How Persona Combines 2D and 3D Graphics

[@Acerola_t]

Get a free 30 day trial and 20% off an annual plan at brilliant.org/acerola ! #ad

[@hundvd_7]

Now that you have a video about Persona 3, when are you going to make a video about the graphics rendering of the monogatari series?

[@michaelgussert6158]

al-BEE-doe

[@ttmso]

what software at the beginning?

[@blackwarrior823]

​@@ttmso Nvidia Nsight

[@Bit_Crust]

Now that you point out how ray tracing shadows work, it has just now, and only now, become intuitively apparent why my Desmos radiography machine ran like a burning dumptruck. It's a raytracing integration problem, for ten thousand pixels, running on the CPU, written in JavaScript, through an interface.

[@Kwauhn.]

Man, people do the craziest shit with Desmos 😂

[@Bit_Crust]

@@Kwauhn. Real time physics simulation was when I realized that people get nuts with Desmos, there's something about the feedback of putting it on the graph, I think.

[@Sammysapphira]

Imagine how much further along science would be if they didn't use python and javascript

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@Sammysapphira Can you imagine if scientists actually knew how to program? Probably a good thing that they can't, because we would probably have a real AI by now and the human race would be destroyed that much quicker.

[@opposite342]

​@@Sammysapphiraprobably not much since ppl don't wanna touch c

[@GibbonFan]

bro's trying to distract us from the Jam.

[@NoVIcE_Source]

lmao

[@TheLeNiBo]

And it worked

[@bananaman9869]

Love the pfp

[@uberchurch8335]

It's too tempting

[@wpwscience4027]

Take home message: Don't ray trace in the Jam.

[@ShaimingLong]

That 'bug' with the hallway light rendering is likely intended, there's a good few scenes where someone comes to talk to you and you can see out into the hall while they stand in the doorway.

[@Acerola_t]

that's a good point yeah

[@ShaimingLong]

@@Acerola_t I must admit, I have been wondering if it could have been worth setting some sort of flag to skip the hallway rendering when no scene will play. At least for older hardware or lower graphics settings, anyway. Incidentally, the video was brilliant, there's a lot that went into P3R that I had taken for granted. It really makes me appreciate the cunning use of existing systems to create such stylised visuals.

[@Hobojoe529]

Your choice of P3 music for your videos has always been great, but now it fits perfectly.

[@CheesecakeMilitia]

With that smooth as fuck choice of Paradise Killer soundtrack in the middle

[@Vete_Runner]

Ad with Junes' music just made my day

[@santerijyvas7308]

I love the irony of him playing the junes song while doing a promo

[@notnuvo113]

Should’ve of been Tanaka’s theme

[@locky_y233]

Acerola: Explains why brilliant is great My Brain: EVERYDAY IS GREAT AT YOUR JUNES!!!

[@bradb9635]

I love that you noticed the 3D model on the pause screen looks like Kingdom Hearts.

[@JadenGoter]

Fun fact, the normals of the faces of each character's meshes are hand-edited to have shadows that look more "anime" after cel-shading! This is also commonly done in VR Chat and other Atlas games. It's a painful but rewarding process. Also, I'm not sure if that discard had anything to do with the inverse hull because that outline effect is simply drawing an unlit black version of the model with its faces inverted. Since faces are single sided, no clever discarding or other shader tricks needed! Great video as always :)

[@gonderage]

its a lil shame ace didnt go over stylized normals, coz its really cool. Atlas decided to go with smoothly snapping normals, it looks like, which is comparatively easier to tune then trying to make it smooth all over. I've tried, it's hard to get good-looking normals in a smooth, non-snappy way.

[@Rhodochrone]

It's pretty hard to notice the stylised normals as the lighting of most of the scenes isn't very directional, so you can't really tell how reactive those shadowed parts are, but it's really cool. I think ATLUS next needs to focus on improving their environment and lighting work next, as they've absolutely nailed character rendering now. I look at some of the painted backrounds in stuff like Ghibli or the last Rebuild of Evangelion and it's proof that realistic, natural lighting can still work in a stylised context.

[@BelBelle468]

Bit disappointed he didn’t focus much on that either. That stuff is part of why the models looks so distinctive, and normal editing for a cell shaded effect is actually seriously difficult to do. Regarding the inverse hull technique, I’m not sure if it was used here. Or at least if it was, it was used in a different way than what’s typical. The inverted hull technique frequently leads to part of the outline being thicker or thinner in inconsistent ways. It would be difficult to make such a thin and constant line. Also, that technique often leads to lines being created in places it shouldn’t be, so they’d have to manually set up where the inverted hull should go. I don’t know if UE has a built in compositer but making outlines using the figure and increasing size tends to be more even. That or they could also use the fresnel method, but that can be messy too at times

[@BelBelle468]

Ok nevermind they did use it, and he even mentioned the variant. The inverse technique is so hard to work with so I’m curious what things they did

[@semirionu]

Does anyone know where can I learn more about this?

[@neongravity88]

i thought i would see something on the jam but was gifted with the menu tutorial of the century

[@__dane__]

Honestly, the fact that they created such a robust NPR lighting system in UNREAL is super impressive as Unreal previously did not make it easy to do so

[@mikkelens]

that albedo pronunciation is wild

[@WelhamGaming]

Acerola did that on purpose, because its the jam THEME!

[@Acerola_t]

i say it how i think it should be said 👼

[@__dane__]

It’s somehow a unique pronunciation that I’ve never heard before

[@hundvd_7]

Wildly correct

[@alexcine]

Its the Albe-dough. Hiralious i like it

[@yummypancakes7768]

Of COURSE you would do a P3 video given all the P3 music you've used in your previous videos! Super excited to watch this one :D

[@thegreyemperor]

The sponsor + Junes song = brilliant

[@danm3573]

I haven't played persona but I love how the blue haired guy has the power to shoot himself in the head. If I was a playable character in a tactical JRPG, that'd be my power too.

[@rafaelbordoni516]

I recommend looking at Arcsys games, they're also kings at stylized 3D graphics, particularly 3D that really looks like hand drawn 2D graphics. They have an old GDC talk about their Guilty Gear Xrd game revealing a lot of interesting techniques as well. It focuses mostly on 3D modeling techniques rather than shaders though, but it's still full of insight for anyone interested in non-PBR rendering.

[@gonderage]

There's also a lot of slides that some folks translated to English here, too! docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WUvd9s8d_5ENBnbSpXo6ajdeTGODPr6S/edit#slide=id.g10ca4482672_3_0

[@melvin8d671]

That GDC talk is a major influence on my graphics programming for my game, although I can't use every technique as my game is first person. Its really interesting how they use a custom light source that only effects an individual character and all that.

[@rafaelbordoni516]

@@melvin8d671 I feel that, lmao, I tried the same thing though not for an actual game but for personal project so I could learn how to do it. Not using textures was huge for me, especially because in first person games you can get really close to some models. It's very difficult to apply everything though, customizing the normal vectors and vertex colors is hard when you're not a good modeller, but I think the journey at least brought out my own unique visual style in the end, though I still have much to learn.

[@sshh7510]

Acerola, truer words have never been spoken than couldn’t “find an example from VRChat that wouldn’t get the vid demonetized”

[@Dominik-K]

Thanks for this video, Atlus really knows how to make slick UI and it's great to see how they approached these challenges

[@paul2609]

Yes stylised Unreal Engine games do exists! I made a prototype of The Spirited Away train scene with ray traced hatching at Vimeo as an example

[@idyliawritehorse7509]

This video is awesome! I love the visual real examples and it's insane how concise your breakdowns of each effect are given all the complex stuff going on.

[@OldShatterham]

love these closer looks at the rendering process of different games!

[@fletchercobb4398]

The jam is in literally an hour what is this man doing?

[@BuyMyBeard]

Words not spoken here, but you can tell Acerola was very excited for that game, literally all the background music on this channel is P3 music. It's deserved, game is awesome, I'm having a blast too!

[@xYAuronYx]

Your videos are so sooo informative. And so fun to watch at the same time, how is it possible?? Using the freezed frame as a single texture for the UI instead of re-rendering all of the gameplay geometry feels so obvious, but my mind was blown... I can't wait to tell my team so we can implement this in our game and save some sweet battery life. Thanks Acerola (and Atlus!)

[@anonimowelwiatko9811]

I don't know if I am getting better at understanding interactive graphics and shaders, more crazy or it's Acelora improving with videos making it even easier to digest and understand 🤣

[@izzaazzurri]

I love this. Can you talk about "NEO: the worlds end with you" next time? They have unique NPR style, especially for the skill fvx. Im really intrigued by it and nobody really ever discuss about it

[@blizzardlizard5614]

I didn't know you posted a new vid until you were posting about how it had less engagement than usual, so naturally I had to rush to it and comment something to try and push it in the algorithm

[@rikkasummer2784]

i thought the menu was 2d at first but when i look close enough, i can see the jagged line which is the polygon of 3d pretty neat stuff

[@chibbychaps6445]

I've been waiting for this!

[@julianlanty2066]

Great video. I was always curious about how persona 5 did all their incredible UI and now I understand a lot more on how its made

[@SimplyMavAgain]

at around 7 minutes you mention that it's unfortunate how Ray Tracing reflections seem to have been an afterthought for the visual design of this game but i like to look at this from a different perspective (pun intended) as the team being incredibly intentional about their use of reflections to account and circumvent SSRs usual weaknesses. While playing the game i constantly switched between RT on and off to see how they solved different problems where SSR artifacts could have been distracting and every time i got excited by how smartly they worked around those issues. For example: small things like entering the beefbowl shop at the iwatodai strip mall where the camera again will cut to a different angle that allows the door to continue reflecting the floor tiles as you open it, regardless of whether RT reflections are on or off. Or the way the mirrors are rendered with this very opaque blue filter on top and blurring whatever is reflected in it which still vaguely lets you get the impression of something being reflected in those mirror while also hiding the fact that often you're actually seeing the backside of things reflected in it when you should be seeing the front. All these details come together in ways which make their use of SSR look incredibly effortless but must have taken an immense amount of consideration throughout. It made me almost feel bad for generally playing the game with RT reflections on but also made never feel like I was missing out whenever i turned them off for my Steam Deck sessions.

[@KARLOSPCgame]

I know a scene where Raytracing is an Afterthought One of Koromarus's Social Link where you are sitting outside the dorm you can see the reflection of the street in the door glass The thing is, in one social link a mom and her child go offcamera to the right, and while you can see their reflection in the door while they are offscreen *they disappear when they are in the middle of the glass*

[@winteriris13]

i understand absolutely nothing but this was incredibly fascinating to see the breakdown of how the game is rendered :0

[@Gestrid]

12:15 My guess is one of two things are happening here: 1. It's rendering it for scenes where a character opens the door (shich happens a fez times during the game). 2. At one point during development, they were planning on having part of the hallway visible when the character opens the door.

[@vixtheexistent6390]

It’s option 1. There’s several times it happens throughout the game.

[@ptaszor9779]

We need more youtubers like you

[@redalchemy7322]

P3 Reload is an interesting game, I spent a lot of time just staring at the various effects that they were using trying to figure out exactly what's going on. Now this video drops in my lap and I sit a bit stunned at the timing, an excellent breakdown. One thing that still stuns me is how they handled the gloss on the hair and the rimlight The frenel is a bit sneaky in execution. It looks like they utilize some sort of masking or additional authorship is used to control where the rimlight is, because it's generally directional compared to out of the box frenel tends to be applied over all of the model. On top of that the places where the hair shines has an interesting effect. I almost want to say that it looks like there is an additional mask for the shine so that it reflects a specific area first then is additive if they are direct lighting. Just really beautiful attention to detail, the shader artists and art director really went the full mile to make the illustrations and 3D models synergize harmoniously

[@samfairclough6345]

I saw your tweet that this video is underperforming and I thought it was great so here's a comment for engagement boosting :)))) pls make more in this series

[@shishimuraa]

I couldn't express how much I love the artistic style of P3R, so thank you Acerola for also showing us the work that the programmers also put into making it a reality.

[@MrAntraxico]

Incredible video. Seeing how many graphics basic concepts get applied in AAA graphics is quite beautiful. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the startling complexity of the finished render without realizing that I know how all the components of it work and should understand what they do. But the interactions between that are so unexpected that it seems like something else. It sort of like the composition of music. Thank you for making such incredible videos and I holding my breath for the next one.

[@kyledinsmore9984]

One detail I liked about P3R was that in daytime when you’re walking around inside the dorm, it almost appears darker but that’s because it’s daytime and almost none of the lights are turned on, compared to when all the lights are turned on in the evening

[@GuyunZhongli-ow4ti]

Bec im old/new to 3d modeling but was trying to make sense of modding a game this was such an info overload vid and extremely helpful

[@lum1nescence_248]

I love Persona 3 reload, and seeing what Altus was able to do here makes me so excited for what they’re gonna do in the future

[@sunnydraws2513]

I was blown away by the fact that the protagonist images in the UI are just 3D models used in an exceptionally clever way. God, as someone who likes studying UI design, this is like crack to me.

[@Vanishing_Age]

As a very casual dabbler in messing around with 3d rendering, I really appreciated your explanations of various concepts/techniques. I wasn't really expecting to get that when I clicked on this video, so that was a delightful find.

[@ajflink]

13:18 That made me smile and chuckle more than I think it should have.

[@praetorprime]

I guessed the bug! Actually I had two guesses, either the window being noisy, or the part of the ceiling that looks like it's missing.

[@apresthus87]

I am making my own 3D game engine and thus a renderer these days, and so your videos are fantastic to get an overview of things and concepts. Thank you very much! Also it took me a lot of time to wrap my head around how PBR works and you just explained it simply in a few minutes, amazing :D

[@AshArtzMusic]

I was just listening to the yard advice show and got jumpscared by the acerola mention, anyways amazing content as always man

[@ZealanTanner]

At the end acerola said he played persona 3 reload for 3 days straight. That’s not a joke, I saw his discord and it said persona for 3 days

[@taki1009]

acerola has such a unique feeling that always when i enter i new video i go like "oh its him" just by the way you do your things, you're really cool man, hope to be as good as you

[@CelesteLunaRael]

Shigenori Soejima and the art team behind Persona are among my fave artists!!! Pop art, graphical and this distinct, clean look on their anime style is so good😢❤

[@Celykhanyne]

It's the 4th time your videos pop up on my feed, and each time I watch them integraly and religiously. Something about the editing and "storytelling" just scratches my brain juuust right. Also I love nerding about these subjetcs, you somehow bring my class subjets back, but more interestingly. I'm subscribed now :')

[@BoglBoi]

The random images that pop-up on screen whenever you speak are not only effective at grabbing my attention, but it also helps me understand what's going on by showing a visual representation of terminology I didn't know.

[@purpleponteran2805]

Honestly can’t believe I’ve seen people say this games UI is soulless compared to the original P3. Every menu is its own piece of art & yet people want to let their nostalgia goggles blind them 😔

[@bigmiraclewhips]

I'm glad you did a video covering this. The UI from P5 has always been my favourite, ever since I laid my eyes upon it; and the new P3 UI is just as good, if not better. It's incredible how well of a job they did with it. Shoutout to the designers and programmers. It's so stylised and fluid and definitely stands out from most other games which have fairly bland UIs. It's so good that I actually think about it on like a weekly basis, and I am always enamoured at the design. It's probably my favourite part of the game. It's always fun to see a technical breakdown and notice all the small details that go into it. There's so much variety across different aspects of the game, especially how it matches the personality traits of the related characters. It's just pure art and I love it.

[@doctorcoke5072]

The bit where you go "that's ray tracing" on the shadow explanation got a good chuckle out of me.

[@larataenmalospasos]

this just sounds like magic, I did not understand a single word but still watch the entire video

[@mRidley508]

1:00 MONOGATARI FAN SPOTTED

[@FullNarutoIdiot]

Really liked the video! 💖Love Persona to bits and was it was so fascinating to see how it all works under the hood 😍 Thank you so much for the explanations!

[@ckk3129]

I'm glad that this was a deep dive into shadows given the game being covered.

[@KoshakiDev]

🎉 ANOTHER banger video, Acerola! Very informative!

[@JoelPerry1]

This video will be helpful for the Femc mod. It also shows why she wasn't included.

[@arkanesugar]

Wow. I watched the entire video already in 18 seconds, and its pretty good

[@prinnyreturn]

The monogatari styled appendix of the whole chapters was clean

[@stevethepocket]

Caching the contents of the scene when you pause is just smart programming in general. Too many games waste processing power re-rendering the same frame over and over when you're paused, and if your engine isn't great at doing cheap 2D compositing... (looking at you, Unity) ...you're likely to be pushing it even _harder_ in the pause menu than when you're in the thick of the action. _Slime Rancher_ is a great example of this-I played on a pretty old system at the time, and any time I was paused or pulled up a full-screen UI like the letters from Riley, my fans revved up! Yes, the menus that _completely covered the screen with no transparency_ were running _on top_ of the entire actual game even though nothing was happening OR visible.

[@andhikanirwasita1890]

Im new to pers- WHY IS THERE A GUY SHOOTING HIMSELF

[@francisco2759]

Lmfao the cat video by the add is a mean move 😂

[@beans9288]

Not even halfway but what a video. First I’m seeing from this channel and this is so well broken down to even a newbie to game design like me. Have subbed, thanks!

[@chickennugget6684]

Watching timelapse rendering is definitely a new liked object for me now

[@ushien2717]

Incredibly interesting. I learned a lot, thank you for this content !

[@vito_alvess]

ohhh my! I was waiting for this video so much!!

[@plvto1]

I'm hoping we'll see more games with stylized UIs, that not only look cool but relate to the game's themes and hold nice little secrets.

[@RilAether]

i had no clue what half of these words meant. Watched and appreciated the whole 23 mins

[@alizarinart]

Love the random Linkin Park reference at the end. I have only a very basic understanding of render pipelines so this was a really interesting, eye-opening video. Thanks for sharing!

[@TheVigLebowski]

Damn at 12:50 when Garoad kicked on I totally got into Va-11 Hall-A mode

[@lilyamiia3436]

This was really well explained and *also* funny. Didnt see the time go by :)

[@AINEET]

Bizarre as it sounds, whenever I'm walking down the street wondering about very specific things such as pixel shaders and dithering, image post processing and persona 5 mixing 2d and 3d, KZbin somehow reads my thoughts and recommends videos from this channel

[@LS95774]

Game Jam announcement vid dropped and I made a joke about it being pushed to late Feb to make room for a P3R addiction, but little did I know.... 🤣

[@DaniKH1]

The reason the game renders whats on the hallway while being inside of the MC room it's bc theres a simplified version of the hallway due to some characters will knock at your door and talk from it with you. Fun fact: The entire dorms are a one single piece, despite it has loading screen between floors.

[@valentinorubio703]

after you mentioned the AO pass the first thing that came to my mind is that probably that line effect on shadows is because of the ambient occlusion sampling...

[@GavinFromWeb]

bro needs more subs so he can finally play the game with a rtx card and have it render lighting fast

[@Velzp]

Wow didn't noticed such details in game. Thanks for explanation!

[@DemonixTB]

so happy i caught the graphics bug in the window, i truly am insane.

[@noiJadisCailleach]

If every Brilliant ad is like this, i'll NEVER skip ads EVER AGAIN!

[@axelsgf]

I enjoyed everything about this game to the very end seriously I would just stop and enjoy the pause menu very often, i will 100% replay this game many times.

[@GuilhermeHenrique-tz5mn]

I didn't knew the reflections were ray tracing. Does explain why i'm getting constant framedrops on my old 1050

[@Brindlebrother]

"In the end" _shows linkin park_ the mad lad

[@SadeN_0]

Those menus are so crazy stylish

[@joonatansaarhelo6138]

Shadow volumes is an easy to implement alternative to shadow mapping as long as you don't have too many polygons or transparent textures.

[@txu2011]

The interview with Persona 3 Reload reveal that they do use different 3D models custom made for UI. :o

[@__dane__]

I’ve been waiting for this (especially because you’ve used Persona 3 BGM in most of your videos)

[@herlantmajor5883]

Personally I don’t like so much the idea covering at much topic in computer graphics as fast as possible, but love your channel looking forward to see more in depth technical subject keep it up

[@user-zl1vf4me1p]

It has been quite a while I've seen this kinds of videos, I'm honestly surprised I understood when bro started speaking about vectors.

[@anon_y_mousse]

That Brilliant ad was purrfect. Best way to do ads really.

[@Luka9S9]

I'm not a Graphics Programmer, but this was a really interesting video to see, I'm surprised to see that the menus are actual a 3D, that was impressive, but I was even more surprised to see they're using Ray Tracing to do Global Illumination, I thought Atlus would use pre baked GI, since it's very common is some Sega games.

[@sleepiexpanda]

currently learning blender and playing p3r as a 2d artist so this feels super relevant lol

[@Its-Donut-Cat]

Videos like this make me question “How did video games even get to this point??”

[@corey2232]

Octopath Traveler 2 was one of the best JRPG's I've ever played, yet there was one thing that I felt was seriously missing - 2D art! The story, writing & voice acting were all great, but after playing so many Atlus games, it felt wrong not having any 2D art popping up for the characters in dialogue! The first time you actually see what you 2D sprite is supposed to look like, it's when you beat their story & get a single drawing of them in a more detailed style.

[@janaekelis]

clicked on this video bc i like persona's art despite never playing the games once and i thought your username was areola

[@modestasmurauskas12]

Would have skipped the sponsor part if not for the cat :)

[@geeshta]

After all this time listening to Persona 3 music in your videos, there's a video on the game.