Does trueform have a future?

[Kristof]

In sum, I feel that N-patches will end up like EMBM. It will be sort of an, "Hrm, that looks kinda cool." feature for a little while, until something better comes along. After all, every mid-high end video card out today supports EMBM...but does anybody use it?

Not wanting to hijack the topic but EMBM suffered from having a misleading name. EMBM is really just a dependent texture read which people claim is one of the key advances of Pixel Shaders but has been available for ages. EMBM allows soo much more than just bumpmapping but developers never thought about it... and NVIDIAs slow adoption of the effect also played a large role.

NPatches are too problematic, either the artists has to go an do a LOT of non-trivial tweaking or you get gaps/cracks/blobby-objects/etc. RTPatches are used in a lot of high end design packages and today they are tesselated into triangles, once/if there are good RTPatch implementations things might change.

K-

 

[Saem]

NPatches are too problematic, either the artists has to go an do a LOT of non-trivial tweaking or you get gaps/cracks/blobby-objects/etc. RTPatches are used in a lot of high end design packages and today they are tesselated into triangles, once/if there are good RTPatch implementations things might change.

I believe at least 3dS Max has a plug-in which automatically does all the necessary work for you to make a model truform friendly.

 

[nggalai]

Hi there,

I found the poll overly restrictive:

"Yes it will work in many new games"

vs/

"No it will not appear in any new games"

I don't believe it will be widely adapted, but neither do I think that it won't appear in ANY new games . . . actually, I'm pretty sure that quite a number of games will feature some Trueform-Support, but not "many" new games.

ta,
-Sascha.rb

 

[Kristof]

NPatches are too problematic, either the artists has to go an do a LOT of non-trivial tweaking or you get gaps/cracks/blobby-objects/etc. RTPatches are used in a lot of high end design packages and today they are tesselated into triangles, once/if there are good RTPatch implementations things might change.

I believe at least 3dS Max has a plug-in which automatically does all the necessary work for you to make a model truform friendly.

I'd love to see a link to that then...

All I can find is this :

http://www.ati.com/developer/sdk/NPatch/NPatchPlugin.html

UGH... never mind here it is :

http://www.ati.com/developer/sdk/Npatch/npatchresource.html

Never tried it, anyone know if its any good ?

K-

 

[Dave Baumann]

Right...a primitive processor is just the next logical step in programmable 3D rendering. Hopefully we see one sooner rather than later.

Errrm, more or less we've already got one - Wildcat VP's P10...

 

[nggalai]

Hi Kristof,

NPatches are too problematic, either the artists has to go an do a LOT of non-trivial tweaking or you get gaps/cracks/blobby-objects/etc. RTPatches are used in a lot of high end design packages and today they are tesselated into triangles, once/if there are good RTPatch implementations things might change.

I believe at least 3dS Max has a plug-in which automatically does all the necessary work for you to make a model truform friendly.

I'd love to see a link to that then...

K-

News article: http://www.maxunderground.com/mu/news.php3?mode=read&key=1397

Links:
Preview Plugin

N-Patch Exporter for 3dsmax

Hope this helps,
-Sascha.rb

 

[nggalai]

LOL

well, good to see you found it yourself.

UGH... never mind here it is :

http://www.ati.com/developer/sdk/Npatch/npatchresource.html

Never tried it, anyone know if its any good ?

It's so-so. I personally never used it, but a couple of my colleagues evaluated it. Bottom line is you apparently save some time, but you still need to tweak the models, sometimes considerably.

I am looking forward to 3dsmax 5, though--if I remember the Siggraph stuff well enough, discreet planned on implementing saving objects with various LOD settings automatically as well as native n-patch support. But don't quote me on this, I don't have the material here, so I might be wrong very much indeed.

ta,
-Sascha.rb

 

[KimB]

Errrm, more or less we've already got one - Wildcat VP's P10...

Mildly interesting. I'll be much more intrigued when we see a gaming card that has one.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Well, that might happen sooner than you think.

 

[KimB]

Well, it would be kind of nice, Dave, but it is still of little importance if the performance isn't there as well as the programmability. Hopefully the performance will be there, but based on what I've seen so far, I'm not very hopeful.

 

[jb]

Guys,

I remember one of the ATI employes saying that Truform could be used for more than just creating smoother models. In the Oringal version of RtCW he said truform is used for Geometry compression. I now that SOF2 also has a truform option but I have not seen much difference in it....

 

[Sharkfood]

Hmmm this poll is actually pretty easy.

Truform has a stack of games it works with in the past... a stack at current, and a nice list of games yet to be released with Truform support promised in them as well.

The "No it will not appear in any new games" voters obviously can't read nor follow the dev. notes from upcoming games as many are promising support for TruForm, and given the wording of this poll, there is only one correct answer.

A different kind of poll might suggest the use of "toolkits" in the form of libraries to define new methods of geometry compression as GPU's get more and more programmable. Hardware or hardcoded geometry compression will, over time, be made obsolete by devising more flexible "software" geometry compression that use advanced programmable GPU's to on-the-fly be coded to the same end. Obviously, hardcoded/hardware will always be faster if the spec is well designed, but if the overall goal is to save bandwidth (be it agp bandwidth or gpu->vram bandwidth) the return will still justify the different approach in regards to flexibility and compatibility with different IHVs..

 

[Galilee]

What upcoming games will support it? Someone said UT2003 but I have not heard that one myself.

And what current? Counter-Strike, RTCW? (in some way), SS:SE? I don't know about anyone else.

 

[noko]

Has ATI dropped the ball on this feature? Seems that ATI could promote this better by updating their plugin for 3dsmax that is if the old one doesn't work. The Radeon9700 has also adaptive N-patches which seems pretty cool if used.

 

[Sharkfood]

Galilee-

What upcoming games will support it?

Just a couple (sure there are more) off the top of my head include Beam Breakers and New World Order.

And what current?

Again, just a couple (likely forgetting some as well) are Halflife/Counterstrike, Myth3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Serious Sam, Serious Sam:SE... not to mention a slew of demos and demonstrations.

The cool thing is seeing this feature outside of JUST demos and demonstrations, but actually finding it in GAME option screens so quickly... along with delivery to the degree of the demos.

My other videocard looks real impressive when watching a tree in the wind, a chameleon walking on a branch, and a werewolf run around a darkened town, but have yet to see a single implementation of the "like" effect in any games so far.

 

[Sharkfood]

Has ATI dropped the ball on this feature?

An interesting tidbit concerning the recent "dull roar" about Truform might be some idea concerning TruForm 2.0.

If you head over to ATI's website (beware- be sure to wear your boots, PR/Marketing material is found there), this quote concerning TruForm 2.0 kind of raises an eyebrow:

By taking advantage of the massive vertex processing power of the RADEON 9700, it delivers more natural looking 3D scenes without requiring any changes to existing artwork.

This could explain some of the silence on the matter. There might be an internal effort to make implementation of Truform 2.0 more seamless (read- close to transparent) through the use of better API support and/or toolkits/libraries so it's a simple code change flip and little additional work to support.

Or then again... it could simply be they are too busy trying to crank out product (yes, 0 of 5 local stores here can promise one to buy in the next month due to sell-out with continued backorder waiting list) and some marketing yahoo was let off the leash for a few moments.

 

[noko]

. . . without requiring any changes to existing artwork.

That is interesting, meaning what? That TRUFORM can be turned on any game by the drivers without the adverse effects that was seen before . Hmmmmm, interesting, did ATI code a smart TRUFORM algorithm to prevent models from breaking? Or is this a PR sentence where the person wrote it didn't understand the limitations of TRUFORM?

 

[KimB]

ATI was saying similar things with the original release of Truform, where all you had to do to enable it was "flip a bit"

In other words, I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[BRiT]

In other words, I'll believe it when I see it.

That's my approach on the NV30. Right now, the NV30 is nothing but vaporware.

--|BRiT|

 

[Althornin]

That is interesting, meaning what? That TRUFORM can be turned on any game by the drivers without the adverse effects that was seen before . Hmmmmm, interesting, did ATI code a smart TRUFORM algorithm to prevent models from breaking? Or is this a PR sentence where the person wrote it didn't understand the limitations of TRUFORM?

Hmm, i lean towards thinking it is the latter, although the former would be nice to see!
How would you do that though?
I mean, if the "truform 2.0 engine" sees an semi sharp corner (say 140degrees) (or say it sees an octagonal "arm" on a model) is it supposed to be there (like on say a robotic type model) or should it be curved?
I dont see how truform could possibly "know" the intended look of an object.