Gdc 2010

[Laa-Yosh]

Everyone should read the Naughty Dog HDR presentation, it contains very good example images and explanations on the following:
- need for gamma correction in textures and lighting
- possibilities of proper tone mapping
- why and how to use SSAO

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vault/gdc10/slides/Hable_John_Uncharted2_HDRLighting.pptx

 

[AlNom]

It's also a nice look at how they've split up work with the SPEs.

 

[liolio]

2010 content is online http://www.gdcvault.com/free/category/280/conference/

Interesting graph in the Saint's Row 2 co-op presentation:

Silver 20%
Gold 36-37%
Gold Premium 12-13%

Where all of the above represent connected users... I guess that's 30% of 360 users are considered offline? But what's Gold Premium vs Gold

Cool
There isd also an interesting presentation from Valve about "wound rendering" I added it yesterday in the "presentation thread".

 

[AzBat]

gold premium is just a bonus pack: normal gold plus random arcade game plus other junk.

Huh? Watcha talkin about Willis?

I figured it was deferentiately between the 48-hr free Gold codes/free Gold weekends and those that actually pay for a Gold subscription. The 48-hr free codes doesn't give you access to the Gold benefits like early demos, etc. It's only for Silver members so they can play multiplayer online for free.

Tommy McClan

 

[AlNom]

I guess we'll need clarification on that.

Cool
There is also an interesting presentation from Valve about "wound rendering" I added it yesterday in the "presentation thread".

Figured the thread ought to be stickied. Thanks for gathering the links altogether.

 

[Billy Idol]

hey, interesting stuff!
but why in hell do they state that the xbox360 gamma is screwed up?!?!?
in all of the comparisons of MP games, you typically have the situation that the pics of the PS3 version look somewhat bright in comparison to the Xbox360 version and that you have to adjust the gamma in the PS3 game...

Everyone should read the Naughty Dog HDR presentation, it contains very good example images and explanations on the following:
- need for gamma correction in textures and lighting
- possibilities of proper tone mapping
- why and how to use SSAO

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vault/gdc10/slides/Hable_John_Uncharted2_HDRLighting.pptx

 

[TheWretched]

hey, interesting stuff!
but why in hell do they state that the xbox360 gamma is screwed up?!?!?
in all of the comparisons of MP games, you typically have the situation that the pics of the PS3 version look somewhat bright in comparison to the Xbox360 version and that you have to adjust the gamma in the PS3 game...

I guess, since many mp games have a "lead" on 360, the colors are set for the 360 version first and probably won't be corrected for the PS3 version thereafter.

Because, if you set the Gamma so, that the 360 version looks good (which then would be the bad gamma), the PS3 version looks worse, although it has the correct internal setting.

But another this is, though, that most TVs by "normal" people aren't set correctly anyways (my Sonys standard settings ALL suck SOO MUCH... extreme fringing, overblown contrast, MUCH too high brightness etc.), and most people don't bother setting those correct anyways, I don't think the "minute" differences between PS3 and 360 matter anyways.

 

[steveOrino]

(my Sonys standard settings ALL suck SOO MUCH... extreme fringing, overblown contrast, MUCH too high brightness etc.), and most people don't bother setting those correct anyways, I don't think the "minute" differences between PS3 and 360 matter anyways.

They are set that way to combat lighting in retail stores. Majority of consumers flock to whatever is brightest so setting televisions at proper would be retail suicide on your typical best buy showroom floor.

 

[Billy Idol]

I guess, since many mp games have a "lead" on 360, the colors are set for the 360 version first and probably won't be corrected for the PS3 version thereafter.

Because, if you set the Gamma so, that the 360 version looks good (which then would be the bad gamma), the PS3 version looks worse, although it has the correct internal setting.

If this is true...this would be ultra lame!
If the MP devs don't even care to adjust the gamma for the PS3 version, I can understand now a little bit better why some ports turn out like they did...

 

[Gubbi]

They are set that way to combat lighting in retail stores. Majority of consumers flock to whatever is brightest so setting televisions at proper would be retail suicide on your typical best buy showroom floor.

On my last trip to London, I was really impressed with the top floor at John Lewis on Oxford Street. The entire TV-section had very dim lighting, which really showcased the Pioneer (Kuro) and Panasonic plasmas.

Cheers

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Getting back to topic, lots of interesting presentations are not posted on the link above... for example some from Naughty Dog. If anyone has any new info about these, don't hesitate to share!

 

[MJP]

hey, interesting stuff!
but why in hell do they state that the xbox360 gamma is screwed up?!?!?
in all of the comparisons of MP games, you typically have the situation that the pics of the PS3 version look somewhat bright in comparison to the Xbox360 version and that you have to adjust the gamma in the PS3 game...

The 360's hardware doesn't use a proper 2.2 curve for decoding or encoding, it uses a piece-wise linear curve to approximate it. There are more details here. Basically it means that you get different results on the 360 compared to the PS3 or PC hardware.

He wasn't saying that the 360 always outputs "bad" results, since...

A. "Bad" is subjective

and

B. The output quality isn't necessarily directly related to how the GPU encodes or decodes sRGB. A game could do it all manually in the shaders, or it might do the final backbuffer encoding using something custom. Or the hardware might do something funky with the backbuffer data when presenting it to the display. It's also possible that some games might account for the weird behavior of the 360 GPU in their engine, and that caused them to have weird results on the PS3.

 

[MJP]

Everyone should read the Naughty Dog HDR presentation, it contains very good example images and explanations on the following:
- need for gamma correction in textures and lighting
- possibilities of proper tone mapping
- why and how to use SSAO

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vault/gdc10/slides/Hable_John_Uncharted2_HDRLighting.pptx

Yeah good stuff in there. Most people seem to be getting the idea that gamma is important, but it's really hard to get it right all the way through the pipeline. My co-worker calls it the "gamma-banding hydra", since whenever you fix one problem another seems to spring up in its place.

The tone-mapping stuff is cool. My other co-worker is always going on about how terrible Reinhard is, and I didn't believe him until I saw this Star Ocean 4 presentation. Hopefully now some people will start improving their tone-mappers!.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Did not expect to see it here:
http://area.autodesk.com/gdc/ondemand12
Uncharted 2 character pipeline presentation.

I'll dig around to see if there are other GDC related videos over there... well there are:
http://area.autodesk.com/gdc#ondemand

 

[Laa-Yosh]

So, the UC2 presentation is also uploaded as a PDF on the GDC vault, and it contains some extra info compared to the vide. It definitely gives you guys an interesting overview of just how complex the character stuff for today's games can get, and how many custom tools have to be developed for the DCC applications.

It's worth to note that they've been using LODs more thoroughly compared to UC1. I'm sure it's also true for props and sets, not just characters, and it's one of the - apparently less obvious - reasons for the quality jump of the sequel. You don't necessarily have to push more polygons to get more detailed scenes, it's enough to just build more and better LODs. And it's also important that they might be using the same amount of the hardware's performance, and yet they can still do more with it. Which is why it's completely unreasonable to talk about game X using 50% of console A, and game Y using 100%, while game Z is only using 60% of console B...

Also, looks like just because they're not using any LOD versions of Drake in single player, it doesn't mean they did not have to build any - because of the multiplayer

Now, let me just get those nice tools from Rich Diamant for our modelers... it's actually a bit scary that our workflows now are similar enough that we can profit from those.