Claybook [XO, PS4, PC, NX]
- Thread starter sebbbi
- Start date
The background (outside the play area) is a simple polygon scene rendered with Unreal Engine. We combine our ray traced game area and the background in the same g-buffer. Unreal Engine handles image post processing. Lighting is mix between our and Unreal code. We added custom ray traced soft shadows and custom ray traced AO.
60 fps on all platforms. Stable 60 fps is more important for us than resolution. We haven't yet decided final rendering resolutions. I am still optimizing the tech. I post performance figures to Twitter (https://twitter.com/SebAaltonen) quite frequently.
PSVR and Oculus Rift definitely interest us. Our ray tracer doesn't have any "draw call" overhead or vertex processing overhead, so it should perform very well with two eyes. We are already 60 fps on consoles, and PSVR is 60 fps + 120 Hz timewarp, so performance should be similar. But we are already releasing the game for 3 platforms with a team of 3 people, so I doubt we have resources to add VR support for launch. But we will definitely test it at some point.
PS4 Pro will obviously have improved visuals (higher resolution and quality). We don't want to change the physics, as we want scores to be comparable between all platforms. We are spending a quite big portion of the GPU time for physics simulation & world modification on the original console revisions. Physics simulation time will be smaller on Pro, meaning that we should be able to push visuals up a bit more than most games. Also there's the level editor, and we definitely don't want to split the community in half. Game play can't change between platforms.
Wow. Great concept, and execution. And a hell of an ambitious project for 1 programer. Congrats sebbbi.
I remember when you said, here in the forums, when you had a presentation on Trial's engine's GPU driven rendering, forgot if on siggraph or GDC, that you felt like you presented a last-gen engine after watching Media Molecule's presentation in the tech of dreams. And here we are now!
I'm very happy for you. From just a technical level, this is very inmovative and cool from many differenr angles. You must be very proud.
I remember when you said, here in the forums, when you had a presentation on Trial's engine's GPU driven rendering, forgot if on siggraph or GDC, that you felt like you presented a last-gen engine after watching Media Molecule's presentation in the tech of dreams. And here we are now!
I'm very happy for you. From just a technical level, this is very inmovative and cool from many differenr angles. You must be very proud.
Most liked post ever.
Thanks, very nice of you sharing your work with us. Keep it up Sebastian!
When it says "Play with friends", does it keep a rock solid 60fps framerate even at 4 players split screen? Because if so that's quite the achievement. As rancidlunchmeat mentioned, could it be Play Anywhere someday?
Last edited:
monstercameron
Newcomer
This is very very exciting!
When will you be going over the specifics of the engine?
I'm especially interested in ray tracing and pros and cons of using SDFs.
also 100% compute shaders!!!
just a thought you are using gpu driven rendering?
When will you be going over the specifics of the engine?
I'm especially interested in ray tracing and pros and cons of using SDFs.
also 100% compute shaders!!!
just a thought you are using gpu driven rendering?
Triangles are still the best choice for many games for primary visible geometry pass.
SDFs will gain popularity for shadows and AO. Rendering the scene multiple times to multiple shadow maps is simply not efficient. More dynamic lights and higher shadow map resolution requirements make this even worse in future. There are some hybrid algorithms that borrow ideas from ray tracing, such as this https://developer.nvidia.com/hybrid-frustum-traced-shadows-0 and the virtual shadow mapping algorithm I presented at Siggraph 2015. But these techniques are pretty complex and only solve the problem of hard shadows (often blurred by a small kernel to fake softer shadows). SDF ray tracing results in correct penumbra softening based on distance to occluder. The quality is so much better compared to any real time shadow map based technique. And no problems such as acne, peter panning, incorrect self shadowing or blockiness. And performance is better.
SDF based AO is much better than screen space AO, and SDF can be used for reflections (and reflection occlusion) as well.
We are not 100% compute shaders. We render backgrounds (outside play area) as triangle meshes using UEs g-buffer rendering pipeline. Also some of UEs post processing steps (bloom, TAA, motion blur, etc) are pixel shader based. I was writing compute shader based post processing pipeline at RedLynx before I left, so I have plenty of good ideas for improvements. Will likely port some pixel shader based steps to compute shaders when I have time. But I expect to see only small gains (but all gains are important when you are targeting 60 fps on consoles).
I intend to write more detailed follow up about our physics simulator, our SDF based world representation and our ray tracer. But I don't yet know when I have time for that. If the launch goes well, I should be have time after that. (We haven't yet decided on launch date)
I have been answering lots of technical question in this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/SebAaltonen/status/862722656860327937
https://twitter.com/SebAaltonen/status/862722656860327937
I take it that team member #3 is handling audio?
Or they're the masseuse.
That's great. I'll love it when you do that.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
This looks mindblowingly good!! On both a technical level and in terms of the aesthetics. I LOVE the look of the game. Everything just looks so tangible in a way that few games are able to achieve.
I'll buy this twice (PS4 and PC).
Also, am I the only one who after seeing that video feels an increasingly unexplainable urge to bite into some of those clay objects in the game (yes, I was one of those naughty kids in primary school that used to eat the Playdoh).
Many people have said the same thing about the chocolate themed chapters. The video didn't show much of that... but I can assure you that melting that chocolate and the candy glaceing on top of it feels fantastic
lol!Many people have said the same thing about the chocolate themed chapters. The video didn't show much of that... but I can assure you that melting that chocolate and the candy glaceing on top of it feels fantastic
btw, question about your rendering pipeline in regards to XBO. With deferred techniques esram became an issue scaling into higher resolutions, was footprint such an issue with your SDF + ray traced method?
Prophecy2k
Veteran
Many people have said the same thing about the chocolate themed chapters. The video didn't show much of that... but I can assure you that melting that chocolate and the candy glaceing on top of it feels fantastic
This game's gonna induce some unholy cravings in me... I know it will
