Procedural textures, is Microsoft making a mistake?

[DemoCoder]

MS GDC information seems to suggest that the Xbox2 is engineered for using procedural textures on everything. However, if you look at non-Pixar films in the DCC biz, done offline with RenderMan textures are still predominantly not procedural. Why? Because with the exception of a few nice looking marbles or woods, most procedural textures don't look as real as real world scans.

Now, scanned/drawn texture + procedural *detail texture* might work, but having every texture in the game be procedurally generated? That's a reciped for major performance suckage.

 

[jvd]

are they saying they want procedural textures to be used on everything ?

I can see a game where the things close to you are premade textures and then as you get further away from your main focus point they can switch to procedural instead of just reusing the smae textures over and over again

 

[randycat99]

I hope they incorporate the new PTP in XB2. (Procedural Texture Processor?) ...but if it is too expensive, MS is surely teh doomed. ...and make it double precision. Can't have procedural textures being mangled by 32-bits. ...and make it 5 Ghz with a buncha barrel shifters and its own 128 MB edram pool. It'll have OoOE, too, right? If not, then MS is teh stoopid!

 

[BOOMEXPLODE]

That's what was suggested in the slides from GDC. It was something like "artists concentrate on form, with procedural detail added dynamically." Sounds like a low resolution texture with high resolution procedural detail.

 

[V3]

MS GDC information seems to suggest that the Xbox2 is engineered for using procedural textures on everything.

What part of Xbox2 give you that impression ? Lack of memory ?

 

[rabidrabbit]

How could they use procedural textures for everything?
For example if there was a level in game that's set inside an art gallery, would it be possible to do the paintings using procedural textures?

If next gen almost all detail would possibly be done with geometry instead of textures, procedural textures would seem to make some sense. Just look at the world around you, there's a huge amount of "polygons" and the "texturing" is very much "procedural" around you. But even if most textures were procedural, there'd still be much need for hand painted or photographed textures.

How would making procedural textures affect the art design. I can imagine many games would lose some personality as textures would be generated by math formulas instead of artists.

 

[V3]

That's what was suggested in the slides from GDC. It was something like "artists concentrate on form, with procedural detail added dynamically." Sounds like a low resolution texture with high resolution procedural detail.

Maybe they'll do procedural stuff for the detail texture layer ?

 

[Simon F]

How could they use procedural textures for everything?
For example if there was a level in game that's set inside an art gallery, would it be possible to do the paintings using procedural textures?

It's like I said earlier in a different thread - it's procedural but the shader code does use a very big array of constants.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

We don't use procedurals at all in our work, usually. Even the opacity-mapped smoke and fire effects are done using filmed footage of real smoke and fire, isntead of fractals.

Procedurals-only is a baaad idea.

 

[DemoCoder]

How could they use procedural textures for everything?

Because of how much they are hyping procedurals, and because it looks like the xbox2 is 8-pipelines with all of the extra transistors dedicated to shader ALUs.

 

[Guden Oden]

Procedurals-only is a baaad idea.

Don't say that. A couple years ago, realistic-looking fire effects was either impossible or at least seriously inferior to the real thing. Then along came Shrek and Lord of the Rings and such and suddenly digital fire rocked hard.

Certain textures are of course not going to be possible to generate procedurally (typically most stuff that is man-made), but one day we will be able to procedurally generate most everything else with good results methinks...

Now, is that a reason to do it in a game console? Not sure. Perhaps, in some cases at least... It could save on memory I guess, but I would think memory would be cheaper to add than the (serious) computing power needed to spit out reams of procedural textures on a per-frame basis... Then again, who knows what MS is planning? We're just speculating.

 

[London Geezer]

Well, manmade textures will have to be normal old-style textures.

A Tekken7 character's shirt with a picture of Britney on it would have to be an old style texture.

Same for any other texture that needs any kind of explicitly manmade image.

As far as natural environments textures, i think procedural textures would be very useful for the detail texture layers. But one will still need a manmade texture for the basic colour information the artists envisioned.

Procedural textures could be used on many occasions, but certainly not on everything.

 

[Guden Oden]

Many man-made surfaces would be easily recreated procedurally. Think tiles, wall paper, grating, etc. Almost anything that's a repeating pattern really, and probably some that isn't too.

The 'the way the artist (or designer rather perhaps) envisioned it' would probably be a larger stumbling-block than the technical side, but if a program could be developed that takes a real-world image and breaks it down into a procedural formula, that aspect would be diminished.

 

[London Geezer]

Many man-made surfaces would be easily recreated procedurally. Think tiles, wall paper, grating, etc. Almost anything that's a repeating pattern really, and probably some that isn't too.

The 'the way the artist (or designer rather perhaps) envisioned it' would probably be a larger stumbling-block than the technical side, but if a program could be developed that takes a real-world image and breaks it down into a procedural formula, that aspect would be diminished.

Why would you wanna do that when you can just have a normal compressed texture with an image of Britney? They are going to save lots of storage by using procedural textures on repeating patterns or natural textures, so i don't think breaking down an image of Britney into millions of algorithms is needed, but i could be wrong.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Procedural textures work for some stuff, like bumps (reptile skin, grating) and especially dirt (random noise). Adding a layer of procedural grime to a textured wall will break up repeating patterns.

However I thought their appraoch to 'procedural' was going to be procedural application of models and textures. Eg., create 5 leaf models with textures, and then procedurally these are added to a tree, and 5 textures of paving slabs that are procedurally applied to a pavement (sidewalk) to give a non-tiled pattern. Add a layer of procedural dirt on top and it'll look pretty good.

The big downside to procedural is it's DAMNED slow compared to textures!! And order of magnitude slower for even simple effects. Complicated procedural materials on everything wouldn't be possible in real-time IMO, unless you have simple scenes, simple AI and generally cut back on the rest of the game.

 

[London Geezer]

Procedural textures work for some stuff, like bumps (reptile skin, grating) and especially dirt (random noise). Adding a layer of procedural grime to a textured wall will break up repeating patterns.

However I thought their appraoch to 'procedural' was going to be procedural application of models and textures. Eg., create 5 leaf models with textures, and then procedurally these are added to a tree, and 5 textures of paving slabs that are procedurally applied to a pavement (sidewalk) to give a non-tiled pattern. Add a layer of procedural dirt on top and it'll look pretty good.

The big downside to procedural is it's DAMNED slow compared to textures!! And order of magnitude slower for even simple effects. Complicated procedural materials on everything wouldn't be possible in real-time IMO, unless you have simple scenes, simple AI and generally cut back on the rest of the game.

And even then, i was pretty sure that the calculated textures will need to reside on RAM anyway, which basicelly defies the purpose.
So, procedural textures would save you space on the DVD, but not on RAM. That is, unless EVERYTHING is really done on the fly and dumped as soon as the frame is rendered. Seems fishy to me.

 

[cybamerc]

Of course they won't use it for everything (how would you do normal mapping with procedural textures for example) but having the functionality is hardly a bad thing IMO.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So, procedural textures would save you space on the DVD, but not on RAM. That is, unless EVERYTHING is really done on the fly and dumped as soon as the frame is rendered. Seems fishy to me.

I imagine there would be a degree of on-the-fly creation. eg. In the wall example you have a shader that applies a degree of noise based on the UV coords, or on a reptile you create cellular bumps based on UV coords. This'll save RAM and provide infinitely scalable detail (no pixelation or blurring of bumps for example) but is a number-hog. You wouldn't procedural render to texture or you may as well just use a precalculated texture.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Procedurals-only is a baaad idea.

Don't say that. A couple years ago, realistic-looking fire effects was either impossible or at least seriously inferior to the real thing. Then along came Shrek and Lord of the Rings and such and suddenly digital fire rocked hard.

Lord of the Rings is a nice example of using stock footage mapped onto camera-facing planes, both for the Balrog's fire and smoke and the water in Isengard. The lava in the end was UV mapped, they've used some funky method to generate the UVs.

Shrek fire is procedural though, but an entirely different approach. You're right that there is a place for procedurals, but such complexity is still far beyond realtime engines... and the simple fractals that are currently possible will just not make it, they'll look ugly IMHO.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

MS GDC information seems to suggest that the Xbox2 is engineered for using procedural textures on everything.

What "information" suggests this? Everyting I've read suggests that procedural textures are more viable on the architecture than has traditionally been in the past.

It also suggested that in general, computational power is (as expected) increasing much more rapidly and is much more plentiful than bandwidth. So as a consequence of the architecture (and computing trends in general), one might consider using procedural textures vs. standard teture maps where possible.