Halo3 Global Illumination Engine, can be a UE3 killer on 360?

[ShootMyMonkey]

Yup, I know that works, and if that's what SMM is talking about I'm all clear. Normal maps are pretty much identical to the l=1 SH coefficients unless there's some heavy asymmetric occlusion nearby. But if you have the SH framework there, you might as well precompute the real coefficients for a better image. You'll definately notice it in the nooks and crannies.

That's pretty much it, but we do cheat various things on top of it by using various other quantities (including an AO map) to deal with things like self-shadowing. We anyway apply various types of color modulation trickery to avoid having to sample multiple irradiance volumes for different times of day. It's all total hacks, but they get the job done.

AO can capture a decent chunk of PRT effects, but I don't see how it's so much cheaper to precompute than 0-bounce SH terms. Both need to cast a bunch of rays and see whether they escape the model. Once you have that it's a simple convolution of these boolean results with the different SH basis fn's, which should take a fraction of the time involved in the ray tests.

One of the nice things about AO maps is that since they're essentially grayscale "self-shadowing generalizations" in texture form, they're relatively straightforward to hand-edit and many character artists know how to handle it -- the end result is usually better than most tools give you anyway. Granted, we have a baker's dozen of different types of artists here, so there's always someone who knows what they're doing on that front.

 

[Heinrich4]

Halo 3 uses PRT?

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Halo 3 uses PRT?

At this point, nobody knows for sure. The press info sounds like a case of really odd wording that makes it sound like they have a GI hack, but then when you read the actual statements, nothing quite adds up to the notion of GI or PRT or anything particularly unique. For that matter, they seem to mention things that sound unrelated at the face of it(e.g. "lighting coming from one source" and "reflections of objects on a visor").

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

From an old Halo 2 presentation
http://s189.photobucket.com/albums/z152/TurnDragoZeroV2G/?action=view&current=ZRDCase3.jpg

 

[AlNom]

From an old Halo 2 presentation
http://s189.photobucket.com/albums/z152/TurnDragoZeroV2G/?action=view&current=ZRDCase3.jpg

Do you have the rest of those slides? I've been meaning to get a copy of them just for reference. (their switch from stencil shadows to shadow buffers)

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

Sure do (though they're all in a PDF instead... heh). Just suggest the best place to host it. The original MSRA link is long gone by now, as I found out when I went looking for it probably a year ago or so.

 

[AlNom]

Cool.

Try Rapidshare?

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

Game Development at Microsoft (.pdf, 632KB)

 

[Heinrich4]

At this point, nobody knows for sure. The press info sounds like a case of really odd wording that makes it sound like they have a GI hack, but then when you read the actual statements, nothing quite adds up to the notion of GI or PRT or anything particularly unique. For that matter, they seem to mention things that sound unrelated at the face of it(e.g. "lighting coming from one source" and "reflections of objects on a visor").

Thanx for answer ShootMyMonkey and we still waiting for more information about this engine.