Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Artcl]

Posted By: Nems

Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Artcl] - 01/08/08 05:27

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Introduction
As an industry, we are now deeply entrenched in a new generation of console development. What seemed unknown and even scary only a few years ago is now part of most developer's everyday work. In the end, most people's fears about the new breed of games requiring hundreds more artists, drastic increases in budgets and longer development times turned out to be unjustified. Many high quality titles have been made on time by small to average sized teams of experienced staff.

With that said, creating artwork for these new machines has never been more problematic. Many artists, especially those coming from the familiarity of the previous generation, have had to learn a whole new set of tools and work practices.

Creating efficient, high quality environment art can be done with the right amount of planning and forethought. I have identified, based on my experience developing several titles for the 360 and PS3, key 'problem areas' commonly found in next-gen art pipelines. This article outlines these areas and offers solutions, hopefully helping other artists identify problems earlier rather than later.

Posted By: xXxGuitar511

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/09/08 18:12

Good Read, thanks...

Posted By: frazzle

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/09/08 19:09

Quite interesting, nice found

Cheers

Frazzle

Posted By: lostclimate

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/10/08 19:04

yeah, I read this one before, pretty interesting, although most of the techniques arent really "next-gen".

Posted By: frazzle

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/11/08 22:14

Well maybe they're still using old techniques which are being 'pimped' to make it fit next-gen in the positive way

Cheers

Frazzle

Posted By: alleen

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/13/08 13:19

that link doesn't work ?????

Posted By: Nems

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/14/08 01:44

Maintanance over now, link active again

Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/15/08 13:51

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yeah, I read this one before, pretty interesting, although most of the techniques arent really "next-gen".

I think that real-time ambient occlusion is still a quite modern technique and only a few engines support it at the moment.

This article is interesting and well written. But unfortunatelly it is hard to find an indie engine that supports all this (professional lighting, shader, efficient scene-management).
If you want to make all this in Gamestudio then you have to pimp it up with a few plugins

And you still have to create shaders for things like AO.

Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/15/08 21:26

real-time ambient occlusion is indeed "next-gen" but nothing else in the article is. it doesn't appear to describe real-time AO, but static AO, in which case it isn't "next-gen" in the slightest. here's the hint:

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Do some experimenting with these built-in tools, as you may find they are overly complex or render times take too long. If you're going to be lighting a city block, for instance, you're going to want a fast renderer.

i believe this is referring to the time it takes to make a static AO lightmap. the most common realtime AO techniques are variants of screen-space ambient occlusion which is unaffected by scene complexity if a depth map is already being rendered anyway. the idea that it is static is further supported by the fact that they treat dynamic lighting in outdoor scenes as a special case ("One direct light source means the whole world can be either lit using lightmaps, or in some cases, dynamically lit.").

all this can be done in Gamestudio with nothing more than ventilator's second uv-set plugin (though you don't even need that if you use Gamestudio's radiosity on level-geometry coming in the next update).

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And you still have to create shaders for things like AO.

that's half the fun of graphics. shaders are ridiculously easy to learn, and if we all depended on pre-made shaders we aren't going to be ground-breaking, are we? anyway, a few of us are already working on our own variations of realtime AO shaders

julz

Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/16/08 12:33

Julz, your post sounds a bit theoretically. And in this case I totally agree with you. You can do all this. You can write the shaders. You even say it is "dediculously easy". I am sure that most users will disagree here since only little know vector and matrice mathematics.
And yes - you can add shadowmaps with Ventilators plugin.

I know all this since we work on a prototype with exactly those techniques and because of that I can tell you that in practice there are more problems then you might think of.

You will get heavy problems when you want to make a level with more than one texture and more than one uv. FBX and obj import does not support more uv's and shaders get problems with many textures and uv's.
When you pack all into one texture and one uv then you have some problems with modelling and level design.

Besides that it is not that easy to write shaders for AO, depth of field, dynamic shadows an much more in a small team. It takes much time and effort and will not compete with experienced shader developers.

We do our best and will show our progress in the future. But I still would suggest to argue a bit more realistically and not only with the usual term that I read since several years: "It can be done"

Regarding radiosity on blocks:
This ist still not available and had some light bleeding in the last images. And I doubt you can combine it with shaders. And then you still are limited to point lights with linear fall-offs (no spot lights, no area lights, no squared falloffs). This is not a good lighting-toolset.

Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/16/08 23:07

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New lightmapper that supports radiosity, spot lights and light emitting faces BETA.

from forecast. note the 'BETA' status, and remember that jcl said this will be available in the 7.8 release (we're on 7.7 atm, with a cleaned up version coming soon after jcl gets home).

depth of field and shadow mapping shaders have already been developed by individuals in our community who are good with shaders, and depth of field isn't even mentioned in the article we are discussing (and as i said before, neither is realtime AO).

ventilator uses blender for the dual-uv-set exports and while it isn't ideal for those who don't want to use blender, no one can expect everyone's favourite tools to be useful in dual-uv-set creation.

besides, the second uv set plugin can't be that difficult if we've already seen people showcasing it's use on the showcase 1 forum and praising it's ease of use.

i'm not arguing about the theoretical -- everything mentioned in the article is built-in to Gamestudio except putting AO in a second uv-set, which ventilator has covered for us and has been demonstrated by him and other users.

the only 'theoretical' and untested part of my side of this discussion was the mention of screen-space AO shaders that some of us are working on, which still are unrelated to the article we're discussing.

basically in the end, my post was written to nullify your implications that Gamestudio isn't even nearly capable of all that was in the article without at least "a few plugins" (at the moment only one is needed, and even that won't be necessary for the features mentioned in the article in the next update), and that we needed to "create shaders for things like AO" (realtime implied, as static doesn't require anything special), which isn't discussed in the article.

julz

Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/17/08 10:02

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basically in the end, my post was written to nullify your implications that Gamestudio isn't even nearly capable of all that was in the article without at least "a few plugins" (at the moment only one is needed, and even that won't be necessary for the features mentioned in the article in the next update)

Ok, I wish you are right with all your lengthy emotionally post because it would make game developing easier for us. Even you exagerated alot I will not defend me similar like you did.

But again. I doubt that you can use shaders like normal-mapping on top of your new A7.08 lightmapped geometry without loosing the shadows.
And still we have no second uv-set in mdl-format and problems with more than one uv / texture per uv-set (import, shaders and more).

Again: we are no spammers. We really work on a project and try to combine all those techniques. While we found solutions we had to work around many things, have to model in several layers per room and have to create more polygons than needed to overcome those issues. We need plugins and our own scene-management.

And we still do not have every feature working.

So I recommend: Just make a game and see yourself.

Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/17/08 11:00

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Ok, I wish you are right with all your lengthy emotionally post because it would make game developing easier for us. Even you exagerated alot I will not defend me similar like you did.

from what i gathered (a combination of your poor english, location associated with your username, and your incorrect assumptions about the emotion of my post) english is your second language, and therefore language barriers can be somewhat responsible for this argument.

i'm not disputing the trouble you had making these things, i simply (and quite calmly) pointed out that your post contained wrong assumptions.

i've made fully-functioning small games (one of which uses baked AO quite effectively), so don't make such bold assumptions about my knowledge of Gamestudio. i don't think you're a spammer, i just think you're mistaken and sell Gamestudio short.

as an obviously experienced user, your comments would hold more water if they were better researched and not so exaggerated, as one would expect.

julz

Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/17/08 13:13

Sorry for my bad English Julz and thanks for pointing that out. That is very kind of you and encourages me alot

I made clear points, called specific functions, problems and issues. I think even with my bad English it should be understandable.

You did not comment those problems but talked again about assumptions, exaggerations and language. So I must be right that you just defend yourself.

No problem for me but it leads to off-topic and so I suggest to stop it.

I mentioned clearly and obvious issues. And there is a reason why big companies rather use expensive engines instead of GS. We all know it. There must be issues and we should just understand it and live with it. We got what we paid for and that was a good deal.
We try to find workarounds and we are succesfull with it.

But still we should not betray ourselves and act like fanboys claiming A7 is a next-gen engine.

Posted By: Slin

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/17/08 15:19

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But again. I doubt that you can use shaders like normal-mapping on top of your new A7.08 lightmapped geometry without loosing the shadows.

Why shouldn�t that work?
It renders a shadowmap and creates a second uv-set. Both can be accessed by a shader and combined with normalmapping for example.

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And still we have no second uv-set in mdl-format and problems with more than one uv / texture per uv-set (import, shaders and more).

That is true but you could import the models as static gemetrie in WED have it generate the shadowmaps for it and display it however you want. The only thing which is important for this is that the new lightmapper has to work good.

sorry for beeing a bit offtopic...

Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/17/08 15:27

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sorry for beeing a bit offtopic...

No, dont feel sorry. This was a constructive post. Thanks for it.

I think you are right. With the option to access the second uv-set of static geometry in A7 it could be possible.

Our project is already in the making and we dont have time to wait for missing features and an external lightmapper tool is still better and has way more options than the shadow compiler will have. So we try to go with models and fight against those missing uv-sets.
But your ideas are great for other teams and can be very helpful.

Thanks again.

Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/18/08 00:12

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But still we should not betray ourselves and act like fanboys claiming A7 is a next-gen engine.

that's a simple example of you being wrong or at least exaggerating. i'm not claiming that A7 is next-gen. i'm claiming that the techniques discussed aren't next-gen and so A7 handles them fine.

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That is very kind of you and encourages me alot

i can't be sure whether or not that was sarcastic (it's hard to tell in writing), but if it was, i just want you to know i wasn't intending to come across rudely. i've had an argument before on these forums with someone else thanks to emotional implications unintentionally made across language barriers.

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I made clear points, called specific functions, problems and issues. I think even with my bad English it should be understandable.

You did not comment those problems but talked again about assumptions, exaggerations and language. So I must be right that you just defend yourself.

you mentioned three problems and i quite clearly addressed two of them -- my apparent emotional issues and my apparent lack of experience. the third was whether or not we could use the new lightmapper effectively with shaders which i couldn't comment on because i'm inexperienced with shaders in Gamestudio. thankfully Slin was able to respond.

you claimed Gamestudio is much less capable than it is, therefore you exaggerated. you assumed i had less experience than i do, therefore you made bold assumptions. considering this, what was wrong with me mentioning that you exaggerated and made false assumptions, as well as addressing whatever else you said that i could address?

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I mentioned clearly and obvious issues. And there is a reason why big companies rather use expensive engines instead of GS. We all know it. There must be issues and we should just understand it and live with it. We got what we paid for and that was a good deal.
We try to find workarounds and we are succesfull with it.

of course there are issues and i never disputed it. the engine has almost no issue with this article, however, which is the topic of this thread. instead the issues are mostly with an outdated physics engine and an incomplete toolset.

those quotes and my responses should make it quite clear that i've been responding directly to your posts and you have no cause for calling me a "fanboy" making unwarranted claims (which i never made).

sorry for this being off-topic but i'm sure everyone can understand me wishing to correct these false accusations and assumptions. unless more material related to the article is posted and i have reason for response, or other users address me in this thread, i'm not going to reply anymore to this thread because Father Frank so far has ignored my clear and well-founded responses and instead called me a fanboy and attempted to talk me down.

julz

Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/18/08 09:02

I would like to stop this off-topic dispute.

I just sum it up: We both agree on most cases. But unfortunately you feel attacked and respond quite loudly.
So I only have to beg your pardon. I never wanted to attack you personally. This is just a dispute about clearly mentioned problems that appear when you try to make modern visuals (missing second uv-set in mdl file, problems with more than one textur / uv per uv-set, missing shaders). Those problems still exist and you cannot talk them away and not distract from them.

But those problems of a software have nothing to do with your personal character and are not intended to insult you.

Best regards,
Frank

Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Creating Efficient Next Gen Environment Art[Ar - 01/18/08 11:14

well put, and as much as i said i wouldn't be responding again that was a very nicely put response and i'd like to end this on good terms. i'm sorry for over-reacting and (quite clearly in at least the last post) getting angry.

i was okay with leaving the discussion as it was before, but i'm much happier to leave it as it is now.

julz