Which game allows scenedepth export?

[STiFU]

For my research I need RGBZ-images i.e. a regular RGB-images plus depth and they should preferably be in stereo 3d. The depth needs to be perfectly conditioned rather than those faulty estimates that are usually used, which is why virtual scenes are the only way to go.

 

So I was wondering whether there are any games that more or less easily allow exporting a screenshot along with the pixelwise scene depth? Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Obsttorte]

For the depth normally three color chanells are used to get them right.

[STiFU]

Yeah, high bitdepth depthmaps would be preferred over an 8 bit grayscale, obviously.

 

Maybe there is a game where you can at least visualize the depthbuffer. Then you could use scripts and an external application to take the screenshots.

 

I also found this article, which explains how to visualize the depthbuffer using GLSL. Could that possibly be plugged in to some game as a shader?

 

We have already setup a Workflow for blender to export stereo 3d imagery along with the appropriate depthmaps, but lack in decent render content. Most free blender source files are missing some ressource files or are not compatible with stereo 3d rendering. In Big Bug Bunny for example the rendering of grass seems to be somewhat viewport dependent, which makes it useless for stereo 3d.

[Obsttorte]

TheDarMod can visualize the depthbuffer (r_showDepth 1 or so).

[STiFU]

Oh nice. However, the results look kind of weird. I tried stacking the components on top of each other (in all possible permutations) like this: 255*255*R + 255*G + B. But still no dice. I also tried it in original Doom 3, just to make sure this feature wasn't broken in TDM.

[nbohr1more]

Doom 3's depth buffer is a little strange because of the infinite far z hack. That's why Sikkpin hasn't been able to solve some of his SSAO issues for and left his post process method in place as I recall. If someone could figure out how to exclude skybox data from the z buffer that would be aces.

[STiFU]

Check out this depth buffer image from Doom. It does seem to be possible...

 

I found it in this article.

[STiFU]

I just had a talk to the guy who wrote that article and together we found out as follows: The 32 bit floating point depth buffer is simply output as RGBA without any casting operations whatsoever, which is why the above image looks so wonky. He retrieved the correct depthbuffer image using gDEBugger, but it should also be possible to correctly display it within D3 by proper casting.

 

I am gonna try and fix the depthmap display and implement a new function into tdm that lets you export depthmap in full 32 bit floating point format.

[Obsttorte]

It is, actually. See here.

[STiFU]

Awesomeness!!