Taking another look at these things:
These are actually just short of finished.
The models are actually very detailed and have a high polygon count. Look at the closeup of the dragon’s teeth, snout and jaw, and the detail on the horns.
The bump textures are there too, those are the bumps on the skin.
The problem is that the skin map was left blank, so that’s why you see large areas of yellow, puce, orange, etc. instead of actual scales and other detail that should be wrapped around each surface.
Here’s a page with a skin map for a human head, for example
What we’re seeing should be for a preview rendering, which is done quickly to show how well the parts are coming together, adjust camera angles, lighting, figure positioning etc.
I’m theorizing that the skin map artist may have not gotten their work done in time, or they ran out of time to do a full rendering.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Anime are made on broke, shoestring budgets. The reason these will continue to look bad is because anyone good at 3D modeling and animation can get a much better job that doesn’t pay starvation wages.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s why IDK why they bother with 3D. Almost all of it looks bad.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
It wouldn’t get done otherwise. It’s marginally better than totally static dragons.
SatouKazuma@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’d love to see the budgets for series like “A Place Further Than The Universe” that start out as anime, versus light novel adaptations like “KonoSuba” and “Madome”, or manga adaptations (e.g., “Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included”). The anime original series still have to make money, but because there’s not a source material to assist in recouping costs, one would intuitively assume there’s a bit of a higher standard there, no?