*spin-off* Dynamic GI on Consoles

[i nerini del buio]

yup, playing the x360 version right now and see no GI
I get it's on in the ps3 version though?

 

[Afrikan]

so MLB The Show 09 is still the only console game/series with GI?

 

[L. Scofield]

Is there any video showing the dynamic aspects of MLB's GI?

LBP2 has GI as well.

 

[Afrikan]

Is there any video showing the dynamic aspects of MLB's GI?

LBP2 has GI as well.

one of the developers explains it here in a blog with various screens.....this was for MLB 09.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/02/19/mlb-09-the-show-–-lighting-explained/

2011 looks even more amazing, lighting wise...I hope DF does a feature/interview on it sometime.

 

[zed]

whilst its nice and all that & my hats off to them, but choosing an outdoor environment & single light (unless its night maybe) is not the way to showcase it
heres my real time GI from 9 years ago (very low quality I admit)
http://www.flipcode.com/archives/03-25-2002.shtml
but if youre gonna use (one of the holy grail of CGI ) radiosity, you really wanna do it in something like quake2, i.e. a corridor shooter

 

[L. Scofield]

one of the developers explains it here in a blog with various screens.....this was for MLB 09.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/02/19/mlb-09-the-show-–-lighting-explained/

2011 looks even more amazing, lighting wise...I hope DF does a feature/interview on it sometime.

Yeah I've seen that image, but I'd like to see it in action. The way the image explains it, there's no hint of dynamic objects affecting the lighting at all, so it's not truly a dynamic GI solution.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Yeah I've seen that image, but I'd like to see it in action. The way the image explains it, there's no hint of dynamic objects affecting the lighting at all, so it's not truly a dynamic GI solution.

You can't say it's not truly a dynamic GI solution in MLB '09: The Show and later versions. We do know there are dynamic day transitions with the GI. Either way, there is GI in MLB '09: The Show and later versions.

 

[(((interference)))]

So...the consensus is no realtime GI for Crysis 2 on consoles?

Should someone message/tweet Grandmaster and tell him.

 

[Turok]

So...the consensus is no realtime GI for Crysis 2 on consoles?

Should someone message/tweet Grandmaster and tell him.

There is no consensus on anything. Some people are saying it's totally absent, others are saying it's there for just the sun, and other are saying that it's there for some objects, not all of them.

 

[L. Scofield]

Are you sure you read the entire post? Your response suggests you haven't.

I did. Since only static surfaces seem to be taken into account for the GI (at least, according to the article posted) there might be a precomputed step, similar to Enlighten's.

 

[(((interference)))]

There is no consensus on anything. Some people are saying it's totally absent, others are saying it's there for just the sun, and other are saying that it's there for some objects, not all of them.

I don't know, Nebula (who is the resided Crytek expert) isn't convinced and all the screens supposedly showing GI have been rejected.

Someone should inform Richard to investigate further. The worst thing would be if Crytek gets plaudits for doing something they didn't do.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

The article indicates that the indirect illumination is done in real time.

How do we do all this? Well, I can’t give away our secrets, but I can give you an overview of our lighting model. There are several steps we take to make each image, and we make 60 of these images every second.

Starting with the stadium:
We begin by tracing direct sunlight into the scene, with detailed shadows.
We render a sky (without a sun), then use this sky to add the indirect sky light to the scene.
We then trace the sunlight’s path as it bounces off the ground and stadium. When sunlight hits a surface, it takes on that surface color, bounces off, and lights objects around it. We add that indirect light into the scene.
We do the same with the crowd (up to 50,000 people lit in place!)
All of these steps are done in HDR (high dynamic range), and tone mapped into our final frame.
The players are handled in a similar way. They are lit by the sun, the sky, the stadium, and the ground around them. They also sample the environment to get reflections and gloss energy. The goal is to always make the player feel like he belongs to the world around him.

Since you are asserting that the lighting is partially precomputed, the burden of proof is actually on you in this case.

It seems you're assuming that because the game doesn't have dynamic environments that it must somehow be a precomputed solution. Given that baseball games don't usually have level changes, if we allow this premise then how could one possibly dispute it? I think the lack of dynamic level geometry can't be a sound argument against real-time GI being present in the game.

 

[L. Scofield]

....

The article is clear, they take no lighting information from any dynamic objects in the world, only static. Just like Geomeric's Enlighten and Lionhead's recently shown GI solution, both use precomputation.

You made the leap by assuming that since there are some aspects of realtime GI it automatically is fully dynamic.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

The article is clear, they take no lighting information from any dynamic objects in the world, only static. Just like Geomeric's Enlighten and Lionhead's recently shown GI solution, both use precomputation.

You made the leap by assuming that since there are some aspects of realtime GI it automatically is fully dynamic.

Like I said in my last post, I don't accept the premise that a game has precomputed radiosity by virtue of the fact that the environment is static. I think you're making the leap at this point without explaining how static geometry entails precomputed GI. It may be true that if you use a precomputed solution you cannot have dynamic geometry but the reverse is a completely different proposition.

The article clearly does not make any mention of lightmaps or precomputation, so I don't see how you came to your conclusion from anything within the article. Again your point is the levels are static therefore the GI is precomputed. Why? Even if you claim a tendency, nothing about this necessarily follows. Yes the environment happens to be static given the nature of baseball and stadiums and such. Maybe in the future we'll include some dynamic topography into the sport, who knows.

BTW given that they are only calculating indirect illumination for sunlight as Crytek does, I could infer that it's probably simplified enough to do completely in real time, whereas BF3 supports indirect illumination from multiple light sources.

 

[MJP]

The article indicates that the indirect illumination is done in real time.

It never indicates anything of the sort. It just gives a very basic overview of how their GI works, without ever saying when the steps occur. Considering the performance implications and novelty of real-time GI algorithms (plus the fact that the game has to run at 60fps), I think it would a mistake to assume that they're not doing all or most of it at tool time just like any other recent game.

Looking at the pictures, it's very clear that the sky lighting is done with a per-vertex AO term and that the the dynamics (crowds, players) don't have the AO term nor does any indirect light reflect off of them. So at best they could be using something like enlighten or other point-based approaches where the indirect lighting is handled at runtime, but with pre-computed visibility. But without those developers actually saying that (or in-game evidence to support it), I would put my money on them just pre-baking the indirect lighting too and using standard irradiance volumes for the dynamics.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

It never indicates anything of the sort. It just gives a very basic overview of how their GI works, without ever saying when the steps occur. Considering the performance implications and novelty of real-time GI algorithms (plus the fact that the game has to run at 60fps), I think it would a mistake to assume that they're not doing all or most of it at tool time just like any other recent game.

Looking at the pictures, it's very clear that the sky lighting is done with a per-vertex AO term and that the the dynamics (crowds, players) don't have the AO term nor does any indirect light reflect off of them. So at best they could be using something like enlighten or other point-based approaches where the indirect lighting is handled at runtime, but with pre-computed visibility. But without those developers actually saying that (or in-game evidence to support it), I would put my money on them just pre-baking the indirect lighting too and using standard irradiance volumes for the dynamics.

So, how much effort would it take to do this for the gradual change in lighting over the course of the day (daylight transitions until night)? After all, Crysis 2 on consoles doesn't do this (dynamic GI or not).

 

[L. Scofield]

@lucid

Saying some game has GI is useless without clarifying what type of technique they're using.

 

[jlippo]

I did, and as I said, useless statements are useless Saying some game has GI is useless without clarifying what type of technique they're using.

We do know it uses reflective shadow mapping which injects light contribution into a light propagation volume.
They refresh the RSM every 5th? frame so including dynamic objects to RSM, might not be a good idea for temporal stability of the light. (running character would light it's own back the next frame and so on..)

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Saying some game has GI is useless without clarifying what type of technique they're using.

If you comprehended my earlier post, quote the part where I said it was "fully dynamic". Then, couple that with the last sentence (particularly, the first two words) of that very same post.

 

[Neb]

It never indicates anything of the sort. It just gives a very basic overview of how their GI works, without ever saying when the steps occur. Considering the performance implications and novelty of real-time GI algorithms (plus the fact that the game has to run at 60fps), I think it would a mistake to assume that they're not doing all or most of it at tool time just like any other recent game.

Looking at the pictures, it's very clear that the sky lighting is done with a per-vertex AO term and that the the dynamics (crowds, players) don't have the AO term nor does any indirect light reflect off of them. So at best they could be using something like enlighten or other point-based approaches where the indirect lighting is handled at runtime, but with pre-computed visibility. But without those developers actually saying that (or in-game evidence to support it), I would put my money on them just pre-baking the indirect lighting too and using standard irradiance volumes for the dynamics.

Thanks for the clarification. Also surprised not a single video of the GI in MLB has been shown. You ought to think they or others would showcase it and be proud...