Is Nvidia Remix technology possible to be applied on the Dark Mod?

[Nighthound]

Hey everyone!

I discovered the Dark Mod back in 2017 and as a fan of the original Thief 1 game, I instantly became a fan of this Mod's gameplay style and amazing content!

 

This is my first post here so excuse this short intro,

I just wanted to thank everyone that made this mod possible and for continuing working on it.

 

I was wondering, has anyone tried to see if Nvidia's latest tech, REMIX can be applied on the mod?

It looks SO promising!

 

Edited January 9, 2023 by Nighthound

[cabalistic]

Remix only works on DirectX 8 (and 9 without shaders) games, so I'm afraid the answer is no.

[nbohr1more]

Not sure what the license is but if the Nvidia Remix tool has textures with a creative commons license then someone could extract them and use the texture replace tool in Dark Radiant to update a mission with them.

The textures are most likely using a modern PBR format with metalness and roughness, so without PBR support in TDM they would need to be converted to a diffuse \ specular design ( I believe there are tools that automate going from legacy to PBR but I am not sure whether any texture author tool can do the reverse? )

There is a long term plan to evaluate whether allowing mixed legacy and PBR content the way that the "RBDoom3BFG" Doom 3 port does might be viable in TDM. If it turns out to be viable, then TDM would be able to use these "remix" textures natively without conversion ( again, as long as they are open CC assets and can be exported ).

As far as I can tell, Nvidia are locking down all remix aspects so that modders can only use it for Nvidia's intended purpose of upgrading old fixed-function games to RTX.

They aren't interested in shader based games or DX9+ because the change to Ray Tracing won't be as dramatic.

Anything using light-mapping with probes is going to get a negligible upgrade from changing the lighting model since lightmaps are already raytraced. They want really impressive before \ after pictures to sell the technology. Even TDM probably looks too good in the "before" state to be of interest to Nvidia.

( That said, I would gladly accept a ray tracing patch for TDM if Nvidia ever decided to create one for us...  )

[Wellingtoncrab]

34 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

There is a long term plan to evaluate whether allowing mixed legacy and PBR content the way that the "RBDoom3BFG" Doom 3 port does might be viable in TDM. If it turns out to be viable, then TDM would be able to use these "remix" textures natively without conversion ( again, as long as they are open CC assets and can be exported ).

This would be awesome for productivity on new assets as since almost everything gets authored as PBR the “tweaking to make things look right” in bump/spec often is the longest (and most frustrating) part of the process.

[madtaffer]

1 hour ago, nbohr1more said:

There is a long term plan to evaluate whether allowing mixed legacy and PBR content the way that the "RBDoom3BFG" Doom 3 port does might be viable in TDM. If it turns out to be viable, then TDM would be able to use these "remix" textures natively without conversion ( again, as long as they are open CC assets and can be exported ).

 

Who will be evaluating this plan? For what TDM version would RBDoom3BFG be target?

[Nighthound]

5 hours ago, cabalistic said:

Remix only works on DirectX 8 (and 9 without shaders) games, so I'm afraid the answer is no.

I see...

I was afraid that would be the answer.

Thank you for clearing it out.

[nbohr1more]

Quote

Who will be evaluating this plan? For what TDM version would RBDoom3BFG be target?

 

Several team members have expressed interest into evaluating PBR but there is no hard target for any progress because it would be a lot of work.

If someone wanted to take some existing TDM assets and convert them for use in Doom 3 BFG ( RBDoom3BFG ) so that they can be evaluated, it might speed up the initial phase work. ( Eg, make a small test map with all the basic visual components; AI models, wood, metal, water, glass (textures), and lighting ) We won't even ask for anyone to start this work until we have more commitment on the time-tables but we won't say no to any submission like this if someone is really motivated to get things going.

Going back to my previous post, it seems there is a workflow to convert PBR to Specular:

https://marmoset.co/posts/pbr-texture-conversion/

but I can't find any automation that does it.

 

 

 

[Nighthound]

2 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

Going back to my previous post, it seems there is a workflow to convert PBR to Specular:

https://marmoset.co/posts/pbr-texture-conversion/

but I can't find any automation that does it.

I am pretty sure there is a good reason for using the DOOM 3 engine,

but it does make me wonder for how long this project can remain active if it doesn't get transferred onto a modern game engine eventually.

Although I am afraid that if it gets transferred to a modern engine,

the temptation to make everything look photo realistic, will take away its retro-aesthetics-charm.

[HMart]

6 hours ago, Nighthound said:

I am pretty sure there is a good reason for using the DOOM 3 engine,

This game started has a Doom 3 mod and even thou I'm not on the team, I bet idTech 4 was chosen at the time, because it's real time per-pixel lighting and shadows, strongly resembled the look of Thief 3 and also the engine itself was very mod friendly, afaik more so than the heavily modified Unreal 2 engine used in Thief 3. 

6 hours ago, Nighthound said:

but it does make me wonder for how long this project can remain active if it doesn't get transferred onto a modern game engine eventually.

IMO this game will be active for years to come, at lest while there's people willing to work on it and making new missions, players will come.

And also the current TDM engine, is not the original Doom 3 engine, it got updated by the team through the years and as surpassed the original in many ways and will keep on evolving, while there's good c++ coders in the team, like currently they have.

[datiswous]

7 hours ago, Nighthound said:

the temptation to make everything look photo realistic, will take away its retro-aesthetics-charm.

I don't see a retro-aesthetics-charm in TDM, so I don't know what you mean by that.

I think that almost everything that I would like to see being prettier in this game can be done without changing the engine. And like Hmart said, the engine is constantly getting upgrades. Not the same as regular AAA games where you're usually stuck with an engine state.

[wesp5]

4 hours ago, datiswous said:

I think that almost everything that I would like to see being prettier in this game can be done without changing the engine.

I completely agree, and it seems that the core team focuses on improving the graphics with each new version anyway!

[chakkman]

It's amazing how TDM already progressed in that area over the last 10 years, if you take a look at some videos of people playing older missions in older TDM versions.

Personally, I don't need better graphics than TDM already offers. 

[Nighthound]

11 hours ago, datiswous said:

I don't see a retro-aesthetics-charm in TDM, so I don't know what you mean by that.

Yeah I get why this sounds confusing.

I guess the game did try to look as realistic as the engine permits it to be,

but there are some elements that look heavily stylized,

like trees

or the lit window panes on buildings, that cannot be accessed.

But yeah other than that, its not all that retro, you re right.

Still I fill that by making it 100% photo real and losing everything stylized, it might turn out a bit boring looking.

[datiswous]

6 minutes ago, Nighthound said:

I guess the game did try to look as realistic as the engine permits it to be,

I don't think it's so much an engine limitation. I think it's more an assets limitation. Some missions use a lot of external stuff (textures, models, etc.) and they look better.

[madtaffer]

1. How does RBDoom3BFG handle loading of data? Would loading speed be increased with Dark Mod being merged ?
2. Could Dark Mod size be reduced in half if not more with RBDoom3 textures and prefabs compression?

Edited January 10, 2023 by madtaffer

[nbohr1more]

TDM 2.10 and newer already have substantially improved data loading speeds due to SIMD mipmap and compression changes.

RBDoom3BFG does support binary asset loading but managing binary assets is generally seen as too cumbersome for most mappers.

TDM 2.10 and newer already supports RGTC normal map compression. If desired we could convert assets to that format. There is a reluctance to do so because material "program" keywords must decompress that data and this will lead to decompression artifacts in the final render. We would need to identify textures that no mission author would ever customize with keywords before deciding which ones to compress