NBA 2K19 Art Feedback

[Soundsational]

Quote: Originally Posted by CaVsFaN2273

R4zor is widely regarded as the best modder in the 2K PC community. He mostly worked on fixing tons of legend players and creating missing ones from scratch. Here is some of his work. Spoiler

Oh that's awesome. Really hope they give him alot of freedom and let him put in the work and actually use what he wants to do

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[CaVsFaN2273]

Quote: Originally Posted by aeroneflores

So will people be disappointed if we don't see those quality mods/fixes on player faces/models from R4zoR? I'm excited that 2K is reaching out to the modding community however I'm lowering my expectations. I feel like they will hold him back in terms of what he can actually do. Over the years 2K has paid less attention to player detail and paid more attention on park, MyTeam, and anything to do with multiplayer

In my opinion, I don't see why they would hold him back. I'm almost certain that they hired him for the sole reason of improving player models/cyber-faces and bringing in his great attention to detail. I mean that's why so many people, including Brian Mazique, were pushing for 2K to hire him, so I would be surprised if we don't see some kind of improvement. Now, I'm not expecting some 180 with player models, but like I said, I would be surprised if we don't see a decent amount of legend and/or current players improved.

[phenom2311]

Quote: Originally Posted by CaVsFaN2273

In my opinion, I don't see why they would hold him back. I'm almost certain that they hired him for the sole reason of improving player models/cyber-faces and bringing in his great attention to detail. I mean that's why so many people, including Brian Mazique, were pushing for 2K to hire him, so I would be surprised if we don't see some kind of improvement. Now, I'm not expecting some 180 with player models, but like I said, I would be surprised if we don't see a decent amount of legend and/or current players improved.

He does an outstanding job on faces, does he do equally well on player bodies (which is a bigger problem than faces imo)?

[antdoggydogg]

This is an excerpt from a document I compiled and sent over to some of the people at 2K, you can find my full doc here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Oi...gDmYKYAWfgPc7c

I am an animator/artist in real life and I think it's a good time to talk about how the player model system can be improved upon. Body weight relative to body height. Here is an example of Muggsy Bogues and Manute Bol.



Compare left to right, Muggsy looks decent, but Manute is so heavy! It looks like they took someone that was Muggsy’s size and scaled him up to be 7’7. To see if my theory was correct, I took Muggsy and changed his height to 7’7 to see what it would look like in the game:



So clearly this is the cause of some of the disproportionate head sizes that crop up here and there. Several players suffer from this issue. It seems to affect anyone who is above or below the average NBA height. Because when their heights are edited, everything is scaled up or down in size, including the head. If you look at the real-life image on the top left, Manute’s head isn’t that much bigger than Muggsy’s. Now if you look at the image where both players are 7’7 and thus on the same size scale, their head sizes relative to each other, are very proportionate to the real life photo. This tells me that the issue is scaling. Player face scans (and face designs for the historic players) should never be scaled up or down when height is edited. It is leading to some really wonky appearances.



Muggsy should be thicker, especially in the legs. Manute’s arm and overall body thickness is an issue. Once his height was changed to 7’7, the chosen weight of 200 pounds was not redistributed proportionately throughout his body. Normally I wouldn’t nitpick about something like this, but when I can’t recognize the 7’7 giant on the court as Manute Bol, then I think its a problem. Height usually comes from long legs, he should look like a really, really tall version of slender man. Notice the difference in where the waist lines up, and the knee-cap line. Also the gigantic head. I think this stuff matters when people are spending real money to purchase cards in MyTeam, and then ending up with an unrecognizable player.

That exact scenario happened to me when I chased after a Connie Hawkins card a couple seasons ago.

Connie Hawkins, a unique looking player, with a thin frame and an albatross wingspan. I was determined to add him to MyTeam in 2K17, I hustled to get his card, put him in my lineup, started the game, and couldn’t even recognize the guy on the court. I was so disappointed that instead of Connie Hawkins I got this generic body type:



I’ve since gone into 2K19, and created a guide to compare the body measurements of real-life Connie Hawkins and 2K Connie Hawkins. I used red lines to mark where the shoulders, hands, knees and feet should line up.



The biggest inaccuracies with Connie’s player model are that he has too much muscle, his wingspan is too short, and his torso is too long, which then also makes his legs look short. You can tell this by looking at where his knees and waistband should line up. This is a problem that seems to affect most player models in the game, which results in some awkward running motions where it looks like their upper body is trying to run ahead of the lower body. This may seem small in the grand scheme of things, and it’s probably not noticeable during the first year of a game engines cycle, but after a while these legacy issues are more noticeable because they’ve become so familiar.

I understand the restrictions when it comes to player heights, you might be obligated to go off the official NBA listing. But with a lot of players, there is no official data about their wingspan. I’m assuming that means we have free reign to adjust all unlisted wingspans to whatever we think is appropriate for classic players. These side by side comparisons with real images can go a long way in fine tuning a lot of legends in the game. And even current players when it comes to things like torso length or shoulder width.

On top of that, it would be nice to get back some of the control we used to have with wingspans, torsos and shoulder width in the edit player menu. But instead of a meter that goes from 0-100, it would be nice if we got an actual update on his wingspan measurement when we move the slider. This type of function already exists when creating a MyPlayer.

Here is a before (middle) and After (right), where I created a player but modified his weight, wingspan, torso and shoulders to be as close to the real Connie Hawkins proportions as possible. Notice that his knee caps still don’t totally align with the real life image, even with the torso slider maxed. This means there’s a good chance that anatomy is off for all bodies.



So I decided to check up on other players and do similar before and afters.


Kevin Garnett:

Resized his head, its way too big, caused by the re-scaling issue I mentioned above.

Elongated his torso, which simultaneously lined up his knee height.

Increased his shoulder width a little bit to try and match real life. Might be too much.

Assigned him his real life weight value, which results in more realistic body appearances in Create A Player. His physique now closely resembles his slender build now.



I think he looks much better with these updates. The head size alone makes a big difference.

Jerry West:

His model is too thick, should be thinner. Create-A-Player weight system helped fix this.



Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1971):

Re-sized his head. Changed his thickness, shortened his torso/elongated his legs.



Larry Johnson:

I entered a game and posted up Kyrie Irving with Larry Johnson and something just didn’t look right. He didn’t look or feel like Larry Johnson



He’s too skinny, unrecognizable in-game.
Wingspan is too short.
Shoulders should be wider.



If you place a real image of Larry Johnson over the player models you can notice what’s wrong. In the Official Roster version, his shoulders are way too small, he pretty much needs to be maxed out in that regard, and he could use a bit more muscle mass. With these changes I believe it would be more enjoyable and life-like playing with Larry Johnson.



Jayson Tatum:

His head is too large and his frame is too thick, he seems to occupy a lot more space on the court due to his thick frame.



Yabusele:



Here are some existing player models that I think are very well done, Giannis and Mo Bamba. An example of two of the most unique body types staying true to life.:



Pros:
Muscle definition and size is on point.
Knee and waist lines line up.
Wingspan is on point.
Head sizes also pretty on point.

There are other good examples too, like young Shaq. Although the post 2000 Shaq models could use some extra weight haha.

[Schnoodle321]

KD is a perfect example of what you have shown. 2k player models just don’t have that lean long look, everyone almost looks the same height when playing

[antdoggydogg]

I agree, and same body thickness too most of the time. Larry Johnson looked comparable in size to Kyrie Irving

[Schnoodle321]

I have a feeling though this won’t be addressed until next gen unfortunately

[antdoggydogg]

Here's another great example of head sizes being too big. Decrease in muscle mass and shoulder width really goes a long way. I know this is going to sound silly but If you slimmed down/sized up players to their appropriate physical shapes, you would notice a difference in the spacing in the game. If you remove a couple pixels where necessary from the 8-10 players on the court you will notice a difference. Olynyks head size alone would open up the spacing

Credit to modder JH13000