Course Description

Welcome to the fourth generation of this course, presented at SIGGRAPH 2009 on Monday, August 3rd, 2009!  (Previous years’ course contents can be found here for those who are interested). The course was presented as a two-part course (Part I and Part II), covering a series of topics on the best innovations and practical techniques prevalent in state-of-the-art rendering of several award-winning games and forward-thinking rendering research that will be found in the games of tomorrow.

 

Advances in the real-time graphics research and the ever-increasing power of mainstream GPUs and consoles continues to generate an explosion of innovative algorithms suitable for fast, interactive rendering of complex and engaging virtual worlds. Every year the latest video games display a vast variety of sophisticated algorithms resulting in ground-breaking 3D rendering pushing the visual boundaries and interactive experience of rich environments. The focus of this course lies in bridging the game development community and the state-of-the-art 3D graphics research, encouraging cross-pollination of knowledge for future games and other interactive applications.


This course is the fourth installment in the now-established series of SIGGRAPH courses on real-time rendering, bringing the best of graphics practices and research from the game development community, and providing practical and production-proven algorithms. This year, the course includes speakers from the makers of several award-winning games, such as Bungie, Media Molecule, Crytek, Black Rock Studio; as well as representative from leading graphics IHVs. The topics cover practical methods of global illumination, postmortem on lessons learned throughout development of an award-winning game, designing pipeline for rendering thousands of lights in real-time, techniques for effective foliage and shadow rendering and many other ‘bleeding-edge’ production secrets!

 



Syllabus

Introduction: Graphics Feature Development for Games 

Natalya Tatarchuk (Bungie)


Lighting Research at Bungie

Hao Chen (Bungie), Natalya Tatarchuk (Bungie)

Light Propagation Volumes in CryEngine 3

Anton Kaplanyan (Crytek)

 

The Light Pre-Pass Renderer: Renderer Design for Efficient Support of Multiple Lights

Wolfgang Engel (Rockstar)

 

Rendering Technology at Black Rock Studios

Jeremy Moore (Black Rock Studio), David Jefferies (Black Rock Studio)

 

When Fuzzy is Good: Advances in Filtering Techniques

Jason Yang (AMD)


Graphics Engine Postmortem from LittleBigPlanet

Alex Evans (MediaMolecule)

 

 

Lighting Research at Bungie

Abstract: The talk focuses on the latest directions for lighting research in Bungie, such as high-quality real-time lighting with advanced atmospheric rendering and continuous time of day, as well as efficient prefilterable soft shadows. The speakers will also explore fast methods for generation of pre-computed global illumination using modern GPUs.

 

Presenters:

Hao Chen (Bungie), Natalya Tatarchuk (Bungie)

Affiliation:

Bungie

Bios:

Hao Chen is the graphics architect and one of the engineering leads for Bungie Studio, where he currently leads the research and development of Bungie’s next generation graphics engine. He was the graphics engineering lead of Halo3. Prior to that, Hao has worked on numerous game titles for Microsoft and Bungie on the Xbox and PC platforms, including Outwars, AMPED1, AMPED2, and Halo2.

Natalya Tatarchuk is an engineering architect driving state-of-the art next-gen rendering engine and game graphics for the unannounced title at Bungie. Previously she was a graphics software architect and a project lead in the Game Computing Application Group at AMD Graphics Products Group (Office of the CTO) where she pushed parallel computing boundaries investigating innovative real-time graphics techniques. Additionally, she had been the lead of ATI’s demo team creating the innovative interactive renderings and the lead for the tools group at ATI Research. She has published papers and articles in various computer graphics conferences and technical book series, and has presented her work at graphics and game developer conferences worldwide.

 

Materials:
(Updated July 12th 2016)

Slides (PDF)

 

 

 

 

Light Propagation Volumes in CryEngine 3

Abstract: In this talk a new technique for real-time computation of the first bounce of diffuse global illumination will be introduced. We present the light propagation volume - a completely dynamic solution using spherical harmonics irradiance volumes for light field finite-element approximation, point-based infusive volumetric rendering and a new light propagation approach. 

Our implementation proves that it is possible to use this solution efficiently even with the current generation of console hardware. Because this technique doesn't require any preprocessing stages and fully supports dynamic lighting/scene/cameras, it's possible to harmoniously integrate it into an extremely complex cross-platform engine (CryEngine 3) with a large set of graphics technologies without requiring additional production time.

 

Presenters:

Anton Kaplanyan (Crytek GmbH)

 

Bios:

Anton Kaplanyan is a software engineer and member of the Research Team at Crytek. During the development ofCryEngine 3 he was responsible for multiple researches on graphics and performance optimizations for current generation of consoles. Currently he is busy working on the next iteration of the engine to keep pushing future PC and next-gen console technology. Prior to joining Crytek he received his M.S. in Computer Science at Moscow University of Electronic Engineering, Russia in early 2007.

 

Materials:
(Updated July 12th 2016)

Slides, Course Notes Chapter PDF, Video: Global Illumination (Download AVI), Video: Massive Lighting (Download AVI)

 

The Light Pre-Pass Renderer: Renderer Design for Efficient Support of Multiple Lights

Abstract: This talk will describe a renderer design that allows a huge number of lights while being very efficient on the current generation of graphics hardware. This technique provides easy support for MSAA, as well as allows significantly larger number of dynamic lights as compared to other rendering styles (for example, as forward rendering or typical deferred rendering). An additional benefit of this renderer pipeline is lower bandwidth utilization. Our technique can be implemented on a wide variety of consumer graphics hardware, including scaling the technique to work on DirectX8-level hardware.

The talk covers the idea behind the design and outlines the advantages and disadvantages of this renderer design when compared to a Z Pre-Pass renderer or a Deferred Renderer. We will cover practical examples of this renderer as utilized in popular video games developed by such companies as Crytek, DICE, GSC World and Insomniac, among some. We will also cover future directions and modifications of the original technique.

Presenters:

Wolfgang Engel (Rockstar Games)

Bios:

Wolfgang Engel was working for the last four years in Rockstar's core technology group as the lead graphics programmer. Now he is taking a sabbatical to do some research into next-gen graphics. He is the editor of the ShaderX books, the author of several other books and loves to talk about graphics programming. He is also a MVP DirectX since July 2006 and active in several advisory boards in the industry.

 

Materials:
(Updated July 12th 2016)

PowerPoint Slides

 

 

Rendering Technology at Black Rock Studios

Abstract: This talk will describe a number of graphics techniques used for the upcoming Disney Entertainment game “Pure”. These will include the method for rendering ground cover in Pure to add detail to the playable surface and give the tracks an organic feel, including plants, grass and small shrubs; applying irradiance volumes as a post-process; G-buffer MSAA edge detection using centroid interpolation sampling; and GPU management of a memory pool.  Additionally, the talk will also cover the methods for integrating deferred shading and shadowing in Split / Second, and using irradiance volumes for lighting. 

Presenter:

Jeremy Moore (Black Rock Studio), David Jefferies (Black Rock Studio)

Bios:

Jeremy Moore is the lead engine programmer for the Core Technology Group at Black Rock Studio in Brighton, UK. He has been working in the games industry for over a decade with spells at Mirage Technologies, Blade Interactive Studios and Video System. At Black Rock he spent four years working on SCEA's ATV Offroad Furygames on both PS2 and PSP. Amongst other things he was responsible for the acclaimed network play implementation. He now specializes in real-time graphics.

David Jefferies is the technical director of Split/Second at Black Rock Studio in Brighton, UK. He started off as a programmer at Psygnosis in 1995, where he worked on the Global Domination and Wipeout 3 teams. After a time at Rare, David joined Black Rock in 2003 where he has led the technical development of MotoGP'06, MotoGP'07and Split/Second.

 

Materials:
(Updated July 12th 2016)

Slides, Video: Pure (No Foliage),  Video: Split / Second

 

 

When Fuzzy is Good: Advances in Filtering Techniques

Abstract: We will present current rendering research at AMD in anti-aliasing (AA), glossy rendering, and depth of field. The latest generation of graphics hardware provides direct access to multisample anti-aliasing rendering data. By taking advantage of these existing pixel subsample values, reconstruction filters can be computed using programmable GPU shader units. Summed-area tables are a data structure that can be leveraged to implement spatially-varying, constant-time filtering. When used in the standard “forward” direction, they can be used to approximate glossy reflections and image-based lighting. When used in the “reverse” direction, they can be used to implement a novel technique we refer to as filter spreading, which naturally mimics the effects of real lenses, such as a limited depth of field.

 

Presenter:

Jason Yang (AMD)

Bio:

Jason Yang is a Member of Technical Staff in AMD’s Office of the CTO focusing on parallel computing using graphics processors. He is currently the technical lead for game physics on the GPU. Other projects he has been involved with include HD video decoding, shader based anti-aliasing, encryption, and Stream Computing. He received his PhD in computer science and his BS in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005 and 1999 respectively.

 

Materials:
(Updated July 13th 2016)

Slides, Video: Raytracing, Video: Summed Area Tables

 

Graphics Engine Postmortem from LittleBigPlanet

Abstract: In this presentation, the makers of the award-winning LittleBigPlanet will describe some of the lessons learned and production decisions behind the graphics engine that made the immensely customizable and cohesively stylized world of LittleBigPlanet possible.

 

Presenter:

Alex Evans

Affiliation:

MediaMolecule

Bio:

Alex Evans is Technical Director at Media Molecule. He is universally acknowledged as one of the games industry’s technical innovators. A graduate of Cambridge University, Alex got his first taste of the software industry working at Bullfrog Productions during his holidays. On graduating, he joined Lionhead Studios full time and fast became a key member of the team, developing cutting-edge graphics technology for titles such as Black & White, Black & White 2, The Movies and The Room. His R&D work led to his invitation into Microsoft’s exclusive “Graphics Arbitration Board", a small group of top developers who help shape the future of 3D graphics on the PC. By night Alex turns his creativity to a more musical direction and his visuals and films have been shown around the world, most notably, on tour with Warp Records and the London Sinfonietta.

Alex's technical contributions to the cult PC internet game Live For Speed and Mark Healey's Rag Doll Kung Fu, along with his longstanding links with the demo scene (where he is known as Bluespoon) inspired him to develop games in a small and highly creative environment. In 2006 Alex co-founded Media Molecule with the Rag Doll Kung Fu collaborators Mark Healey, Dave Smith and Kareem Ettouney.

 

Materials:
(Updated August 16th 2011)

Slides, Video 1,

 

 

 

 

Contact: