Custom Renders and why they look so huge / scale so weird and how to fix it (kinda). A big analysis.

[CM_EDGE]

In the last 3 hours I've been experimenting how custom render pictures work internally in comparison to the ingame render and this is going to be a long posting that will probably takes another hour to write down with a lot of tests and comparison pictures and explanations of why so many people have problems with zoomed in and way too big pictures.

Long answer short, the implementation is, like most stuff with 2K, amazing on paper but far behind their potential implemented, cause in-game render and custom render simply work different. They don't have to, they could theoretically fix that, but this is so in depth and particular, I don't think there is a chance for that.

I was thinking about this zoom in problem yesterday when I thought the answer would be super easy and easy to fix for us. Cause what most people do is using the 1:1 square format (1024x1024) and put a render into it and upload. Now, most people see the character select screen and think, yep, that's self explanatory and make them in a way that they fill out the square and they mostly cut off the render at around the waist, cause that's how the character select screen looks like, right?

The answer is, no. Actually the in-game render are full blown pictures of the in-game wrestlers, like you can see in the Universe mode very often.

So they automatically scale depending on which mode you play and which screen you see, which works great, then I thought I have an easy solution, I just use this 1024x1024 square and put the whole render in, or at least up to the knees and the game would scale them exactly how it needs them for every mode, well, that would have been too good to be true cause then I found out that, unlike the in-game render, the custom render doesn't scale, at least not in the same way as the in-game ones, it's messed up. I tried a lot of different scales and hoped I find one that hopefully look acceptable in most modes.

The problem is, you can either have custom renders look really good and in the same scale as the others in the play mode select screen, but then they are messed up, a lot, in most other modes, especially the Universe mode, or you can try to make them look good in the Universe mode, if you play that the most and then they kinda look messed up in the other ones. No solution is 100% satisfying.

I also found out they have different rules and boundaries as the in-game ones, which is odd. Like you can see here, if you don't give the arms, or the head on the top, enough space, they get faded out, so this is another limitation that makes them hard to scale to the exact size of the other ones in the first place, at least in the play mode.

Other characters don't have any rules here.

That same size of Alexa looks like this in the Universe mode, so it's not great, I obliviously had to change that.

While messing with the UM I've found another bug, that's easily fixable, but once again, it's to specific and small, I don't think they will. Custom renders on single CAW superstars, even the in-game models, are kinda placed wrong in the Superstar Roster screen. This is how it should be.

And this is the problem.

Now, the funny part is, if you actually use a render on an attire and you choose that attire in this menu, it then actually get's scaled correctly.

More interesting tho, not only blown up to the full scale, but as you can see, even the arm limit is off then in that case.

Now to the current end of this topic, I tried a lot of different sizes and found one that's 95% acceptable, it's almost the same scale in Universe mode, just still a tiny bit too big, but I could live with that. Of course, like I said, it's not perfect for the play mode selection, but it could be worse. This is a comparison between 3 of my examples, with the very right one being great for Universe mode.

Play selection:

Universe Mode:

As you can see, the right one is almost spot on and looks good and if you don't care about the play selection itself, the screen after that, the Arena screen when it loads, actually makes all 3 kinda ok looking scale wise.

If you want to make them mostly in scale in Universe mode, you have to scale them like this, maybe even a bit smaller as I said, that I will test later, but you're good to go with this example size.

Here is the full PNG picture if you want to use it as size reference. Maybe I will report something to 2K, I don't know yet if it's worth the effort and if there is ever a chance that they will work on this, but that's the current situation. Render scaling for customs is none existent/not great so you can't have them look good in every screen or mode at the same time, unlike the in-game render, which is such a shame. But here you go with the PNG:

[Aqfitz]

Very informative thread here. Thank you for taking the time to research this!

[CM_EDGE]

You're welcome!

 

 

I resized the render a little bit more with an Austin Theory render, made the complete pic a bit smaller and the head ending a little bit lower and now it's pretty much perfect.

 

 

If anyone wants the render in 1024x1024 frame to use it as a base to size other pictures on/over, here you go:

[WNX]

Sure you saved people a great deal of time with this. Props man

[black_machismo]

Wow nice, thanks for this. I was experimenting with the render and man I had a hard time editing as I can't get the perfect size. It looks good for 1 vs 1 but when I try multiman matches the Renders are so big. Will try this out for other renders.

Looks like we can't use the pictures in WWE.Com superstar page since all of the pics there are only upto waist which will cut the renders if we follow your template.

[Jay Mace]

Honestly, this is why I prefer in-game renders.

[Malonik]

Could someone start pumping these out so any Alternate Attire would get changes? Specifically I'd like to get a few Kane/Taker/HHH/HBK and so on and so on if anyone's taking requests?

[CocaPlunge]

On 3/9/2022 at 3:48 PM, CM_EDGE said:

In the last 3 hours I've been experimenting how custom render pictures work internally in comparison to the ingame render and this is going to be a long posting that will probably takes another hour to write down with a lot of tests and comparison pictures and explanations of why so many people have problems with zoomed in and way too big pictures.

Long answer short, the implementation is, like most stuff with 2K, amazing on paper but far behind their potential implemented, cause in-game render and custom render simply work different. They don't have to, they could theoretically fix that, but this is so in depth and particular, I don't think there is a chance for that.

I was thinking about this zoom in problem yesterday when I thought the answer would be super easy and easy to fix for us. Cause what most people do is using the 1:1 square format (1024x1024) and put a render into it and upload. Now, most people see the character select screen and think, yep, that's self explanatory and make them in a way that they fill out the square and they mostly cut off the render at around the waist, cause that's how the character select screen looks like, right?

The answer is, no. Actually the in-game render are full blown pictures of the in-game wrestlers, like you can see in the Universe mode very often.

So they automatically scale depending on which mode you play and which screen you see, which works great, then I thought I have an easy solution, I just use this 1024x1024 square and put the whole render in, or at least up to the knees and the game would scale them exactly how it needs them for every mode, well, that would have been too good to be true cause then I found out that, unlike the in-game render, the custom render doesn't scale, at least not in the same way as the in-game ones, it's messed up. I tried a lot of different scales and hoped I find one that hopefully look acceptable in most modes.

The problem is, you can either have custom renders look really good and in the same scale as the others in the play mode select screen, but then they are messed up, a lot, in most other modes, especially the Universe mode, or you can try to make them look good in the Universe mode, if you play that the most and then they kinda look messed up in the other ones. No solution is 100% satisfying.

I also found out they have different rules and boundaries as the in-game ones, which is odd. Like you can see here, if you don't give the arms, or the head on the top, enough space, they get faded out, so this is another limitation that makes them hard to scale to the exact size of the other ones in the first place, at least in the play mode.

Other characters don't have any rules here.

That same size of Alexa looks like this in the Universe mode, so it's not great, I obliviously had to change that.

While messing with the UM I've found another bug, that's easily fixable, but once again, it's to specific and small, I don't think they will. Custom renders on single CAW superstars, even the in-game models, are kinda placed wrong in the Superstar Roster screen. This is how it should be.

And this is the problem.

Now, the funny part is, if you actually use a render on an attire and you choose that attire in this menu, it then actually get's scaled correctly.

More interesting tho, not only blown up to the full scale, but as you can see, even the arm limit is off then in that case.

Now to the current end of this topic, I tried a lot of different sizes and found one that's 95% acceptable, it's almost the same scale in Universe mode, just still a tiny bit too big, but I could live with that. Of course, like I said, it's not perfect for the play mode selection, but it could be worse. This is a comparison between 3 of my examples, with the very right one being great for Universe mode.

Play selection:

Universe Mode:

As you can see, the right one is almost spot on and looks good and if you don't care about the play selection itself, the screen after that, the Arena screen when it loads, actually makes all 3 kinda ok looking scale wise.

If you want to make them mostly in scale in Universe mode, you have to scale them like this, maybe even a bit smaller as I said, that I will test later, but you're good to go with this example size.

Here is the full PNG picture if you want to use it as size reference. Maybe I will report something to 2K, I don't know yet if it's worth the effort and if there is ever a chance that they will work on this, but that's the current situation. Render scaling for customs is none existent/not great so you can't have them look good in every screen or mode at the same time, unlike the in-game render, which is such a shame. But here you go with the PNG:

This is how a brilliant idea, in 2k hands, can turn into a crap! I admire you for summing it all up, but I've practically done all your own tests and there is no fully satisfactory solution

The most absurd thing that I do not understand (and I speak as a developer) is that we are basically talking about images linked to a game record: why the *Censored* those of 2k have decided to use two different image management methods?????

as you have already explained well, in-game renders are images (from the knees up) that resize depending on the mode you are playing, why the hell not do the exact same thing with the custom's too?

I also don't understand why on the roster menu, the CAWS have that horrible fading frame.

With the right foresight, this could be a very interesting feature, so instead it's just a badly done and visually ugly stuff!

Shame on you 2k

[Generations]

Doing god's work. Thank you for this. 

The addition of custom renders is amazing, but it really does need some ironing out.

[Malonik]

Yo Edge, I was sure you had this topic earlier and we had a few responses because God Damn this Forum is EXTREMELY Sad if we're the 1st 2 posts on this Topic????