Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Graphics Technology Sharepoint


STiFU

Recommended Posts

On 5/16/2020 at 8:46 PM, STiFU said:

 

P.S. Going from an arena shooter to loot box gambling is quite a stretch, don't you think? ^^ Also, it's not like Quake 3 invented multiplayer. 😉

It popularized and mainstreamed FPS multiplayer. Quake Champions had loot boxes. It's only the logical continuation.

Not so fun when some of my friends turned into junkies for another shot of dopamine.

 

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

badge?user=andarson

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A bit more grounded discussion on UE5 demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KgWJ1RxDhw

It also aligns with what I've been thinking, e.g. that the quality of the character model is still last gen. Or that these 30-million polygon models are just impossible to have in a production environment.

I've also checked the latest Megascans video:

And you know what, I thought I had a pretty beefy rig. This scene runs at 20 fps for me, in a viewport. In fullscreen mode is more like 5 fps. And it really doesn't look much better than e.g. last Uncharted games.

But right now I kind of understand why they've been pushing this "no-polygon limit" approach – so they can bind you to use Megascans and their hugely unoptimised assets. This scene is also not possible to have in a current production environment (i.e. a full game with AI logic, etc.). But AAA companies will jump at this as fast as they can, because the workflow they propose in this video is hugely beneficial to them. Once Megascans libraries are comprehensive enough, the role of "3d artist" will be to search through them, find an asset, choose from available dropdowns, push some sliders on a material level and insert asset into a level. In a sense, there will be no need for a 3d artist, as level designers could easily do that job themselves, or there will be a highly replaceable "asset finder" post, where any monkey with a week of training would do.

But that's AAA business I guess, indie games will still hire modelers and 3d artists with a classic skill set.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, peter_spy said:

I've also checked the latest Megascans video:

The portayed workflow and the way of customization is incredible, 'though.

Oh and, I loved Uncharted, but it definitely did not have that level of fidelity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Never played Uncharted, not a console player so can't comment on that, but I do agree with peter_spy this is the death strokes for normal 3D artists, this will be a age for sculptures and scanners, just like in the movies. IMO the ones that will still have some job security, will be riggers and animators but I bet, even they will also go the way of the Dodo, some AI system will come that will automatically rig and animate a character, I already saw some baby steeps for that, on the youtube channel, two minutes papers.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, STiFU said:

Oh and, I loved Uncharted, but it definitely did not have that level of fidelity.

obraz.png

obraz.png

obraz.png

 

 

Btw. I've seen that Rebirth cinematic: https://youtu.be/9fC20NWhx4s

IMO it's a very good representation of what AAA industry is right now: style over substance lvl 1000. Ultimately, the tech and resources mean nothing to the audience, when the script is at this level of shallow and cringe. Although the tech nerds in comments under this video are getting orgasms one by one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, peter_spy said:

But AAA companies will jump at this as fast as they can, because the workflow they propose in this video is hugely beneficial to them. Once Megascans libraries are comprehensive enough, the role of "3d artist" will be to search through them, find an asset, choose from available dropdowns, push some sliders on a material level and insert asset into a level. In a sense, there will be no need for a 3d artist, as level designers could easily do that job themselves, or there will be a highly replaceable "asset finder" post, where any monkey with a week of training would do.

But that's AAA business I guess, indie games will still hire modelers and 3d artists with a classic skill set.

https://quixel.com/blog/2020/5/14/building-next-generation-experiences-with-megascans-and-unreal-engine-5

Quote

While Megascans is designed to enable an incredibly high level of photorealism for the world’s most ambitious projects, it’s also completely free for use with Unreal Engine.

https://quixel.com/blog/2019/11/12/quixel-joins-forces-with-epic-games

Quote

 

The Megascans library is now completely free for use with Unreal Engine.

That means that if you are using Megascans with UE4, you get free, unlimited, and instant access to all of Megascans through Bridge and Mixer, and a wealth of Megascans packs on the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Ten high-resolution packs have been shared today for free on the Unreal Engine Marketplace, with additional asset packs being made available for free on the Marketplace at a future date within the Unreal Engine 4.24 release timeframe. This way, you can access the content in whatever way you prefer.

 

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/05/unreal-engine-is-now-royalty-free-until-a-game-makes-a-whopping-1-mill/

Quote

 

As of today, any game or software maker who uses Unreal Engine for commercial purposes doesn't owe Epic Games a penny until a single piece of software exceeds one meeeeeeellion dollars ($1,000,000) in gross revenue. This is on top of the company's existing policy to not charge Unreal Engine users a monthly fee, whether they're using the software suite for commercial or educational purposes.

Previously, Epic offered a royalty-free grace period for a game or app's first $50,000 of revenue, then began requiring payment of 5 percent of the software's "worldwide gross revenue" from that point on, including DLC, crowd-sourced fundraising related to the software, and other related revenue streams. That 5-percent fee still applies, but it now leaves game makers unaffected until a $1 million threshold is hit.

 

If I'm reading the situation right, Epic wants Unreal Engine to be used by indie games, and indie developers will have access to Megascans through Unreal Engine. Niche indie games may never hit the $1 million revenue mark, but some unexpected hits might. And it gets more developers hooked on using Epic's tools, possibly for the rest of their careers.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, jaxa said:

If I'm reading the situation right, Epic wants Unreal Engine to be used by indie games, and indie developers will have access to Megascans through Unreal Engine. Niche indie games may never hit the $1 million revenue mark, but some unexpected hits might. And it gets more developers hooked on using Epic's tools, possibly for the rest of their careers.

With Tencent's money, they're trying to cover all fronts, but megascans content does run like shit even on decent modern machines. And that auto LODing system that will come with UE5 will require some serious hard drive throughput. There are rumors that PS5 has some next-gen SSD that allows it, so that would make sense. But I doubt indie studios will want to force highest hardware requirements for their games. Either that or they'll be spending most of their time optimizing someone else's models.

Not to mention that there are quite many indie studios specializing in stylized art (pixel, voxel, handpainted), so no jobs for slider pushers there :P

 

I wouldn't be surprised though, if a UE5/Megascans combo will be heavily used in VFX and Cinematography. Prototyping lighting and camerawork will be much faster than doing tests on location only.

 

Side note: I know that I'm getting grumpy, but the whole thing kind of makes me like idTech4 even more. Its limitations (no GI, old shaders, etc.) are opportunity for you to grow as 3d artist, and you will see that improvement in the scenes you make. If you have no idea about how light works, how surfaces react to light, how objects are made, and you don't really care about all that, it will be reflected in the quality of your maps and models. But once you start learning all this, or if you have some experience in drawing, photography, etc., the quality of your work will become better and better. It's a joyous process and no amount of sliders and picklists will give you that ;)

Edited by peter_spy
Side note added.
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, peter_spy said:

...

Side note: I know that I'm getting grumpy, but the whole thing kind of makes me like idTech4 even more. Its limitations (no GI, old shaders, etc.) are opportunity for you to grow as 3d artist, and you will see that improvement in the scenes you make. If you have no idea about how light works, how surfaces react to light, how objects are made, and you don't really care about all that, it will be reflected in the quality of your maps and models. But once you start learning all this, or if you have some experience in drawing, photography, etc., the quality of your work will become better and better. It's a joyous process and no amount of sliders and picklists will give you that ;)

Completely agree, this is also happening in the world of programming, more and more programmers don't know how CPU's and RAM really works, even tho I don't consider my self a good c++ programmer far from it, I know that by working on idtech 4 c/c++ code base, I've learned more about low level coding (using pointers for example) and how memory works than the years I spent messing around with Unity and java scripting. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, HMart said:

More and more programmers don't know how CPU's and RAM really works.

I am not sure that is true. I think all my c++ colleages know enough about that stuff to write efficient code. But yeah, sure you learn nothing about cpu and memory when using java script. ^^

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not really talking about c/c++ programmers, those for the most part know that (or at lest should) but web programmers, those coding in java script, UE4,/Unity c#, etc, anyone coding on high level languages that hides that stuff from them and those, I think you concur, are the majority of programmers now.

Also don't take my word for it, i'm not even a professional coder, if you follow HandMade Hero developer and Jonathan Blow, maker of the game "The Witness" you will hear them sometimes say, how Software today is garbage, because many programmers don't know how to really code in a way to take full advantage of the hardware they are running on and thse guys have 30 years of experience.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's easy to criticize it, but it is probably a good thing overall. Higher level languages, more abstraction, more hardware than you need, etc. lets a noob generation of developers get more things done. Throw in machine learning algorithms, procedural generation, denoised ray tracing, megascan libraries, etc. and development gets even easier.

On the ray tracing front, here is a new story:

NVIDIA Researchers Demonstrate New Raytracing Algorithm That Can Render Direct Lighting from Millions of Dynamic Light Sources

https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2020-07_Spatiotemporal-reservoir-resampling/ReSTIR.pdf

youtube.com/watch?v=HiSexy6eoy8

Edited by jaxa
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have no problem with making life easy for artists and programmers for the contrary, is just that we should still encourage people to go low level, but of course still have those higher level tools for those that don't care, is just that I think that if we are not careful, we will reach a time where, no one can push tech forward because the knowledge is just not there. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The solution is simple. Offer six figure salaries or huge contracts for low-level programmers (and COBOL). Give peanuts to easily replaceable JavaScript developers. The problem will solve itself, and the expertise will live on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And that's what will become of 3d artists. Slider pushers will get peanuts (although 3d artists are not exactly gods even now).

But IMO what's more important, if the majority of such "artist" community will not have basic artistic / technical skills, they will have no say on what direction the tools or the tech could or should take. They will just passively get on to whatever new thing is given to them. And that might ultimately be what's this all about. To make as many people as possible disposable, and lower the expertise to make them passive, so you're in the full control of what technology is being pushed and when. Btw. level designers are next, there are already neural networks learning how to furnish rooms, houses, public spaces, etc.

Edited by peter_spy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wasn't impressed by Unreal Engine 5 at all.

I don't see what's new to this, just more polys for the environment while keeping good performance? What about the GAME SIZE and LOADING TIMES?
Then they mention something old; physics on clothing and water. Yeah, this sure is new.
And I know this is a common practice...These days, sadly, but mentioning third-party tools doesn't make your engine look any good, if not worse. Why use a third-party to make something look good? Why not use the tools in the engine itself?
I guess it doesn't have it, so let's not use them.

I find it silly how the guy starts to talk about how the "light bugs" react to the light and that there, what was it, there are "real shadows" around the environment?

And man, this is the worst Tech Demo to show. Just look at the colours, it's brown brown brown, which is not bad BUT if you want to give an impression, you should use a lot more colours. Why not a Desert City, that shares a border with a beautiful green oasis and its skyline is an orange-purple?

Maybe I'm just an asshole, I demand more and too much, I want "perfection" and UE5 is very good right now. I'm not sure, but I'm very disappointed in today's videogame industry.
Like I said in another thread, Doom Eternal is great, the engine is AMAZING, but the game was rather dull after you finish it one time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, The Black Arrow said:

These days, sadly, but mentioning third-party tools doesn't make your engine look any good, if not worse. Why use a third-party to make something look good? Why not use the tools in the engine itself?

Not sure what you're talking about here. What tools, other than industry standard ones?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/30/2020 at 2:33 PM, peter_spy said:

Not sure what you're talking about here. What tools, other than industry standard ones?

They mention "Quixel" and I believe another was "Substance Painter".

Good tools, sure, but I feel it's rather lazy how they had to use these just to make an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Substance Painter is for authoring materials, baking additional textures, painting over models, etc. The whole Substance suite is geared towards 3d artists, so they can make better materials, and it has been an industry standard for years. And there's nothing lazy about it. Making materials for games is awfully time consuming, and Substance makes it a little bit easier and faster. Again, no idea how's that connected with "making an engine look good". Good Substance materials will make models look good on any engine.

Edited by peter_spy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/30/2020 at 12:36 PM, The Black Arrow said:

I wasn't impressed by Unreal Engine 5 at all.

I don't see what's new to this, just more polys for the environment while keeping good performance?

So I am guessing you skipped the part where they showed off those incredible GIs?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, STiFU said:

So I am guessing you skipped the part where they showed off those incredible GIs?

Nope, those didn't impress me either, but I can't deny it's an advancement compared to what Unreal Engine 4 had, so it's still good.

Honestly, I'm more concerned in how good in performance Unreal Engine 5 will be, because a LOT of Unreal Engine 4 games I played had terrible performance, despite the fact I have an RTX 2070. My CPU does suck, rather old, it's an i7 2600k, but it can run Id Tech 7 (Doom Eternal) at 122 FPS with no drops.

If you're going to tell me that it's most surely the developers' fault, they don't know how to optimize; I can't argue with that, it's true. But goddamn, I'd really love it if there was an engine that came with optimizations already done.

P.S. Doesn't anybody else feel like the character is out of place compared to the boring all-brown color environment? It's a bit uncanny valley.

Edited by The Black Arrow
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The character is definitely last gen in comparison. And also it's not the same thing to have a 30-million poly static mesh (statue), and a 30-million poly animated character. I don't think it even would be possible to rig such complex model at this point. Simpler models, below 10 million poly, would probably crash a modeling app during rigging or export.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer  »  DeTeEff

      I've updated the articles for your FMs and your author category at the wiki. Your newer nickname (DeTeEff) now comes first, and the one in parentheses is your older nickname (Fieldmedic). Just to avoid confusing people who played your FMs years ago and remember your older nickname. I've added a wiki article for your latest FM, Who Watches the Watcher?, as part of my current updating efforts. Unless I overlooked something, you have five different FMs so far.
      · 0 replies
    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...