Polygons, voxels, SDFs... what will our geometry be made of in the future?

The top answer reasoning is sound. The detail is geometric is nature, as in consisting of geometry information, so it'd be 'geometric detail.'

 

I think subdivision surfaces with vector displacement mapping are nice primitives and a lot of the problems with it seem close to solved.

Of course even if a developer creates the tools to use it you will have to hold artist families at gunpoint to make them switch, might even have to shoot a few first.

 

You inadvertently give the right answer here.

It’s logic captain vs it’s logical captain vs it’s logically correct captain.
It’s geometry captain vs it is geometric captain vs it is geometrically correct captain.

But a lot of modern linguistics no longer uses prescriptive grammar, but instead describes how people use language.

https://www.google.nl/amp/s/federal...9/05/05/grammar-symmetric-vs-symmetrical/amp/

And I actually wonder if the exceptions in daily practice have to do with stress on the first syllable.

 

I'm at this point.
The paper you show is no good solution because it requires expensive stitching. The true solution is quadrangulation, which turns the surface into quads and so allows for seamless texture UVs (on the original triangle geometry if you want!).
I started working on this to have global parametrization for GI, and only while working on it i realized it has many other applications:
A new solution to the LOD problem.
Displacement mapping everywhere.
Volumetric shells using volume textures or point clouds.
Better procedural texturing and texture synthesis.

So i think it's 'unlimited detail' done right. But it's much harder than any other triangle alternatives discusses here. It took me more than a year to get an automated tool working... almost at least.
The problem is quadrangulation research is still very active, and it does not handle LOD at all, so i was on my own.

On the artist side, i think it's not that difficult. Downside is that many details they model / texture can go from triangles to displacement maps or lower res textures, so they loose full control, but they also have big wins:
No more need to work out good UV maps and care for seems (the tool will resample anyways).
No worries on triangle budgets. Use as many as you want.
No more manual LOD models.

So they can focus on art instead tech. I think they'll like it.

But i won't go into all of this... i'm happy if can get GI done before i die...

 

After you tear photoshop from their cold dead hands.

How do you plan to fix anisotropic across quad boundaries? Programmatically inside the shader?

 

If you need anisotropic samples use the usual dilation by copied neighbor texels, but the harder problem are singular vertices where not four but any other number of quads meet.
The obvious solution here is to place the quad vertices in the center of texels, and make the texel equal color. But this breaks when orientation matters for example with normal maps.
Also, for LOD you typically want to align texel edges with quad edges, and here using equal texel color would reduce detail at singularities and cause visible blotches.
Trying to do it correctly inside shader causes divergence and may require trig ops or look up tables. Much better than seam stitching at least.
I don't know yet how i'll handle it, need to try some options...

Haha, maybe But i worked as artist myself and i would be sold to the promises pretty quickly if they hold.

 

Hell yes! I always wondered when some game would have the balls to go all-quads. It just solves so many problems, and opens so many doors. It's about time.

 

"Update" on the elusive Shadow of the Tomb Raider RTX patch . The GDC session's description has been modified from:

Original:

Updated: