! I love how you guys dive into a topic and explain it in detail. I also love how you guys showcase people in the gaming industry that may not get the spotlight they deserve for all the hard work they put into making games look and feel incredible.
The Josh brand is slowly emerging and I'm loving it
He emerges from his Brandity Brand cocoon.
Can I just say, I love the profile pic. That still frame must become a meme....
@@joshuahancock2079 I will spread the gospel of our lord and savior horrified garchomp.
It really does feel like he's gotten more comfortable creating content and making jokes and stuff. It's great to watch.
Oh so THAT'S what "reticulating splines" from the Sims means...
And speaking of The Sims, while Miles has individually rendered strands on the PS5, EA have only JUST started fixing textured hairs for The Sims 4 and trying to make them look less like blobs. And in the meantime, loose curls like mine have almost no representation in the game at all...
@@beckstheimpatient4135 For a series that's been around as long as The Sims has, it's really a shame that they're still having these kinds of issues. I know people said darker skin tones didn't look right either until the recent patch (I didn't play 4 so I can't attest to this myself but I remember it being a popular sentiment), and even then there are still some issues that weren't fixed :/
@@beckstheimpatient4135 Well as someone who worked on ts1,2,3,4 (I don't anymore) They can't please everyone. It is very difficult to please everyone. I can say for sure that they try very hard to be as inclusive as possible.
Here is a fun trivia question for all of the Sims haters out there: Name a PC game franchise that has made over a billion dollars that has never been successfully copied. Sims. Not because there isn't a market for it, there clearly is. It is because it is really really really flipping hard to make. They care and try thier hearts out to give yall everything you want.
@@jacebeleren429 I don't hate The Sims. It's a great franchise and I've played since TS1. I just think working on making sure everyone feels represented in the game should probably come before, like, letting your sims do laundry. Yes, it's hard, making a game always is, but if The Sims can have a range of white to tan skin tones that look good and straight/wavy hairstyles, there's no reason they can't also focus their efforts on doing the same for darker skin tones and curly/textured hair. But my criticism isn't for individual coders and employees, it's for the people in charge of deciding what content gets worked on, what gets the extra attention, and what falls by the wayside. It took 6 years after TS4's release for a skin tone patch, and that patch still didn't entirely fix the issues people had. Given there are fans making custom content to expand skin tone and hair diversity, I would imagine the issue isn't that "it's hard," but rather that it's not going to make as much money as a new expansion pack, so it doesn't get the same resources allocated to it. Yes, maybe this is a harsh reality of the game development world, but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to take issue with it even though I like the franchise on the whole.
Polygon's talking about polygons in a video game, we've finally reached Polygonception.
"Unless I'm playing an NBA 2K game, the bar for textured hair is pretty low" ok Josh, you can't just spit facts at the beginning of the video like that
I literally almost refunded monster hunter cuz there’s no black hairstyles not even cornrows or an Afro
Ae, tu é brasileirx?
Só vim pra dizer q é bom encontrar um conterrâneo aleatoriamente na internet, especialmente se o conterrâneo tem bom gosto como vc (Polygon e Contra Points).
E a propósito, seu inglês é bom.
@@miguelnery8907 Q q é conterraneo parceiro/a? É tipo contemporaneo só que pra pais/lugar?
@@bbittercoffee Precisamente, parceiro/a.
I’m happy that it’s easier now but creating presentable low fidelity textured hair has been possible since at least 06 (that 2k fade with the waves has been around for a while) and modders have been showing out on the Sims 2 since it came out. It’s really down to whether a company cares enough to put in the effort.
I really wanted to like this comment, but there are exactly 69 likes right now, and I didn’t want to be the one to change that
there it is! textured hair isnt harder than straight hair, its just the industry has put way more work into the latter
maybe you need to take a trip down the memory lane, because the quality of textured hair back then are horrendous compared to what can be achieved now. It was complicated to make textured hair.
People need to understand that company doesn't just make videogames for fun. They do it for making money.
Think about it this way, why would a company waste their money and time to produce a single textured hair when they can produce multiple texture-less hairs for the same time.
@@fartyfat6539 Idk what your point is here. Back in the early and mid 2000’s no one was asking for the high end hair rendering techniques that are available today. Everyone including white people got a version of helmet hair that was a rough approximation of the hair they had.
All kinky haired folks wanted was a representation of the hair that they had with the tech that was available at the time.
Its whoever the buying market is thats just it. It makes sense.
Okay, this is a fascinating detail I would never have thought of.
3d is such a big and intimidating thing to do, and the more i learn about it the more in awe i am of people who make life-like 3d moving things.
Here's to development of hair technology and hope for more textured hair in future video games!
Big thing to remember is that development of new technology isn't really needed. They can do it now, it just isn't given the man-hours in most games. It's a conscious decision to leave textured hair out of games.
I highly suggest you try to get into it as a hobby. There's something so incredibly satisfying about finishing your first render of a tasty donut while following Blender Guru's beginner tutorial. From there it opens up massively and things start to become more understandable. You don't need to be an amazingly technical modeler to be creative.
is anyone else weirdly excited that this series officially has a name now?
3:45 "Sort of like a lasagna wig with hair drawn all over it" I understand everything now
fellas you got that ps5 fade or that ps4 fade?
I got that Switch lego hair.
Fam I barely got that Samsung Smart Fridge fade
i got the ebay broken ps1 "for parts or repair only" fade
@@aimelle3 you joke but acnh curly hairs are pretty dope
I'm out here with the Dreamcast trim
"Once the design and the Polygon budget are nailed down, an artist can begin actually creating the assets" - Josh, an artist, while he creates some Polygon assets.
I love that this video came out on the same day I got my first haircut since quarantine. I've got long curly hair (3b or 3c), and I understood that on some level curly textured hair is difficult to make realistic. However, I've always been disappointed in games that don't even try. Sometimes there are no textured options other than "afro". Lately I've been seeing more options, which are: short afro, big afro, almost bald, wavy but not curly, and sometimes big fat cornrows (cornrows come in many styles and variations, but the game will give you one). I'm not asking for the textured hair to look amazing in a low-poly or cartoon-style game, I just want the choice. I just want to make my avatar look like Donna Summer.
great video, love that this is a series now and that we’ve got more learning about how games are made to look forward to! all the topics have been so interesting and getting an in-depth dive into hair textures is no exception.
(also just as a side note, tara’s credited twice as a story editor)
double the Taras, double the ... editing?
@@polygon "This is getting out of hand. Now there are two of them."
@@nekkowe an entire generation can just play that line like an mp3 file in their heads
that precise recipe of vhs players being affordable (or at least widespread by the late 90s/ early 00s), and the tapes still being pretty expensive meant most kids had around the same twenty or so VHS tapes doubling as childcare that everyone else did. Not to get all “kids today”- kids today will have a far more varied set of cultural reference points, and that’s good. but they probably won’t experience the almost complete universality of those few movies. Or be able to set up the drinking games
In the Sims 4 (I am a real gamer), there has been criticism of the blocky afros in Create a Sim. EA tried to fix it recently enough, but it still wasn't right. Interesting video Josh!!
Sims just has lazy character design overall.
Always went to CC for black hair, crazy how unpaid custom content creators can do it better than the professionals working on the sims
@@thwipthwap8870 That's probably exactly why there's such great diverse CCcontent though! It's going to take a lot of time and effort. If EA tried to charge for this extra time with a textured hair pack, people would understandably be very angry. Spending a bunch of time on a free patch/content versus spending that same amount for something people can buy... well the higher ups will go for monetization every time- they have monetary goals that are setup by the even higher ups after all.
But a CC creator doesn't have a project manager telling them what they can and cannot do with their time, so we see these labor of loves in cool diverse new hairstyles, clothing, behavior mods, etc
Hair in ts4 is really low poly, they chose this "clay"-like style with no individual strands defined. It's still possible to make decent textured hair with a low poly mesh (some TS2 CC looks great on meshes under 10k) but TS4 textures are just fucking ugly...
I love the detail that this is set in a barbershop, lol
So that's why Agent 47 is bald
honestly, I never even knew this was a problem (likely because i'm white and therefore wasnt aware that this was a problem for people of color)
but I'm glad to learn about strides being made to fix this! and will keep an eye out going forward hoping that the strides continue to be made! I'm glad that even if slowly, people of color are starting to be able to see themselves more and more in the industry. it's about damn time.
I understand why the texture itself would be more challenging, but shouldn't textured hair be easier to program overall? It moves more as a single unit then as individual strands
It is! Particularly when working with physics, it is _so much easier_ to make a curly style look good compared to a straight style, and takes way less resources from the physics engine for a frankly better-looking result. When textured hair moves in clumps, it looks like textured hair, but when straight hair moves in clumps it looks like.. well, lasagna with hair painted on lol. Very exciting to see how next gen can potentially remove the polygon ceiling for curls _and_ the lasagna effect from straight hair!
@@jonmiller6787 Was gonna say this, a Curl is a three dimensional object that looks different from all angles, unlike straight hair. So in order to really look accurate it's actually harder
@@titaniumvulpes Straight hair is unsurprisingly EASIER than curly hair. It has less geometric volume overall so it'd be easier to calculate the physics of the mesh. Plus a lot of game engines already have a good engine regarding the physics for hair.
@@titaniumvulpes also we're not asking for fades just good dreads and twostrand twists
@@titaniumvulpes WWE 2K lasagna hair.
I love josh's speedy monologue at the end, solid stuff :)
4:56 Hi, game dev here! I'd also note that the way that hair cards work really relies on the texture. The texture uses an alpha mask to tell the engine where to show texture and where to not show it. That's how there can appear to be individual strands of hair, but the geometry itself is still quite blocky.
everyone who played sims 3 on a slow laptop: yes, we've all seen the hair lasagna
is this a new series? genuinely love having josh do more in depth looks of the processes in gamedev. :)
It is, and if you have any suggestions for topics you'd like to see in the future, please let us know! 💚
@@polygon I always am interested in localization, and the choices made during that sort of process.
I feel like this is the universe telling me to get a haircut lmao
Especially that quote at the end like "I know barbers are expensive but it's a sign of maturity and care" like okay, I'm gonna!
Thank you Josh
Creating textured hair in games: almost as hard as delivering the line "getting clowned on in the group chat" without a hint of youthful trauma. Well done both Insomniac and Josh.
I love character creators, and get immensely disappointed when there isn't an option for textured hair. I just want it to look like me damn it!!!
this video really shows how representation matters and how we need to praise creators who take their time to make it accurate. thanks josh for giving us your perspective, hope to see more videos like this
Now it makes sense how they managed to get so many Hitman games done in such a short amount of time
Me: Hey, Bioware, can we maybe get some fades?
Bioware: Fade? You guys want The Fade? Sure! We'll include several lengthy story quests set in The Fade in EVERY Dragon Age title!
Me: No, I mean, like... black -
Bioware: Blackwall? The Black Emporium? The Black City? Black runestones?
Me: - hair. Black hair.
Bioware: Ohhhh...
Bioware: ... Nahhhh.
This. I've been struggling with Bioware's character creators for years. But the options they added in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition are a step in the right direction. I can actually make a Shepard that looks a bit like me now lol
@@TerranToro When they removed one of the darker skintone settings in Inquisition I was really pissed.
I love guessing who a video features by the thumbnail style and then being completely wrong but excited that I'm wrong. Josh is absolutely wonderful
What was your initial guess? I thought it'd be either Jenna (because of her previous videos talking about animation in videogames) or Josh (because it was about Miles Morales).
LOVED this vid, Josh. Thank you! I'm glad that we are entering a time where the only thing holding the character representation back in video games is the companies themselves....will easier to weed out who we don't want to keep throwing money at and uplift those who would let all be seen in games!
Josh, this is fantastic.
I love when it's time to learn something niche and absurdly interesting with the Polygon crew.
It's a side effect benefit, but those in-process colour coded shots of the hair cards look brilliant for painting reference and I'm definitely screenshotting them for later.
This was so cool! Now I have way more understanding of and sympathy for the game designers who kept making me choose between a lumpy afro sphere and locks. I’m really excited for processing power to catch up to my coils! Seems like it’s on the horizon.
This video was so so so good!! Josh is doing amazing work :D
And, dang, when the view switched to the PS5 footage and you could see the way the light hit Miles's hair so much more clearly? So good. I hope more games put in the work to make textured hair look good, because it's so worth it!!
I’ve been wondering this for years and I’m glad we finally have a explanation. Hopefully things improve. So I can finally make myself in games lol
I've always thought they were lacking in different curl patterns but this is so interesting!
Bruh! Sometimes I just love the internet. THANK YOU!!!
This is really fascinating as an artist, and as someone with curly hair, I am really excited to see where the next generation of game engines and consoles takes us because it is really frustrating to never see hair like mine in games(and I mean I'm white, it's gotta be way worse for people of color). I really hope one day we have the means to make sure that everyone can make a character who looks like them in the games they play, it's long overdue.
This was rad. This series feels like it's going to be How It's Made, Video Games Edition and I'm super into it
The difference between straight and textured hair in video games is something that sort of occurred to me on a peripheral level, but not something I considered fully, so I'm really glad this video is here to teach me! It's absolutely fascinating to see the different processes that go in, and valuable to see how important it is to overcome potential technical limitations to make sure we have inclusive representation. Thanks Josh!
Love this video, and love the people in the background outside watching Josh film it!
Josh! Thank you for making this video! As a black person with textured hair I always wondered why I never saw much of it in video games and your research makes me finally understand! Also glad to see your new haircut/fade and beard shape up since the reserve mowawk live stream cut.
Lol did u notice how much Alloy's hair clip through her model in game? It's insane
As a 3d artist I can attest that this video is extremely accurate, thanks for showcasing this wonderful process in such detail.
Sorta related, the Sims 4 just released it's latest game pack "Dream Home Decorater", but when me and seemingly most other started the game after downloading the pack, we got a bug in several hair styles that removes the teeth?
Or not "remove" exactly.. When you put on some of the hair styles that came with an earlier pack, part of the upper teeth row goes completely dark like most of the mouth. When you see your Sim's open mouth from a specific perspective, part of the teeth row looks red like the tongue so maybe the teeth's see through, but when you turn the Sim so you it's open mouth from the side the side the teeth are still dark even though the background is blue????
AND ALL OF THIS JUST BY PICKING A HAIR STYLE! A HAIR STYLE NOT EVEN NEAR THE TEETH!!
This pack cost 20$. The base game and all dlc's combined costs over 600$.
If you wanna see the bug yourself it's shown in "The Sims 4's new update is certainly... something" by Plumbella. If you got any idea what caused this bug I'd love to know, this is all super facinating to me
Stop buying things for The Sims 4
Cough games4theworld cough
@@Lincolnrocknroll nostalgia's a b**** so my patients went on way longer than it should've
have now been pirating it since beginning of 2021
... people still pay for TheSim4 content????
Yeah, making normal textured hair in video games might be possible, but COVID hair? Our technology is decades away from that.
Fortunately, I don't think there's a strong community voice to add COVID hair.
LOVE this!! Hugely great topic to address, great video, great shirt, and how delightful to get to film somewhere that isn’t just your greenscreened apartment... hell yeah! 💚
Cool video! Love hearing about this stuff. Insomniac's hair tech on Miles is really fantastic.
i think the real answer is “yes it’s difficult. all hair is difficult to make. BUT people find non-afro hair easier to make because white people were always center stage. more effort was put into creating technology and base meshes for non-afro hair. people think its more difficult because the game industry never learned how”
The mere fact of white people being put center stage would not explain this since many white people have curly hair. It is less about white *people* and more about normative whiteness. Curly hair was treated as an afterthought by most companies, if it was included at all: because it was seen as a deviation from the norm. It was seen as something fewer people would want so less effort was put into it. Although if one actually took a count of all the curly-haired people in the world, there’s actually a decent chance you’d find there are more of us than there are straights. People from every continent can have curls, although it is obviously rarer the farther north and east you go. The assumption of most game developers of course was that an average white man would be playing their game, and an average white man was assumed to have straight hair. This is how racism in media tends to work. The creator, regardless of their own background, is usually assuming a white male audience. Unless of course they are creating in a genre that is primarily associated with women or non-white people. Or possibly that they are deliberately searching for a different audience (because of lagging sales, perhaps), although that can just as easily lead to awful pandering. Getting across the message that many types of people enjoy all genres of media is one of the big challenges of our times.
Make velcro hair.
@@sophiejones7727 Its about who is spending the money. The buyer of the product. Make up commercials dont have men. Even tho its mostly men making the make up and designing it. Same with games.
@@docvaliant721 Not the case, white people don't dominate the buying gaming market. Hispanics, black and white people play video games with generally the same frequency.
www.statista.com/statistics/819353/share-consumers-play-games-frequent-ethnic/#statisticContainer
@@neonbarnowl That's the frequency of people in each group who play games. White people still make up a larger percentage of the population overall (60ish percent) and are more represented.
visiting a barber and saying "Hey, can you hit me with that ps5 fade?"
finally the bionicle representation i've needed
This is actually such an interesting idea that I’ve never really recognized but I think always subconsciously knew it was there!
This guy is great!
In the post-Brian era, I still find that most videos on polygon have (ironically) become a little too flat.
Theyre not BAD by any stretch, but they feel... formulaic. Theres no distinction in style between different creators.
I think polygon should let each creators flavour come out a bit more, you know?
Anyway this is a good video. Interesting topic.
I agree. On one hand: I can literally guess which creator made the video by the name of the video alone with a 90% accuracy, yet the videos themselves are very formulaic.
Meaning: You can see the personality of the creator in the title and the topic that they chose, yet they steel feel samey.
@@tychoderkommentator2989 exactly , the scripts are very bland and by the book and don't sound like anyone's particular voice
Yeah all the vids recently (aside from Overboard) have just been like informative videos about some aspect of gaming. Which is cool and I do enjoy watching them, but it's probably not what most of us subscribed for. It seems like they used to be able to make more creative videos, like Game Ogre, Filmbreakers (I'm sad we didn't get more of that, it was hilarious), Awful Squad, We Fought a Zoo, Please Retweet, and of course Unraveled...but now all the videos kind of feel the same, except for Overboard and the new Versus series. It seems like Brian was allowed to make fun, creative videos because Unraveled was a cash cow but now he's gone and they're not making any new fun videos to replace it. It's a shame because the video team is so talented and funny but I guess they're just not allowed to take chances anymore, so they just make the same type of video over and over. Even just recording their twitch streams and uploading them here would probably help bring in more viewers, a lot of people don't even know they have a twitch!
There was an interview with one of the game writers where he took credit for making sure the art director went back and fixed Miles fade.
Great video, really comprehensive.
"...and a sweet fade that actually looks good" okay but no joke this is the fastest ive ever liked a vid
really liked the video! hair in video games can sometimes be a make or break in the game and seeing just how difficult it is, made me less quick to judge.
Me: Nice hair Alloy
Alloy: Thanks, it took my hairdresser 2 years to do it.
It's great to see Josh really finding his footing, love this series!
10:45 - 10:50 that transition from miles' hair in the ps4 to the ps5 absolutely blew my mind. it went from flat to actually looking like hair. the amount of coils and strands is crazy, it's almost like i can feel his hair just from looking at it.
This was such an awesome and informative video. The visuals really helped me understand the technical process!
Thumbnail: Good Hair
Me (after watching): Good Video
Loving the way this was presented. The way you maintain focus on both the technical aspects and the importance of representation made it really engaging.
Now THIS is the stuff that makes me so excited to 3D model. The science and tech that replicate everyday physics are fascinating, and the obvious joy people get out of finally being represented is games is so worth every hour
Nice video, I am glad I am not the only one that gives a deep look at videogames characters hair.
when somebody didnt need to do a full tutorial and you happen to understand just everything XDDDD just needed the recipe to understand which layers go from which sides SO THANKS A LOT THIS HELPED ME
Really great video, Josh! As someone with textured hair it was really nice to have an explanation for why most of the hairstyles for people like us look wonky most of the time.
As a hairdresser who LOVES gaming, I would love to help with hair designs !
Josh already feels more natural in front of the Polygon camera. Great to see the content develop!
I love this! Keep going with this series!
I recently watched a video about the evolution of animation, specifically Disney movies, and how during the production of Brave, they had to make new tech to make Merida's hair stiff but bouncy and behave like naturally thick and curly hair. I wonder if stiffening the movements and making the hairs shorter on that system would mimic an afro?
I was just playing a new game and was stunned by how fantastic the hair was. Thanks for the perfectly timed video!
Excellent video Josh! It’s more than worth addressing.
"Lasagna wigs" is how I will describe old-gen videogame hair from now on.
I think this is the video where Josh finally found his voice. excellent work
great video josh! i’m living for you blossoming at polygon
This was so fascinating.. Miles' hair is even more satisfying to look at now I know how much work went into creating it!
i love these videos, really important for gamers to see the development process imo
One day my children's children will have better hair options in video games
I think it’s wild that in 2024, the best they have been able to do for Afro hair is Kilmongers, side dreads and a fro🙄… like really??
And all of them are guilty of this. I’m searching high and low on how to make better Afro centric digital hair assets… and there’s barely any good vids in the matter.. smh
Josh, you're doing all the good work out here. Spit those facts!!
Man holy shit, I've felt like this for FOREVER. Thank you for going into this.
Can't believe Josh held an intervention for each and every one of us in the last 30 seconds of this video
Love that you shot this in a barbershop!
This was such an interesting watch and answered a question I've had for AGES. It's driven me crazy for a long time that some games do such a bad job at curly or textured hair.
It's weird how Miles inspired him to make this video on hair, considering how short and static it is. I guess I haven't played enough black characters with fades to notice how impressive it was.
It's been so cool to see Joshua join the team at Polygon. I just love how much this channel allows each of the hosts to pursue topics that are meaningful to them. What kind of gaming channel runs the gamut of topics that Polygon does?
I'm here to give Josh a high five for filming this video in front of the barbershop owner and hearing "you'll get it soon bud!" over and over again
It was posted 26 seconds ago but I can tell its gonna be good
Yes
It’s almost like most game devs have been making all their characters bland white men with straight brown hair, and treated natural African hairstyles (for instance) as an afterthought, and now the video game industry is finally starting to wrestle with its history of passive racism!
It’s almost exactly like that! Wow!
imagine?
It's racist to not have the processing power to make accurate hairstyles? Okay, white male speaking for black people.
@@chrismanuel9768 black person co-signing. “Racist” is a bit harsh, but I feel like that’s bc ur coming here with the idea the racism automatically is intentional and malicious, when really most racism is just ignorance. Black ppl only make up 2% of the industry, it wouldn’t be hard to believe that they’re an afterthought in the process. It’s just a blindspot.
This is a great video and I love seeing Josh's personality!
This is an absolute golden video just for mentioning bionicle
actually informative... thought provocative and inspirational...id not only recommend this video to those who wanna game design...but also artists and animators...as not only the detailed explanations... but the visual examples and the questions asked ..and then answered...bring up great ideas for the future...
even added this to a private playlist for future reference... Definetly deserving a like..more views and ..if i wasn't already subscribed... XD
7:30 Cant wait till the new 'Hey Arnold!' game comes out
Gotta give some respect to Guild Wars 2. When their Path of Fire expansion came out in 2017, it came along with a bunch of fantastic hair and beard styles.
[puts all of your hair cards into pikachu sleeves]
oh yes i loved this!! miles hair looks so good! finally!
YES A JOSH EPISODE GIVE ME MORE
i think about hair all the damn time in video games. It really can make or break the "damn, this is a well made game that looks great" for me.
I'm glad someone's finally talking about it.
Yes yes yes yes! Absolutely love this video, more videos like this and more of Josh please, Polygon!
im so glad theres more josh
I'm so glad I found this awesome channel! I love how you guys dive into a topic and explain it in detail. I also love how you guys showcase people in the gaming industry that may not get the spotlight they deserve for all the hard work they put into making games look and feel incredible.