It's even used for audio.
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Killzone 4 Uses Raytracing For Its Real-Time Reflections
- Thread starter Punkster_NY
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It's even used for audio.
dragonelite
Member
Yeah you could bake a special cubemap for the part inside a tunnel.
So it would be one cubemap before the tunnel,one inside the tunnel and one for exiting the tunnel. If memory constrained you could just have one cubemap for environment and one for tunnel. Or don't give a fuck when inside a tunnel just use the outside environment cubemap
.It is just how much memory you want to spend on cubemaps.
Graphics Horse
Member
They blend between them. It's not suitable for a racing game but your characters aren't so super shiny that the transitions matter too much. It could probably look a bit like navigating around street view if you added enough maps.
Besides, if you follow cars into a tunnel in GT5, they won't reflect the tunnel until your car does, because they all share the cube drawn from your car's position. (even applies to photo mode)
Not going to happen soon
and if it does somehow, it will be faked as hell.---
SMAA T2x or SMAA 4x. There is no better AA right now, in terms of IQ/performance ratio.
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Its the same technique, although in Killzone SF precision is lower, but they cover reflections from greater distance. In CE 3 You can modify it greatly, but in C3 for example it doesnt reflect smoke, while in KZ SF it does, also roughness is considered in different way, because of different lighting model and texture structure.I'd really like somebody who has deeper understanding of the tech to explain differences between their approach and what's in CryEngine 3. For my layman eyes (and brain...) it is strikingly similar. I also re-watched the game-play demos and indeed started to noticing how what they described looks on screen. I can imagine it only gets better while you actually play it, because it gets 'interactive'
Not going to happen soon
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SMAA T2x or SMAA 4x. There is no better AA right now, in terms of IQ/performance ratio.
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Its the same technique, although in Killzone SF precision is lower, but they cover reflections from greater distance.
I also want SMAA to be used heavily next gen. So much cleaner than FXAA, flexible, low cost, and decent coverage.
SniperHunter
Banned
I liked the AA in Crysis 2, it gave the game a blurry CG look. So much cleaner than Crysis 3
No, he specifically says it can do more than one bounce. Listen to the whole video, especially near the end. I don't think it's just using GI for reflections. He specifically says reflections are not done after every other screen pass, too...
It sounds like they can specify certain elements (???) for real time ray traces because he does specifically mention bounces off of bounces, but it is tiered all the way down to static skybox 'reflections'.
Graphics Horse
Member
Not going to happen soon
Faking that example specifically should be pretty easy actually, just take a flat image of the car from the front and project that onto the scene somehow. But not many cars, especially sports cars have the kind of vertical backs where that would be noticable anyway.
It would look stupid most of the time though.
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Cubemaps are static too and real-time reflections are screen-space. There is nothing there, that most people would think, when they hear 'ray-tracing'.
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Ps. I've checked Crysis 3 and damn area lights seems to be cheap, in Dam level almost all are Area based. Sometimes You see 12-14 of them on screen all casting penumbra shadows.
Every light here is Area Light - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIoUelM-4pk&feature=player_detailpage#t=1759s
Thanks for the video!
About the new game,GG got great artists and could make something really neat,but I would like them to make a present day military game kinda like Battlefield.That way they don't need to waste time developing new guns and everything else and just a make great looking game with amazing gameplay.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
not gonna lie, I would use it If it was on C3, I just couldn't get rid of some jaggies in that game.
Uhm...i'm not sure about that.
I've seen their video about area lights but i think that this feature is not diffuse at all in the final game.
Watch this, the specular reflection show that it's not an area light:
Even these doesn't look like area like at all:
In the first level the situation is even more clear due a lot of rectangle shaped light with rounded specular.
About the penumbra shadows i think that if they want every light source can cast them, area lights or not.
By the way... replayed the dam level ...it's so great! Killzone will have hard time to impress me more
Uhm...i'm not sure about that.
I've seen their video about area lights but i think that this feature is not diffuse at all in the final game.
Watch this, the specular reflection show that it's not an area light:
Even these doesn't look like area like at all:
In the first level the situation is even more clean due a lot of rectangle shaped light with rounded specular.
About the penumbra shadows i think that if they want every light source can cast them, area lights or not.
By the way... replayed the dam level ...it's so great! Killzone will have hard time to impress me more
Turn on Screen-space reflections and look at reflection shape.
Also both mentioned by You cast penumbra shadows that cant be cast by point lights.
TheGuardian
Member
The lights in those screen shots are clearly not area lights. Screen space reflections won't actually tell you anything about that and you can cast shadows with penumbra even with fake area lights.
An example: PCSS
We are talking about CryEngine 3.5 and it doesnt allow for penumbra shadows for point lights.
Also in this presentation Crytek is talking about Area Light from this location and its the same ingame
http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...vHel7PL8&list=FLLvq9KX4OlKxx5vA-DX3UqQ#t=729s
Unfortunately You cant get to it with Prophet, because of stairs, but if two lights behind stairs are Area Lights, why rest arent?
Also smoke shows volume of lights all the time there.
Eh why havent they still released CE 3.5 SDK? ;\
TheGuardian
Member
You need light size/area information to calculate the penumbra, but does not mean the area and shape are used for the diffuse and specular calculations as well. Various games have used penumbra shadows without any support for area lights.
Maybe CryEngine allows you to turn the more costly part on and off on certain lights while keeping the shadows, or they disable certain area lights depending on graphics settings, I don't have any experience with it to know.
But if you look at the video you linked, the "wrong" light he shows first behaves just like the ones on the screenshots.
Note: I'm not trying to start a Killzone vs Crysis fight here. CryEngine is awesome, I'm just commenting on those shots
Always-honest
Banned
Thanx for the full video. Interesting stuff!
Looks like they can have penumbra shadows without area lights: click
It's exactly for the CE3 area lights that i've some doubt about the "all lights are area lights" from Guerrilla, even Crytek seems unable to do something like that ...but maybe it's just a matter of time needed to implement it in the PC version due to PS360.
They did say at presentation that their area light are 50% more expensive than normal light and they fully focused second part of presentation about AL and how they artist work with it and how they use free software and philips blueprints(?) for area light shapes and how they use it in game.
He did say that all lights in their game are area lights in that presentation.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
No, I won't "chill out".
I have no beef with GG in particular, and maybe they will add it. My point was, there is no reason it couldn't have been standard for every single xbox 360/PS3 game. Let alone next gen.
The PS3/360 GPUs had miniscule numbers of texture units. There was a good reason why they couldn't support much AF. It was not a developer decision but a hardware restricting.
shaderhacker
Banned
There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. The presenters and the videos are pretty misleading on how things work.
I'd like to address the ray-marching vs. ray-tracing terms. Ray marching is visiting several points (in gaming case, it would be pixels in 2D image) along the direction of the vector and getting information at each point (Ie. Color, opacity, etc..). The points are called samples. Raymarching in 2D space is very limited and a rough approximation to the integral of solving the rendering equation.
Raytracing is the process of computing a vector (with an origin point) and testing it against triangles in the scene to see if it intersects this ray. Both techniques can be pretty expensive but it depends on the context. Raytracing would be a bottleneck on GPUs as opposed to raymarching in 2D space because you'd need a lot of memory to store the entire scene of triangles into a fast data structure so that the intersection tests won't take so long. However, in film, it would take much longer to raymarch a true 3D volume if the number of samples need to be high enough to get a good approximation of an affect.
Area lights - I've not seen a game yet that can implement area lights. Crysis 3 tech demo had it in there, but unfortunately, it wasn't in the game. I am assuming it's as hard as it is for even the film industry. You have to literally sample (Ie. Ray-trace) the light's area and recompute the BRDF for each sample. Then you have to sample the surface BRDF the same number of times. This is called "Importance Sampling". I don't expect to see this kind of high quality physically based rendering for several years. You can always tell a true sample of area lights on a surface when the specular highlight shape is exactly the shape of the light - not circular.
-M
I'd like to address the ray-marching vs. ray-tracing terms. Ray marching is visiting several points (in gaming case, it would be pixels in 2D image) along the direction of the vector and getting information at each point (Ie. Color, opacity, etc..). The points are called samples. Raymarching in 2D space is very limited and a rough approximation to the integral of solving the rendering equation.
Raytracing is the process of computing a vector (with an origin point) and testing it against triangles in the scene to see if it intersects this ray. Both techniques can be pretty expensive but it depends on the context. Raytracing would be a bottleneck on GPUs as opposed to raymarching in 2D space because you'd need a lot of memory to store the entire scene of triangles into a fast data structure so that the intersection tests won't take so long. However, in film, it would take much longer to raymarch a true 3D volume if the number of samples need to be high enough to get a good approximation of an affect.
Area lights - I've not seen a game yet that can implement area lights. Crysis 3 tech demo had it in there, but unfortunately, it wasn't in the game. I am assuming it's as hard as it is for even the film industry. You have to literally sample (Ie. Ray-trace) the light's area and recompute the BRDF for each sample. Then you have to sample the surface BRDF the same number of times. This is called "Importance Sampling". I don't expect to see this kind of high quality physically based rendering for several years. You can always tell a true sample of area lights on a surface when the specular highlight shape is exactly the shape of the light - not circular.
-M
did you watch the GG presentation?
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
I assumed he did since he specifically calls them misleading.
I believe so & he might have also hacked their Shader.
You can see it in action in DeadSpace 3 PC (don't think console ones have it) - they do the blend of baked&realtime as well, and as mentioned it really grounds the scene - but you need to see it in motion to fully appreciate it.Perkel said:
GT5 CAR-cubemaps are dynamically rendered every frame - as they have been in virtually every racing game for the past 12 years or so, starting with PS2 ones.Metalmurphy said:
SSR is to dynamic-Cubemaps the same as SSAO is to character contact-shadows in eg. MGS2.
phosphor112
Banned
You need light size/area information to calculate the penumbra, but does not mean the area and shape are used for the diffuse and specular calculations as well. Various games have used penumbra shadows without any support for area lights.
Maybe CryEngine allows you to turn the more costly part on and off on certain lights while keeping the shadows, or they disable certain area lights depending on graphics settings, I don't have any experience with it to know.
But if you look at the video you linked, the "wrong" light he shows first behaves just like the ones on the screenshots.
Note: I'm not trying to start a Killzone vs Crysis fight here. CryEngine is awesome, I'm just commenting on those shots
Have You watched presentation i've posted? You can decrease cone of area light too and he shows that and light specular looks completely different. Also in this presentation he boosted light intensity and changed angle of light.
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Thats for sun/moon light only, we are talking about additional lights in levels.
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Wasnt that 15-20% more?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...vHel7PL8&list=FLLvq9KX4OlKxx5vA-DX3UqQ#t=729s
Those two lights are confirmed by Crytek's guy to be Area Lights. So yes, they are ingame.
Now question is different, why lights that most of people wont even notice are Area Lights and other as You think arent?
Suit yourself, I just don't understand why you're getting worked up over something that was never commented on - the other poster simply misunderstood what was said on the presentation (he thought it was about 16x AF, while in fact it was about FP16 HDR format). No one said there's no 16x AF, nor that it is there.
phosphor112
Banned
Yeah, they said 15%. Which, as he said, was very well worth it. Sometimes you need multiple point lights to basically act as what 1 area light would be.
Rewatched it yes 15%.
shaderhacker
Banned
LOL! That's not the true definition of an area light in the conventional sense. They are using an implied rectangular shape. I'm not sure how they are implementing it internally but I know they are not sampling the surface of the light. And I don't see any soft shadows from the area light either.
Squares, Rectangles, Cones, Cylinders and Spheres can be computed procedurally.
Let's see an area light that represents a piece of geometry like a character, or a tree, or a irregularly shape boulder, or a ship.
phosphor112
Banned
What's the point? Really? Even if there was a lighting shining through an oddly shaped hole in the wall, the shape of the light will be affected by the wall, regardless of the shape of the source.
Watch the video ...
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Also slides from AMD Ruby presentation based on CE 3.5. In third slide AMD mixed up shots, but You get an idea.
They cant be too expensive if they are using so many of them in a scene.
phosphor112
Banned
I don't know why he's being so adamant on saying those aren't real area lights. It's like he didn't even watch the whole presentation.
shaderhacker
Banned
You can see the point in animated and VFX films that use the technique the brute force ray-tracing way. It approximates the global illumination integral much more accurately than games. That is, afterall, what we are trying to achieve, right?
shaderhacker
Banned
You can't have texture reflection (which is basically the specular highlight) and call it real area lights.
That is a real area light:
Notice the noise in the shadowed areas and the reflection (i.e. the angle between the light and the surface reflection vector are parallel = max) shape. This is all done in the BRDF, not in texture space where you can look up a pre-rendered image and comp it into the specular lighting pass. There are no discrete reflections in this shot because there is no wetness on the wood floor - which makes sense because the floor has a very rough surface (not too rough that the specular highlight fades into diffuse).
Also take note in that second image from ATI.. it looks wrong. The pillar shadows still look too well defined instead of blurred along the entire edges all the way around. This indicates to me that they are not using importance sampling.
shaderhacker
Banned
Another image:
This sphere has no reflection environment around it (like you see in the gaming area lights). It's just a straight ball with it's specular highlight mirroring exactly the shape of the light.
Notice also the shadow on the floor to the upper left mimicking the shape of the area light as best it can (i.e. square).
-M
This sphere has no reflection environment around it (like you see in the gaming area lights). It's just a straight ball with it's specular highlight mirroring exactly the shape of the light.
Notice also the shadow on the floor to the upper left mimicking the shape of the area light as best it can (i.e. square).
-M
shaderhacker
Banned
One last point I'd like to bring up.
The only way to prove for sure that these are real area lights is to see the lights move in realtime. Most of these games are using static lights on static objects. They could be pre-baked.
Also, it would be very easy to mimic area lights with creating several point lights all in an array. Like this:
****
****
****
****
I just made a rectangular area light with 16 point lights.
In the conventional sense, this is not a true area light...
-M
The only way to prove for sure that these are real area lights is to see the lights move in realtime. Most of these games are using static lights on static objects. They could be pre-baked.
Also, it would be very easy to mimic area lights with creating several point lights all in an array. Like this:
****
****
****
****
I just made a rectangular area light with 16 point lights.
In the conventional sense, this is not a true area light...
-M
You can't have texture reflection (which is basically the specular highlight) and call it real area lights.
That is a real area light:
Notice the noise in the shadowed areas and the reflection (i.e. the angle between the light and the surface reflection vector are parallel = max) shape. This is all done in the BRDF, not in texture space where you can look up a pre-rendered image and comp it into the specular lighting pass. There are no discrete reflections in this shot because there is no wetness on the wood floor - which makes sense because the floor has a very rough surface (not too rough that the specular highlight fades into diffuse).
Also take note in that second image from ATI.. it looks wrong. The pillar shadows still look too well defined instead of blurred along the entire edges all the way around. This indicates to me that they are not using importance sampling.
What are You debating now? That its not precise enough? Its not simple texture overlay, as shown on those slides or here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il8T...xx5vA-DX3UqQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=115s
You have light distribution from area, not from a point, so it is area light. What else do You need? That is not as precise as ray-traced light? Sure as hell it wont be, its made for real-time.
Dictator93
Member
One last point I'd like to bring up.
The only way to prove for sure that these are real area lights is to see the lights move in realtime. Most of these games are using static lights on static objects. They could be pre-baked.
Also, it would be very easy to mimic area lights with creating several point lights all in an array. Like this:
****
****
****
****
I just made a rectangular area light with 16 point lights.
In the conventional sense, this is not a true area light...
-M
I guess you can find out soon enough when 3.5 releases with Area Light implementation.
From my impression after playing c3, there are definitely some area lights in the game.
phosphor112
Banned
Do you mind using imgur as the image host? Abload is blocked at my work. It's hard to comment on things when I can't see them lol
Yeah, I'm not really understanding his argument either. The noise he mentions is because of the raytracing sample not being high enough. Not because of the BRDF, well that's my understanding when I messed with pre-rendered scenes.
Yeah, I'm not really understanding his argument either. The noise he mentions is because of the raytracing sample not being high enough. Not because of the BRDF, well that's my understanding when I messed with pre-rendered scenes.
Graphics Horse
Member
One last point I'd like to bring up.
The only way to prove for sure that these are real area lights is to see the lights move in realtime. Most of these games are using static lights on static objects. They could be pre-baked.
Also, it would be very easy to mimic area lights with creating several point lights all in an array. Like this:
****
****
****
****
I just made a rectangular area light with 16 point lights.
In the conventional sense, this is not a true area light...
-M
This is mentioned in the video when he shows the face, but he says that would be relatively slow. Whatever they're doing goes over my head though.
shaderhacker
Banned
That exact light was one that I specifically looked for in C3. Couldn't find it.
LOL! Basically you are saying if a game developer somehow made a light 'simulate' an area light, then it's an area light. OK. Let's see how many of these *dynamic* area lights make it into games this year.
-M
That light is not in the actual game.
shaderhacker
Banned
The BRDF on the surface has to generate it's distribution of rays (seen in the video presentation) based on it's model (diffuse has one set of samples that are completely hemispherical and the specular will be based on the lighting model - Blinn, Phong, etc..). Also the BRDF has to be evaluated at the light source as well. This is called importance sampling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_sampling
-M
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