NBA 2K17 - Screenshots

These are the first officially confirmed screenshots of NBA 2K17.

USA 2016 Team



1992 Dream Team

Some of those Dream Team faces are a bit off, to say the least.

Who's the creepy little white guy next to Pippen? Is that the Dream Team's equipment manager? Yikes... Poor Stockton got screwed on his cyberface.

They did put a tiny bit of effort into some of the classic players this year. I noticed that Patrick Ewing, David Robinson and Pippen actually have 3D hair now, instead of just one model. Some of the faces are truly awful but you can't blame them considering they can't really face scan them.

As the quality of textures and models increase, trying to create a player from scratch without a face scan can be difficult. These aren't that bad when you take that into account. Although I don't know what happened with Jordan, they really screwed him up the past couple of years. It looks like as per usual for like the 3rd straight year, classic jerseys have rev30 holes.... they truly are lazy because I could fix that in about 5 minutes.

The fact that they can't scan classic player's faces - well, they can, but they won't look the right age - is something that needs to be taken into account. However, I think they did a better job creating the textures and models the traditional way in previous games. Compare the Dream Team in NBA 2K13, and Michael Jordan in NBA 2K11:

Come on be realistic Andrew, even though it's possible they can't really scan faces... do you really think Larry Bird is going to show up and allow them to scan his face. Even if he was paid a lot of money, they have no interest in video games.

Take these texture sizes, the first is from 2K14, the second is from 2K16. Imagine trying to make a face from scratch with all those extra pixels. I know these guys are professionals, and get paid a lot of money to do it but it's very difficult considering you're probably not going to get a face scan and your reference images are from the 90's which are bad quality anyway.

Is that Larry Bird or Michael Rapaport?

Come on be realistic Andrew, even though it's possible they can't really scan faces... do you really think Larry Bird is going to show up and allow them to scan his face. Even if he was paid a lot of money, they have no interest in video games.

Read my post again. I actually agreed that it isn't feasible to scan their faces; even if they were willing to sit for a scan, they're not going to look like their younger selves, which defeats the purpose.

Take these texture sizes, the first is from 2K14, the second is from 2K16. Imagine trying to make a face from scratch with all those extra pixels. I know these guys are professionals, and get paid a lot of money to do it but it's very difficult considering you're probably not going to get a face scan and your reference images are from the 90's which are bad quality anyway.

Absolutely, we can and definitely should cut them some slack there. However, we've also seen members of our own community create some outstanding faces for retro players the past couple of years, so I don't think it's unfair to say that some of those faces could be better.

Sorry about that, misread your post. It's at times like these that I wish EA would make NBA Live for the PC again. Some of their Legend faces are pretty decent.

No harm done. I agree, there are some really good faces for the Legends in NBA Live 16 Ultimate Team; I was quite impressed when I went through them all at the community event. Their Dennis Rodman is extremely on point.

Not really bothered. We'll hopefully be able to edit all this shit in Blender, anyway. New Pippen is great, though. Not the most accurate, but great texture.

The fact that they can't scan classic player's faces - well, they can, but they won't look the right age - is something that needs to be taken into account. However, I think they did a better job creating the textures and models the traditional way in previous games. Compare the Dream Team in NBA 2K13, and Michael Jordan in NBA 2K11:

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They just need to work more.
Most of the players look retarded.
It's the f****ing Dream Team, it's a DLC for pre-order

modders can do so much better, and they did, specially on 2K11

They just need to work more.
Most of the players look retarded.
It's the f****ing Dream Team, it's a DLC for pre-order

I think some of the faces look MUCH improved--specifically Pippen, Ewing, Magic, Laettner, Robinson--but Stockton looks like anybody but Stockton. Barkley's nose is really tiny. The rest are fine or okay to me.

But, in this thread, I've seen people blaming the Dream Team's quality is due to the inability to "scan the retro players"... but, correct me if I'm wrong--seriously, do--but before head/face/body scanning (which I believe 2k17 will only be the 3rd game where that technology has been implemented), didn't they have to build the 3D renderings from scratch? Just look at tons of pictures of a player and work on it like a modder till it looks right? So, not being able to "scan retro players heads" shouldn't be the excuse for not getting the looks right.

I think the retro players in all the previous games have been about 80% really bad/horrible 15% fine/good and 5% great in my opinion--to be generous and keep me from having to do REAL math. I LOVE retro gaming... I'd rather play with 80's Magic, Bird, Bad Boys any day of the week than play current NBA... and I have made many, many excellent retro faces, if I do say so myself... In fact, about 90% of the faces I've created for previous releases (FIBA, Retro or current NBA) were all made from scratch. And though I think 2k could & desperately NEED to do a better job on the retro faces, they don't have the luxury of having one 3D artist work for months perfecting JUST Jordan... So, aside from the fact I think they need better 3D artists working on the "un-scannable" faces (Euroleague, FIBA, Retro), I think its probably more of a time issue when it comes to the quality of the faces... And since they DO have the face scanning technology, they may have even fewer 3D artists to work on the faces that can't or haven't been scanned.

So, to sum up, IMO:

- Sweet Lord, they DESPERATELY need to fix about 90% of the existing retro faces (which if the screenshot is any indication, they fixed some & screwed up others that DIDN'T need fixing)
- They need better 3D artists (preferably ones that really love & know retro gaming--I know that's a tall order)
- Time is probably a larger part of the reason they are unable to deliver quality retro faces (...so, maybe need MORE 3D artists?)

Just to sort of step slightly off topic... If the CREATE-A-PLAYER engine didn't exclusively spit out Geico Cavemen, then maybe we could make missing players or those stupid generic players they put on the retro teams. I honestly never see many or ANY people really mention or complain heavily about this. It is truly the absolute worst. If there is a CAP player on a team in the official 2k roster, I just put him on the injury list. I've been playing since 2k9 and the CAP engine has more or less been the same for as long as I can remember... I take that back, its actually gotten worse... I wish 2k would take a cue from The Sims 4 and steal every bit of code from that game to create a similar, amazing CAP engine!!! What would obviously be the BEST solution is to have some kind of user-friendly blender program, that wasn't overly complicated for the players who are non-modders so we could really create our own basketball world, instead of having to wait for the hard working forum programmers to take the game apart every year... I know there is always much more to it, but we know its possible, cause the forum modders/programmers have reverse engineered tools for us, and blender is a tiny program, file-size-wise. I know that's maybe dreaming a bit too big, but that would be the ultimate.

All of this being said, the minuscule information that they have leaked (((come on, guys--less than 2 months away? Where are the teasers?))) are promising. Most particularly, obviously for me:

- The possible (likely) inclusion of more FIBA teams
- The possibility of a FIBA/Olympic style tournament
- The return of JUST playing the play-offs again
- And the ability to create expansion teams
- All of the above... VERY cool!

I'm gonna go away now...

I think it's simply because their facial expression just looks... weird.

They tried to recreate the actual team photo, but the facial expressions just aren't there yet.

well, i only need 1 retro CF to get fixed... LATRELL SPREWELL!!! He's ugly as **** in 2k16!!!

I think it's simply because their facial expression just looks... weird.

They tried to recreate the actual team photo, but the facial expressions just aren't there yet.

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That's a good point, trying to re-create the facial expressions has led to a bit of uncanny valley/off-model appearances. Some of the faces look a little off besides that, but it certainly doesn't help.

Yeah, that doesn't mean they shouldn't try.

I think Barkley is pretty good. I'm confident that they'll nail it down the line.

Some of those Dream Team faces are a bit off, to say the least.

Yeah Johnson,Bird, Malone and Stockton look off but the 2016 team looks spot on. I think the player models look a lot better than 2k16

They finally got a license for Charles Barkley. Cool!

Also, did anyone notice that the shoulder/neck muscle sizes/definition seem to be quite varied from player to player? I wonder if that is customizable for player bodies this year.

Why are there 2 screenshot threads?

Why are there 2 screenshot threads?

One for Leaked Screenshots/Ghetto Gameplay, one for official screenshots released by 2K sports or Community managers. Also this thread will be continued to be used for screenshots that we can share of NBA 2K17 when it releases.

Got it. Thanks.

FYI, we usually prefer to keep user media separate from official preview media, so that's likely what we'll do this time around as well.

They finally got a license for Charles Barkley. Cool!

Sadly that doesn't mean he will be in historic teams - he was in 2K13's '92 USAB team IIRC.

That's right. He was on the Dream Team's roster in that game, but absent from the 1985 76ers.