See the tweet in the first post it is Alex Evans from Media Molecule telling this 100% compute no rasterizer. It is signed distance field raytracing software rendering on GPU...
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Dreams : create, share & play [PS4, PS5]
- Thread starter TEEDA
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See the tweet in the first post it is Alex Evans from Media Molecule telling this 100% compute no rasterizer. It is signed distance field raytracing software rendering on GPU...
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Deleted member 11852
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POLAR BEARS!
Not hard at all. This is youtube link to a 6 years old demo that is only 4 kilobytes in size. It is using a similar GPU SDF raytracer and was running smoothly on 6 year old computers:
More SDF raytraced 4k demos by Iñigo Quílez: http://www.iquilezles.org/prods/index.htm
Distance fields scale very well for large scenes and provide perfect LOD (assuming you are storing them to volume texture or some other area query structure that gives you O(1) query time). Distance fields have some advantages over voxels, but require a little bit more storage. Triangle rasterization scales badly when the geometry density (surface detail) and/or draw distance is high enough. We are nearing the point where the triangle based techniques no longer provide the best rendering performance. GPUs are bad at rendering tiny triangles. When the triangle size approaches one pixel, all kinds of bottlenecks start kick in, and cause various underutilizations and stalls to the GPU pipelines.
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*raises hand*
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Deleted member 11852
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POLAR BEARS!
OK so they are effectively software rendering using the GPU using SDF (a technique l need to read on).
Why are more developers not using this then?
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And what is the benefit?
upnorthsox
Veteran
Better results?
I bet one reason is because you can't switch it on in Unreal or Unity, and another because Maya doesn't support it. This sounds flippant, but if Art is a big bottleneck for a game then art creation tools are an important factor when choosing rendering technologies. But if we're lucky, then the creation tools in Dreams may open this new tech up a bit?
Then why arent they using it?
Practically all content production software is triangle/polygon (or subD) based. You need to create your own modeling software. Triangle meshes usually use unwrapped UVs (split to atlas). This kind of texturing method is not well suited for distance field rendering. You need your own texturing tools and methods. Most existing tools, content pipelines and graphics engines are tailor made for triangle based content. It is a big change to switch to an alternative data model such as signed distance fields (SDF) or voxels. Everything will change.
Complex animation (skinning, blending, morphing) still needs additional research for non-triangle content (such as SDF or voxels). Modern character animation systems and facial animation systems are highly sophisticated and the animation tools used by AAA studios have massive code bases. Building everything from scratch would take several years and cost a fortune.
This is why I have said that I expect indie studios to try the new rendering methods first. Media Molecule isn't exactly an indie studio anymore, but they are very open to new unconventional rendering ideas. Little Big Planet was one of the first games to ship with a volume based GI solution.
And Sony are willing to back 'mavericks' without a clear financial return/timeline, allowing gestation of techniques. MM's early protoype showing didn't look like this - they probably swapped renderer completely to use compute explaining why a new title is taking so long. Meanwhile Polyphony are taking their sweet time, and let's not mention Team ICO (oops, I mentioned it). Whether good business sense or not, it's good that Sony are investing in smart, creative people.
minecraft, aka wheres the game there?
Billy Idol
Legend
The control via DS looked super imprecise...the cool thing is: i don't have to create dreams, I just play the dreams of all the other users around the planet 
Shifty, how about your dream?
Shifty, how about your dream?
Depends on the creative tools. I've learnt the hard way not to go into a new project with new tools/things to learn and an expectation of what to create. Go in, muss about, and see what the system can actually do. Don't try to stretch it until you've got a good handle on the realistic limits and potential. LBP's dodgy physics (closely touching object could cause random object vaporisation, leading to a key getting destroyed) was one of those learning experiences.
Those dreams are just as possible in LBP but it's very safe. TBH as an adult I'd like to not have access to perverted adult dreams.
