Ryse: Son of Rome [XO]

[DavidGraham]

We've already discussed that your idea of fantastic results is very different from mine...

Yeah we did. people have different taste in art anyhow.

CryEngine 3 does support character tessellation though I don't know if it's used in Ryse:

It wasn't used even in Crysis 3. I thought it was used on Marius in Ryse, but apparently that is wrong.

Though the video does present an interesting point.. the engine allows all particles to cast shadows, even water. but the feature is not working in any of it's games.

2. Dunno what You mean by this? Medium, like medium setting in Crysis 3?

Yeah, exactly. LOD transition is noticeable.

3. All particles receive shadows and lights, its very cheap in current CryEngine versions.

They do, but that is entirely different from "casting" shadows.

I hope You dont expect to every light source, no matter how big in radius it has to cast shadows in next-gen games on consoles, because it wont happen.

I don't, that's why I stated at least torches and flashlights as well as some muzzle flashes should cast shadows.

What I mean by dynamic lighting however is just the process of casting lights, no shadows should be attached. for example, all fire placements in the level should cast light on their surroundings. Otherwise they would look out of place.. same for projectiles, sparks, explosions ..etc

 

[KKRT]

What I mean by dynamic lighting however is just the process of casting lights, no shadows should be attached. for example, all fire placements in the level should cast light on their surroundings. Otherwise they would look out of place.. same for projectiles, sparks, explosions ..etc

And they do, if they dont, it means that artist fucked up and that happened even in Crysis 3 , like for example flamethrower's every projectile was a light source [as well as other weapons, like K-Volt], but when it hit the ground and transforms to a flame, it lost light source properties. Its not engine limitation or hardware limitation, just artist mistake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ofmHk-iuJc

CryEngine SDK, for example, crashed for me when i was generating 400 light sources per second, but generally having 600-700 light sources is not problematic.
Some of my videos of pushing particles systems in SDK to its limits or checking precision
1000 light sources from particles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhhxiVOHnyw
Volumetric lighting and dozens thousands of particles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbhN6kzr71Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1ohENg6ahk
Particle casting lights on other particles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqVM6eI4Mz0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2LMy8GxC4Y

 

[pjbliverpool]

Laa-Yosh is saying tessellation will not help with that on characters. You can only solve polygon edges on characters with either high res models in the first place, or something fancy like silhouette mapping.

But Tombraider does exactly this (on PC).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

But Tombraider does exactly this (on PC).

And Lara doesn't look too good either, it's a nice illustration for my point. Tessellation without a proper vertex density and displacement mapping isn't worth much. It's a checkbox feature that gets some people excited but properly built assets will always look better. Look at Ryse, look at Last of Us, look at The Order. Case closed.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah we did. people have different taste in art anyhow.

I'm sorry but taste isn't only the issue here. Metro's character assets are very far from good, and that's my professional opinion.


In case you're new here - I'm the character lead at a CGI animation studio, been here for 10 years now; we do the trailers for Assassin's Creed, ME3, and so on. So I kinda do this stuff literally every day.

 

[pjbliverpool]

And Lara doesn't look too good either, it's a nice illustration for my point. Tessellation without a proper vertex density and displacement mapping isn't worth much. It's a checkbox feature that gets some people excited but properly built assets will always look better. Look at Ryse, look at Last of Us, look at The Order. Case closed.

Lara's a great character model, easily amongst the best of last generation. But that's besides the point. You say Tessellation is useless on character models which it clearly isn't since the Lara model is quite obviously made better by it's use. Ears, shoulders, boobs, probably more are all perfectly rounded on the PC with tessellation and all noticable angled on the console versions. Whether you consider that a big improvement or not is besides the point since tessellation is doing exactly what it's desgned to do in that instance - on a character model.

I accept that the geometry budget of next gen consoles may be sufficient to acheive the same effect (or a better one) with real polygons but you still have a limited budget (unlike the CGI that you work on) and so if you want to use that budget on the environment instead of blowing it all on your main characters boobs and ears then tessellation would still be a valid option to use to round off the character model. It's already been proven to be effective at that.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Once again: ears, shoulders, boobs are not perfectly rounded in the real world and it is not realistic to depict them like that. These are very complex forms - there's a reason it takes many years to become a good sculptor - and the perfect smooth stuff we get instead makes the character look more artificial and abstract.

I would happily trade a tessellated poly count for half (technically, 1/4) the number, but with properly sculpted forms and shapes.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Heck, doesn't even have to be something as highly complex as characters. The brick walls in Crysis look like blisters with tesselation enabled (bricks are sharp, and if someone built you a wall like that in reality you'd get a full refund). The feature practically screams "look at me, I'm a bullet point".
If you have the surplus performance that naturally goes with running games built for 7 year old hardware on a beefed up PC then by all means, include it for all I care. If the old machines aren't factoring into the content creation pipeline anymore however, all you do is waste performance. Tesselation isn't exactly free, so why not model a far more believable brick wall with a quarter of the polygons if not less. Or you can spend it on visual features people who'd rather play than obsess over screen shots might actually notice.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Once again: ears, shoulders, boobs are not perfectly rounded in the real world and it is not realistic to depict them like that. These are very complex forms - there's a reason it takes many years to become a good sculptor - and the perfect smooth stuff we get instead makes the character look more artificial and abstract.

So Lara's shoulders in the right hand side picture are more realistic to you than Lara's shoulders in the right hand side picture?

EDIT: Once again, I 'get' that it's possible to do the same or more with actual polygons. But that assumes you have an unlimited polygon budget - which you don't. My understanding of Tessellation is that it allows you to give the impression of more polygons (in specific circumstances) for a lower performance hit than using real geometry - at least were you are already geometry limited. So if you've spent 98% of your polygon budget on the environment but your character still has blocky edges, is it better to multiply your characters polygon budget by 10x to get rid of those edges - at the expense of enviroment geometry, or is it better to tessellate the character model to achieve 90% of the same effect while leaving your environment geometry intact?

 

[Sigfried1977]

Pretty sure tesselation burns through your vertex resources just as "real" polygons do. It's an easy way to get some extra detail if your shaders are twiddling their thumbs. It saves time, not performance.

 

[milk]

Pretty sure tesselation burns through your vertex resources just as "real" polygons do. It's an easy way to get some extra detail if your shaders are twiddling their thumbs. It saves time, not performance.

I does save memory and it's bandwith and loading times for every time your engine passes your models around.

The skepticism over tessellation based on the hacked-out bullet-point-driven past implementations is a little too radical in my opinon. Tessellation has been used in CGI since for ever, in the form of subdivision surface systems ala Catmull Clark and others. Pixar themselves are working on making it work on GPU hadware tessellators for interactive visualisation of their models. It might end up being that the cost of aproximating one of these subdvision surface algos properly will have the technic used very sparingly yet in this gen, but if not here, next one will be the one where pretty much everything will be modeled through curved surfaces rather than rigid polys, its just the natural evolution.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I will not start to explain what tessellation does again. I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The skepticism over tessellation based on the hacked-out bullet-point-driven past implementations is a little too radical in my opinon.

Please make the distinction between just tessellation, and tessellation with proper displacement mapping.
The tech will only provide an advantage if it can be fully implemented, but that is too costly right now. Artist time and poly budget is much better spent on a higher quality traditional model.

Sure, you can use it in the next Toy Story game, there it's ideal, but we're not really interested in those models I guess.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Oh it's cheaper all right. It's still a far cry from being free, though. First and foremost it's modelling tool.

 

[BoardBonobo]

I will not start to explain what tessellation does again. I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here.

Yes. But has it been tessellated?...

 

[Sigfried1977]

Yes. But has it been tessellated?...

Hopefully. Should be a lot less painful if all the edges are all nice and round.

 

[DavidGraham]

In case you're new here - I'm the character lead at a CGI animation studio, been here for 10 years now; we do the trailers for Assassin's Creed, ME3, and so on. So I kinda do this stuff literally every day.

Good to know, I am truly pleased to know that, especially as I very much adored all ME3 CGI trailers.

Artist time and poly budget is much better spent on a higher quality traditional model.

Then again, if it doesn't get rid of acute angles and polygonal edges (which happens quite often), then the job is not complete. Sure organics are not 100% round and smooth, but they are not angular either, a perfect balance has to be made, and Tessellation provides that balance in my opinion. It is as you said can't make a square 100% circle, but it gets very close.

In fact Tessellation can ease the pain of transitioning between different LOD states through adaptive Tessellation a feature not available through traditional means.

 

[DavidGraham]

And they do, if they dont, it means that artist fucked up and that happened even in Crysis 3 , like for example flamethrower's every projectile was a light source , but when it hit the ground and transforms to a flame, it lost light source properties. Its not engine limitation or hardware limitation, just artist mistake.

Yeah, that one happens a lot not just in Crysis, I remember Metro suffering the same thing too. Cool thing about Metro though is their incendiary grenades, their fire not only cast light but shadows too.

CryEngine SDK, for example, crashed for me when i was generating 400 light sources per second, but generally having 600-700 light sources is not problematic.

I like the fact that all area lights (street lamps) in Crysis 2 and 3 cast dynamic shadows on anything they encounter.

 

[milk]

I will not start to explain what tessellation does again. I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here.

Don't waste your time with me. I do know how it works, and I do know most, if not all, implementations of DX11 hardware tesselation to round-up pre-made models are hacky.
I just pointed out the technology as a whole cannot be completely slanted as unusable just because it hasn't been fully matured yet. It just needs time.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, as I've said, as soon as proper displacements start to work, it'll be all over every game.

I mean we've always used subdivision on every character and most props and vehicles. It's not like I don't appreciate the tech. It's just that for characters, it's almost useless without displacement, and for vehicles (racing games) it's usually more economic to just build a static mesh instead.