Project: "Reality Render" (PSSM+PCSS, SSAO, PhysX)

Hi !
I'm working on a plugin, that can easily render "Parallel-Split Shadow Maps" with Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows, Screen Space Ambient Occlusion and have a support for the PhysX-Engine.
If I get a good performance and a good quality, I plan to sell it for about 10-20 Euro. If it doesn't work as I want it, you can get it for free!

Here is a screenshot of the PSSM with PCSS and SSAO (without textures, yeah it's the demo level):


To Do List:

- improve the quality and performance.
- add PhysX

oho! thats cool. does it support alpha maps, such as leaves?

good question ello and yes, I want to integrate that.
Oh and before I forget it, the plugin will only work for models.

Damn, it looking pretty nice.

If you manage to make this thing work i wont think a second to buy it.(for like €15)

i wonder how's gonna that physx thingy look in game. (well, i tried some cloth physics with phyx and i failed. )

Interesting. I wish you good luck. I am still working on PSSM implementation, but it's not that easy. I have a source code, converted from C++ and it seems to work for now, but I have problems combining the scene. I plan to recombine the splitted shadowmaps after having calculated them out of the splitted depth maps, into one mapping. Is this the right method? I don't really know how to combine them in GS, I tried it with rendering one by one into the screen using process_screen... it didn't work correctly. Can you give me a clue here?

the soft shadows look nice! i don't have such nice filtering in my pssm implementation yet. but the screen space ambient occlusion could be left away in my opinion.

redphoenix: you don't have to combine the maps and you don't have to do multipass rendering like in the opengl demo (i don't even know if this would be easily possible with a7). in the shader you can find the correct shadow map for each pixel by simply checking the distance from the camera.

Wow. This looks indeed very nice.
If it provides good shadows "out-of-the-box" at an acceptable framerate I would really consider buying it (even for 20 euros).

Keep it up!

@ventilator: Thanks again! I will try it immediatly!

Looks wonderful.
What about indoor shadowmaps, for spotlights, flashlights and omnidirectional point lights?
Will it be easy to combine with other shaders, like normalmapping, static lightmaps through Vents plugin and postprocessing effects?
Will stencil shadows work additionally?

yes fogman, that is my aim, to combine all these things. It is very important for me, to have indoor and outdoor lights working together in one level, at the same time. After I finished with the physXs, I make a little demo level with indoor/outdoor lighting, normalmapping and postprocessing effects.
I think stencil shadows slow down the engine too much, but there is no reason why it won't work...well let's see what I can do. I hope I get the physX working until monday.
Cu chris

Hi

This is so ACE

I so want this for my outdoor level, be great if someone can pull it off.

I think this is one of the most important shadow techniques and helpfully Conitec will help someone with this, because one of the main downsides of this engine is its shadows.

i dont think you need stencil shadows or static shadowmaps with that system, why would you? this looks like you dont need anything besides what it already delivers. i'd keep ssao and maybe you just create user-variables to select which features to use.

Hey, this looks great. I am excited.

Chris, if you need something (models or textures) for the demo, just let me know if I can be of help.

Regards,
Frank

If you look at actual games, you can notice a clever mixture of static lighting and dynamic shadowmapping, even with stencils.
The goal should be to provide a perfect working shadow for all situations.

I´m quite happy about your claims and I wish you success.

Wow, impressive!
I have long given up on creating nice dynamic shadowmapping for gs myself (in fact i kinda hate shadowmapping shaders by now. They come from the devil itself! ). Are you using a dll for this or is it pure lite-c? I'm asking this because i don't want another sphere-like plugin. Sphere was all nice and stuff, but it completely lacked a manual, wasn't compatible with new gs versions and you had to keep some things in mind/use workarounds if you were using sphere.

Anyway, i'm looking forward to this. If you can get it to work the way you planned (indoor & outdoor support) and it's based on lite-c, then i will 110% buy it

i think it will besomething mixed. some plugs + some lite-c.

rewriting all physx will take some long time if you do it with lite-c.

Hehe you're right i totally forgot about physX. Of course you would need at least the physX plugin for that
I was talking mainly about the shadows in my post. Sorry, my fault

Hi!

The next small step is done... I did the first physX-simple-boxes test:


The main problem, at the moment, is to combine the physX-engine with my renderer...there are few things I don't understand...so I would say...It will take more time as I thought to get both things working together. I think, I can manage to present you a little test demo until friday. But I can not promise it.

Greetings, Chris

P.S.:
@ BoH_Havoc : I have to make it as a dll, but I definitely don't want to create another kind of SphereEngine !
@ Machinery_Frank : Maybe later Frank, but thanks!

Sorry,
that it took so long, but I had some little problems with the PhysX stuff.
I hope you are still interested



Here is the first Beta Demo Version:
Demo Download

But I still have a lot of things to do:
- Change from DX View to 3DGS View (1-2days)
- Import all PhysX Features (min 1 week)
- Alpha sensitive depthmaps (1 day)
- Combine with Indoor Lights (2 days)

Greetings,
Chris

cant wait to see this running.

Can't wait to give it a whirl

The Beta Demo Version is online:
Demo Download

Install Instructions:

1. Install PhysX_Game_installer_280.msi
2. Run RRdemo.exe or RRdemo.c

if you want to use the RemoteDebugger.exe you have to start it first and than the RRdemo. ( It decreases the framerate rapidly )
Have Fun!

Having 2k physx boxes with no fps loss is fine.

But when i run the demo all i see is a white screen, when i turn off shadows and ssao,i can get the view.(i guess the plugin needs shader model 3 ? i have 2.). PSSM hud seems to be ok.

if the reason is really, shader model 3, you should consider making aegia and pssm+pcss+ssao plugins spare.

Same here! Even after installing a DirektXPack of March 2008!

Does it need a resolution of 1024X768 for the window?

Works on my machines. Things to mention:



That is bad. What is this?

And the app crashed when I pressed alt+enter to get into fullscreen mode.

It gets slow with "already" 500 boxes here. The shadows and the ssao are working fine for me. But what I don´t like about it are those lines of the ssao and bad shadowing if the angle of a box towards the sun is bad. I think you know this but it should be somehow possible to get it at least less visible.

Other than that, fantastic work

Edit: I forgot to mention that the shadows are looking wrong. Do you substract them from the basecolor? If this is the case, you should give multiplying a try.

alt anter also crashes on me, but if you edit the vide_screen line, it starts full screen

Oh my god!
Its fantastic!

Hi guys! Yeah, at the moment you can't switch to fullscreen in the demo.exe, but that will be fixed. It's still a very early beta state and a lot of things are missing or not working at the moment.

OH, and you need at least pixel shader 2_a , but maybe I can create a fallback for ps 2_0 or something. shader model 3 is not required!

Thanks for your critics...

@HeelX: I don't get that result maybe you can play with the views(1-9) and use F7 to see it without textures, I like to know were it comes from. Maybe its the SSAO shader... What video card do you have?

The application crashes on my pc where the faulting module is 3DGSRealityRender.dll. If I run the demo from SED it says "crash in Event". I have Vista Business x64. Graphics card supports psvs 4.0.

Hi Uhrwerk, I will try it tomorrow on a vista pc... Do you have DirectX March 2008 and the PhysX_280 installed on your machine?

@Slin: Thanks for the hint man, I try multiplying the shadows with the basecolor. I think the performance is fine at the moment. I will try to improve it, but when you render 500 physics boxes or more, that all cast and receive shadows, at the same time, your framerate slows down (depending on your pc hardware preformance, of cource). You shouldn't do that in your planned games...

Course. The error I am getting is E1513. I had this problem before with gamestudio occuring randomly on a certain line of code in my project. Rewriting large parts of the code did the job. However, I am not 100% sure if it is a general GameStudio Problem, a scripting error or something else. So you might not necessarily find anything out. JCL had his hands on my code and on his machines the crash I experienced didn't even occur.

Shadows need a sm 3.0?

Sure I am fine with 500 boxes :P it is just not much compared to the 2k Quadraxas mentioned
A question I came up with today was if it is possible not to render shadows (depthmaps) for all objects but only for a few to make things a bit faster (like NOFLAG1 for GS views).
And I found out that there are some problems with alphatesting when using fp textures with most ati cards...

At the moment you need sm 2_x (2_a) for the Shadow and ssao.
@Slin: Yes, I will definitely make a kind of NOFLAG1 thingy...
I will try the alphatesting today with shaders, so I get a workaround ...or not, we will see

I got an nice complete white screen.
seems like my card can't make use of shader 2.a

looks, nice, i get a slow down at about 900 boxes.

one thing to mention, (other than the close up artifacts, which heelx already brought up) is that it ssao seems really weak, like almost like its not even there. i'd darken its effect a little. also ive noticed, it seems like your shadows are not just darkening, but also oversaturating your levels and it makes some very ugly colors in the shadows.

other than that its some beautiful work

yes, the shadows look more like burn marks. should be easy to fix though. it's really stupid that physx needs a separate driver. hopefully this will get changed now that nvidia owns it.

This is realy great!!!
Everything I noticed is already mentioned.

Only two questions: Can this also be used whit A6? Do you plan to make seperate Versions of your plugin? One with PPSM and one with PhysX, because I don't want that everyone who plays my game has to install PhysX althoug the game doesn't use PhysX.

Dark_Samurai

this will also aplly to "i want physx but not ppsm"

hey, great work so far. things have already been mentioned about the artifacts
it works fine here if i dont go beyond key3

maybe a delete all objects shortkey would be cool for the demo, too

A Bug I noticed: If a box moves very fast, the shadows aren't refreshed fast enough and they appear in the air.
And the pssm is realy slow, much slower than stencil shadows. At least on my machine.

Dark_Samurai

So, I got the alphatesting working...


the last days I tried to get rid off the artifacts, but there is no good solution for it. Crytek samples the depthmap a few times and changes the position to blurry the artifacts away. But I want a cleaner way, which costs less render time... DONE

@ Dark_samurai: Emmm sorry man, but stencil shadows are slower than shadowmaps when you are rendering models with more than a few polys! I made a test level with 3 human models, which had about 2000-3000 vertices, and a small terrain. The framerate went from 100 to 5 when I switched on the stencil shadows! However, I am interested in a second stencil test and in the next demo you can fiqure it out on your own. (Also with cloth physX)

Does this work also for arbitrary alpha? I mean, when you have some trees and foliage realised as alpha sprites, how does the shadow look like?



I think it would be good if you can chose between good quality and better performance.

Cheers,
Christian

@Chris3D: Maybe this problem is only on my system, but with your demo I got 10-15 FPS with only 1 box, no physX no SSAO and low quality shadows.

System: 2x1.66 GHz, Ati Mobility Radeon X1400 256MB (another 256MB shared) shadermodel p3.0 v3.0, XP


Did you already get rid of this problem?

Dark_Samurai

@HeelX: In the final version the process will look like this:
1. You tell the renderer which models get a shadow (via a flag or a Light Manager)
2. The dll checks which objects need shadows and render them. If the models have an alpha channel in their texture, the shader uses the alpha channel and render it.
I hope this will help to understand the process.

@ dark_samurai: the problem or "bug" you see, only happens if your framerate is down, because the shadow is a post-processing-texture. I can change that and render the shadow directly on the models, but than you can't use the soft shader... well I will try to make the render process faster, so you won't see the "bug", but it's just a try...
It is really strange that it runs so slow on your machine, maybe its because of the physX, the rest is only a box and a plane, so only a few vertices points to render

sorry for my bad english, but I'm damn tired today.
Greetings from bavaria
Chris

A demo without physX would create clarification.

Are you planning to release 2 seperat plugins? One with physX and one with pssm?

Dark_Samurai

hey christ3D
will you optimaze your code, so it will run with graphic cards, who can't use shaders higher than 2.0?

because my graphic card, ati radeon x800 GTO² isn't THAT old...
also, you just can't make games for systems, that doesn't support 2.a+. the user-target-range would be just too small

Hi

Is your plugin just going to let you use PPSM?

Hi samurai,
I tend to make two plugins(shadows plugin & physX) and I want to create a new test demo till next sunday.

And yes Samb, I also make a fallback for lower 3d cards (with ps2.0)

Hi MaxF, what is PPSM? read the topic from the start and you will know what it is about...

This are great news!

Which features of PhysX will be implented?
I currently program a ragdoll system with Newton, but it's fairly difficult because I have to use a lot of workarounds...
Will this be easier with your PhysX-Plugin?

Are your plugins A6 compatible?

Dark_Samurai

Hi Mean PSSM


And you have answer my question thanks

How far are you away from public release?

I want to implement (almost) all physX features.

Yes, I will create a DX user interface for setting things up.

I haven't tested it yet, but I think it will work.

I think, about 2-3 month is more or less realistic. However, I don't know, maybe some really big problems will come up (hope not), so far everything works fine.

Hi guys!

I said I would upload a new demo today, but now I think, it is better to wait until I add the indoor lights.
What I have improved:
- There are now two plugins: physX.dll and Render.dll
- The Renderer is now working with the 3dgs-view, so you can e.g. change camera.aspect and camera.arc. Also Alt+Enter or F5 works (last time I forgot on_d3d_lost ).
- At the moment, every entity is rendered automatically with a shadow (also with alpha maps).

So far everything works perfect, I hope the indoor stuff won't take so long.
Greetings,
Chris

I was wondering what you will use for indoor lightmapping?
cubemapping,paraboloid mapping,... ?

Also which technique?
PCSS,VSM,Shadow Smoochies,no Softshadows at all,... ?

Or maybe a stencil shadow/shadowmapping hybrid solution making use of the benefits of both techniques?

I'm just curious, this is no critique or anything (And after all i couldn't even criticize the indoor lights as i haven't seen them yet )

OMFG ^_^
Good job! Waiting a new demo =)

ammm...shader model 2.0 is not supported =(?

@JackShephard: He answered this question above:




@BoH_Havoc: Look at the headline he is using PSSM/PCSS.



Does this mean that the last demo wasn't rendered with GS?

Yes i know he's using PSSM/PCSS for outdoor scenes, but using PSSM for indoor lights would be total overkill
Ah well, i'll just wait and see

Oh, I thought that he ment PSSM for outdoor and PCSS for indoor. My fault...

Dark_samurai oh thanks, sorry i have not see...

Hi,

I will make a option to switch PCSS on or off for both, indoor and outdoor lights.


I used a DirectX view and now it is a post processing effect on the a7 view.
You always render with the DirectX API, this has nothing to do with 3dGS, even the a7 view is just a modified directX view.
In c lite you can also use OpenGL, so maybe, I will later convert my finished plugin to OpenGL.

when could we see your demo?

when it is finished!

sorry, but it is difficult to say, perhaps you can figure it out by your own, when I tell you what features I want for the next demo:
I want:
- to make the indoor lights with cubemapping (and Dual Paraboloid Mapping).
- to build a garden with a little house, so that I can combine the indoor/outdoor lights. ->for that I have to create models and textures.
- to add (GPU)skinning and instancing.
- the physX cloth working.

wow...nice features..waiting a demo =)

you are doing a great thing there!

yeah, we all are waiting for it :-)

Yes you are, keep up the great work

I'm so looking forward to PSSM+PCSS

Thanks you for your support, guys!
Good news, I finally got the cube mapping shadow working! On thursday I am going to start creating the demo level... so maybe on Sunday you can see new screenshots!

Greetings,
Chris

You could use a cave and terrain instead of house and garden!
What about using one of the procedural generated models with a cave or dungeon like area?
You could add a terrain to get a more steady ground beneath.

Another idea to speed up the finishing:

What about using rvl_eXiLe's cave?
Free Models

Wow, great news, good work =)

Here You see some Images of my cave...

http://exile123456.ex.funpic.de/images/pics/1.jpg
http://exile123456.ex.funpic.de/images/pics/3.jpg
http://exile123456.ex.funpic.de/images/pics/4.jpg
http://exile123456.ex.funpic.de/images/pics/7.jpg
http://exile123456.ex.funpic.de/images/pics/10.jpg

Hey eXile, cool Contributions! However, It would be great if you post smaller screenshots next time, so that we don't lose the overview. But Thanks, I will think about it! At the moment I am still coding the lights.
Greetings Chris

Hi guys, sorry that I didn't show you new stuff for today, but I was ill the last days, however... the indoor lights are working, I only have to combine them... I try to finish it for tomorrow.

Looking forward to it. Hope you are well again.

rv_exile: Could you please reduce the image size? I have to scroll horizontally to read the posts here.

Hi guys!
I really try to finish the light stuff, but it is not so easy...well, I finally combined the sun with one omni light, but I want more than one point light!
So, I am trying to make a light cycle function that uses only one cube shadow texture. I think, it will push the performance and give you the possibility to create unlimited point lights
here is an early screenshot of the sun shadow (black) in combination with an omni light (gray):


Plz no discussion about that, it's still in beta process.

CU

Do i see this right? Distance based penumbra on the omnilight shadow?



This sounds interisting. So you are using the same cubemap for different lights? Or are you rendering 1 cubemap per frame, cycling through all lights (this would result in a lagging shadow i guess)?
Well, whatever it is, i am looking forward to the next demo

Keep up the great work!

Yes great work, keep it up you are a star

Hi guys, thanks for the nice words!

@Havoc:
Yes, you can use PCSS for all omnilights!
At the moment, I'm rendering all cubemaps per frame and, of course, when you render a lot of lights it gets laggy, BUT when I implement the common performance tricks for omni lights, you will get great(fast) results.

I know there are a lot of artifacts in the screens, but as I told you, this is not finished yet, so far...so good.


^^ On the screens you can see the prototype for the next demo level (a remake of the NVIDIA demo). I also want to add palms and a car, with realtime reflection. And the textures with normalmapping are missing, too!

Wow!
I especially like the inside-outside combinations!

great!

how is the performance? the highest fps you get and your system specs?

This looks very impressive!

Do you still work on the PhysX plugin or do you develop the shadow plugin first and than the PhysX plugin?

Dark_Samurai

great! you are doing a superb job there!!!

Around 200 fps (with sun and 1 light).
My system: Duo-Core 3.0Ghz, Geforce 8 GTS, 2048 RAM


Yes, first I will finish the first beta version of the shadow plugin (planned: end of the next week). Than continue the physX stuff.
Greetings
Chris

P.S.: I have to do a little break until next wednesday.

Hi Chris

This is great news

Keep up the fab work - you rock

Looking good!
fps aren't bad at all, too

How's it going?
Any news?

Hi!

Sorry, I had to do a lot of things in the last week, but now I have more time for the plugin, again!
I almost finished the texturing of the (free) demo level:


this is not rendered with the plugin, with the plugin it will look better!

Greetings
Chris

ooohhh......can´t wait to play the DEMO!!!
:P

same. Can't wait to see more

i am really curious how it'll run here

If so I will call you a god ^^

Dark_Samurai

Hi guys,

I had a hard time last week...well, I am still working on the omni lights. I have to optimize them and for that, I need to calculate the intersection between the camera frustum and a light frustum. After searching for a helping code, a long time, I gave up and wrote it by my own. but, this is only one part of the optimization stuff, there are a few more, I hope I can finish this stuff next week. Maybe someone knows a good site for detecting intersction of a edge and a frustum?
However, it goes on, you will see...
And thanks for the nice comments

Greetings chris

Maybe you are interested how the working intersection test looks like, here a screen:


the orange line intersects with the plane.
CU

Something like this?
http://www.ce.chalmers.se/~uffe/xjobb/SoftShadows2.pdf

Hi, I have now 50 percent of the shadow optimization behind me, maybe after the next week I can present you the new shadow demo.

Nice to hear that work goes on!
I'm very curious on the new demo!!!

Dark_Samurai

Is the new demo ready and post at another place or are you still working on it?

Hi,
sorry that I didn't reply, I have a lot of things to do: working on a new 2d jump 'n run for the games convention, I have to design a character and make a flash project. And of cource I am still working on the plugin, but with less priority. I added a object control system, so you can move(rotate,scale) the models in the level to the right place and save / load it. It's a little realtime leveleditor. The whole system is created dynamically, so you don't have to add extra line or arrow models in your work folder.


Oh and by the way I am planning an XNA support... this has nothing to do with 3DGS.
Greetings
Chris

When will the plugin become available?

I think, at the end of August... but I can't promise

I would love to see some new screenshots/a video of the current state so that waiting to the end of august won't be that hard

Dark_Samurai

Hi guys, sorry but it is still not finished yet. I have problems with vista, the omni shadow doesn't show up, and I don't know why... .

Greetings Chris

just reinstall XP... in any case you are still alive..

I hope you solve this problem soon, because I can't wait anymore

Dark_samurai

hey chris, how are things evolving?

Hi

Is this dead?

Anyways there is a new PSSM in Shader X6, called "Stable rendering of cascaded shadow maps by Michal Valient" and yes before you start cascaded shadow are PSSM just another name for them.

They say its fast and avoids shadow shimmering by removing two main causes of sub-pixel changes ( shadow map image rotation and panning).

Plus they say it will run on old cards not just Direct X10.

Anyone else have the book? (anyone who is good at shaders).

Can I use this for my GS Project?

heya, i hope you have not been eaten up by one of those crazy maneaters?

Any updates to this?

Sadly, It's dead.

where did you got that info from? maybe it's delayed?

So where's the download link?

oh no, please, don't die

no download link doesnt mean it is dead.
and "delayed" means, it's not ready yet.

if you are not really sure, (asking author etc.) don't speak so ceratin. there is words for stating that you are not really sure like

"im not sure but...","i guess ...","maybe ..."
but to say
"Sadly, it's dead." -> you have to be sure.(it's a strange ability to deduce that a project is dead because there is no download link.)

Hi guys! the plugin is alive again !!!
It took me a long time, but now it's back! i am not joking you will see!

HE´S ALIVE!!! ^^

Great!

YES! YES! YES!

This are great news.

yeah, he is still aive :)))

and the plugin gets done you make neat one for the people still alive.

(Im fine, im fine.)
---------------------------
Great news ChrisB.

Nice to hear that there´s progress again!

Yeah,
I know you want some input, so here are 2 possible filter methods of my plugin for the shadows:


the left one is PCSS with an irregular map + blur
the right one is a 5x5tap filter with edge smooth

In comparison to the old version, they look much better now!
You can also see, that I have some problems with the splits, (only split-one renders) When I solve this problem, I will release a new beta version!

Chris

Sounds cool! Can't wait.

PS: I like the look of the second screenshot more

Hi

Well the link does not work

@MaxF: which link?

ok, I made a new topic for my almost new plugin
here is the link:
Beta version

the beta link