Next gen lighting technologies - voxelised, traced, and everything else *spawn*

[Shifty Geezer]

There latest Voxel Based GI (which doesn't require UV Layout!)

https://developer.unigine.com/en/devlog/20180426-unigine-2.7

Some very nice results there. Things like having to tweak the settings to remove artefacts is the sort of development overhead we want to solve, but the performance of these techniques looks like hybrid rendering will be more than rasterised triangles and traced lighting, and rather complex mixes of lighting techniques. As we're already seeing in BFV where we combine screenspace and traced reflections.

I think the magic will happen when devs find the best sweet-spot between the techs, and find with fast enough rays that they can do more with these voxelised solutions.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

March 4, 2019

 

[iroboto]

March 4, 2019

@Dictator doing huge work here. Thank you this really confirms to me that we could see RT on next generation consoles, at 30fps and possibly at ~4K - however it gets there.
4K60 with DLSS and console like settings, it's just shy of the mark. I don't expect next gen consoles to be that strong as a 2080TI, but I suspect software to improve and I expect MS to be profiling their console using these titles for improved performance on lower specs.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@Dictator doing huge work here. Thank you this really confirms to me that we could see RT on next generation consoles, at 30fps and possibly at ~4K - however it gets there.
4K60 with DLSS and console like settings, it's just shy of the mark. I don't expect next gen consoles to be that strong as a 2080TI, but I suspect software to improve and I expect MS to be profiling their console using these titles for improved performance on lower specs.

De-noising will be tough at 30fps, because of the needs for temporal de-noising.

 

[iroboto]

De-noising will be tough at 30fps, because of the needs for temporal de-noising.

good consideration, forgot about this. Both reconstruction and denoising benefit a lot more with higher FPS.

 

[metacore]

Get an up-close look at the ray tracing functionality coming in Unreal Engine 4.22. Learn about the processes and techniques employed to bring cinematic-quality lighting to a real-time piece, developed in collaboration with a ‘soon-to-be-announced’ partner.

https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/ray-tracing-in-unreal-engine-422-presented-by-epic-games/865577


AMD joininig raytracing bandwagon? Microsoft pushing DXR? some middleware ? consoles ? ( probably not, unveil would rather be about whole product)

 

[BRiT]

https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/ray-tracing-in-unreal-engine-422-presented-by-epic-games/865577


AMD joininig raytracing bandwagon? Microsoft pushing DXR? some middleware ? consoles ? ( probably not, unveil would rather be about whole product)

Google? https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/google-gaming-rumours.60817/

 

[Malo]

Is there a reason the partner wouldn't be Nvidia? Isn't that the logical assumption?

 

[metacore]

Nvidia plugins for UE are already there announced and known for audience, knowing PR speak this wording might suggest it's something knew.

 

[Ike Turner]

The "the ray tracing functionality coming in Unreal Engine 4.22" is laterally partially coded by Nvidia themselves & then implemented in the public branch by Epic. So the partner in question is most probably some content creator (ala ILM/Lucasfilm collab) or DCC Software collab (Adobe/Algorithmic Substance etc).

BTW, Juan Canada was the head of the Maxwell Renderer at Next Limit for 10 years prior to being poached by Epic a year ago (he's part of big rendering engineers hiring spree that Epic started a bit more than a year ago with that Tencent/Fortnite $$$).

 

[jlippo]

Screen Space GI (SSGI) early access in Unreal Engine 4.23 dev branch similar to what Unigine 2.7 has.

Pros:
- Works on all modern GPUs unlike DXR (only Volta & some Turing GPUs)
- Performance

Cons:
- It's.. in screen-space..

Speaking of Unigine 2.7:

There latest Voxel Based GI (which doesn't require UV Layout!)

https://developer.unigine.com/en/devlog/20180426-unigine-2.7

Found couple more examples of the SSGI.

https://imgur.com/LDDb20T

https://imgur.com/kkoKjt8

Source

Should be nice addition.

 

[milk]

Finally Quantum Break like graphics on Unreal Engine games. We need more door knobs!

 

[jlippo]

Finally Quantum Break like graphics on Unreal Engine games. We need more door knobs!

Should also be lovely in some scenes where light bounces from skinned objects.
Something like indy lifting Idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Apparently Path of Exile uses now some form of SSGI.

Self illuminating objects seem to work surprisingly well.

 

[Dictator]

CryEngine 5.5 and an experimental branch will suport ray traced reflections.

echnology Reveal: Real-Time Ray Traced Reflections achieved with CRYENGINE. All scenes are rendered in real-time in-editor on an AMD Vega 56 GPU. Reflections are achieved with the new experimental ray tracing feature in CRYENGINE 5 - no SSR. Neon Noir was developed on a bespoke version of CRYENGINE 5.5., and the experimental ray tracing feature based on CRYENGINE’s Total Illumination used to create the demo is both API and hardware agnostic, enabling ray tracing to run on most mainstream, contemporary AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. However, the future integration of this new CRYENGINE technology will be optimized to benefit from performance enhancements delivered by the latest generation of graphics cards and supported APIs like Vulkan and DX12.

It makes mention how it is based on SVOTI, which is voxel tracing, but given the demo I am not sure about that at leasst for those objects that are closest to the camera. They do not break down into voxels and offer per pixel detail not seen in other experimental glossy reflections from voxels seen in cryengine or even unreal. I think it is a compute based triangle ray tracer then? Which then will be ported to DXR and Vulkan Ray Tracing API when it actually releases hence the bit about being "optimised to benefit from performance enhancements from the latest generation of graphics cards", aka, actually utilising the RT Core on Turing.

Neat to see how you can see a bit how it functions, as when an object moves, either a castor or reflector, it causes a 3-5 (have not counted) ghosty latency look in the reflections themselves:

 

[OCASM]

CryEngine 5.5 and an experimental branch will suport ray traced reflections.

It makes mention how it is based on SVOTI, which is voxel tracing, but given the demo I am not sure about that at leasst for those objects that are closest to the camera. They do not break down into voxels and offer per pixel detail not seen in other experimental glossy reflections from voxels seen in cryengine or even unreal. I think it is a compute based triangle ray tracer then? Which then will be ported to DXR and Vulkan Ray Tracing API when it actually releases hence the bit about being "optimised to benefit from performance enhancements from the latest generation of graphics cards", aka, actually utilising the RT Core on Turing.

Neat to see how you can see a bit how it functions, as when an object moves, either a castor or reflector, it causes a 3-5 (have not counted) ghosty latency look in the reflections themselves:

Voxels can be ray traced as well but it produces noise. SVOTI uses cone tracing. The ghosting is due to the temporal denoising.

In fact, voxel ray tracing has been supported in CryEngine (in limited form) for some time now:

https://docs.cryengine.com/display/CEMANUAL/Ray+Traced+Shadows

 

[Ike Turner]

Real Time RT Reflections using Voxel Tracing is nothing really new (but has always been relatively compute intensive in the past). Marmoset has supported it along side GI since 2015. Short video of it I just did a few minutes ago.

 

[jlippo]

Voxels can be ray traced as well but it produces noise. SVOTI uses cone tracing. The ghosting is due to the temporal denoising.

In fact, voxel ray tracing has been supported in CryEngine (in limited form) for some time now:

https://docs.cryengine.com/display/CEMANUAL/Ray+Traced+Shadows

Nice to see traced heightmap shadows for far distances.

 

[mpg1]

Real-Time Ray Traced Reflections With CRYENGINE on a Vega 56 GPU

 

[Dictator]

Real Time RT Reflections using Voxel Tracing is nothing really new (but has always been relatively compute intensive in the past). Marmoset has supported it along side GI since 2015. Short video of it I just did a few minutes ago.

Yeah most definitely, there is even an input in CE you could have to give you glossy cone traced reflections way before 5.5 (3.82 I think had it). The one thing about this demo though is that I cannot ascertain look of voxels in the reflections themselves, so I am curious how it works. Maybe it is not exactly voxels?
Like here, you can see obvious polygonal edges from a lower LOD model used in the reflection:

 

[JoeJ]

Yeah!

Like here, you can see obvious polygonal edges from a lower LOD model used in the reflection:

Only few of the shells are reflected at all. Seems manually authored for this high detail close up.

It makes mention how it is based on SVOTI, which is voxel tracing, but given the demo I am not sure about that at leasst for those objects that are closest to the camera. They do not break down into voxels and offer per pixel detail not seen in other experimental glossy reflections from voxels seen in cryengine or even unreal. I think it is a compute based triangle ray tracer then?

Hard to say. Eventually they bin triangles to voxels? No idea. Maybe a bunch of multiple tech.
In the very beginning there is a metalllic door on the left side, reflecting green stuff. Seems there is a smooth switch from an image based method (dynamic probes, impostors?) to a more accurate one.
Maybe they also project textures to voxel faces. There seems no noise, but a limitation could be it only supports sharp reflections. Very impressive work!