Fantasy Lab Engine - *Realtime* Global Illumination and Subdivisions

[thematt]

IMPRESSIVE to say at least..

So does that mean I soon won't have to wait for my global to compute..nice news :=).
I'm still struggling to understand how an independant develloper can get to such great result whether it's global or dispace, while big develloper such as mental image or pixar renderman are very far from that.really hard to beleive seems more like or this is fake..or develloper such as mental iamge or other are voluntuary slowing thing down to make sure we buy more version as time passed.
Anyway, great result for real time if it is .

cheers

[CupOWonton]

WE WANTS IT! WE NEEEEEEDS IT! Our... Precioussssssss.

[-JT-]

Instead of making it for games they should give it to our favorite programs ! ;)

[lostpencil]

It is neat - and it's no fake. Mike, the owner of Fantasy Lab wrote Chapter 14 for GPU Gems 2. Note also that his engine has developed 'beyond' what he has published. He emailed me this about the articles he's written and the current version of his engine:

"There are siginificant differences between what the engine can do and the chapters I wrote for GPU Gems. My GI technique works with normal and displacment surfaces, it supports specular material properties, and it does not require multiple passes like the ambient occlusion/indirect lighting technique. My new subd code is much more efficient with displacement mapped surfaces and it supports quads and triangles, not just quads."

[P_T]

Wow, this is great, not only does it support GI, it also support subD surface and displacement? Even if the example only feature one creature and simple environment it's still impressive. If the creator can show an example of a large complex scene rendered in realtime then move over Crysis, Unreal, project Offset etc.
So does that mean I soon won't have to wait for my global to compute..nice news Try this free GPU accelerated GI renderer http://www.bee-www.com/parthenon/index.htm. Just scroll down the page a bit and you can dload the zipped files.

[trickypixel]

Wow! Thanks for the kind words. Fortunately, the GI technique we use works well with large, complicated environments. We'll make sure to include those as we add to our demos and update our web site.

[visionmaster2]

impressive engine !! it will be great to have such engine in 3dsmax :applause:

[SoulVector]

impressive engine !! it will be great to have such engine in 3dsmax :applause:

Or any app (Houdini). It would make 3D mo fun.

[jewalker]

The target and requirements for this are very different than rendering packages such as renderman and mental ray. Professional rendering packages need to be able to support correct lighting for a wide variety of lights and surface shaders, as well as support motion blur, depth of field, very accurate shadows and highlights, and on and on.

Game engines need to support things that look good but move in real time. They don't have to be precise or accurate, just fast. This is very impressive work and I'm looking forward to seeing it used.

[visionmaster2]

yes, but there are some cool plug in 3dsmax like ofusion, that work great with max and Ogre3d engine. i know this is not as good as fantasylab but i think (hope ) that such render will be implemented soon in our best loving 3d apps !

[Szos]

When I see demonstrations like this, I really have to wonder what the people at AutoDesk and Softimage are thinking - a few small developers can produce such amazing results, yet the big players with all their resources and pooled talent can't come out with anything similiar that is integrated into their own software. I seriously would be embarassed if I were them.

[Joss]

If the creator can show an example of a large complex scene rendered in realtime then move over Crysis, Unreal, project Offset etc.

That's what I'm talking about! Crytek has blown my socks off with their translucent banana tree leaves, but seeing this run so smooth and with one pass--wow!


I'm anxiously awaiting further eye-candy from this engine!

[torncanvas]

The technology is hella leet. Great job Mike!! We've been trying to get real-time ambient occlusion and PRTs going here. Are you using PRTs or something else?

My only issue is that with all of this technology, your example scene with shadows has bad lighting (or rather no lighting). You should make the shadows darker by lowering the intensity of the ambient light or raising the intensity of the sun light. You would be amazed how much brighter the sun is than the sky if you have a photometrically correct HDR image with the sun in it. It's frightening.

Also, how did you render that movie? Do you have video capture built-in to your engine or did you use capturing software?

P.S. The concept art of the scientists on your home page OWNS. Show us more cool stuff!!

[trickypixel]

originaly posted by torncanvas
The technology is hella leet. Great job Mike!! We've been trying to get real-time ambient occlusion and PRTs going here. Are you using PRTs or something else?

Thanks!
We're not using PRT (Pre-computed Radiance Transfer) or any other pre-computed technique. They are just too restrictive and very complicated IMHO.
BTW I considered using real-time ambient occlusion along with environment lighting for the engine, but found it difficult and restrictive too. Environment lighting is only correct from a single location so you end up needing lighting from lots of different locations, which all need recomputed if the locations or the environment changes. :eek:

your example scene with shadows has bad lighting...You should make the shadows darker

Assuming you are talking about the second clip, the intensity of the sun was chosen on a completely subjective basis.


how did you render that movie?

The game engine can dump out movies.:)

[torncanvas]

Thanks!
We're not using PRT (Pre-computed Radiance Transfer) or any other pre-computed technique. They are just too restrictive and very complicated IMHO.
BTW I considered using real-time ambient occlusion along with environment lighting for the engine, but found it difficult and restrictive too. Environment lighting is only correct from a single location so you end up needing lighting from lots of different locations, which all need recomputed if the locations or the environment changes. :eek:

Assuming you are talking about the second clip, the intensity of the sun was chosen on a completely subjective basis.

The game engine can dump out movies.:)

Sweet, yeah we really respect the work you did in GPU Gems 2. Are you planning on sharing anything in the next GPU Gems? Because that would be great. :)

Yeah, I'm speaking of the second clip. If you want the sun the same brightness, than I would recommend turning down the environment intensity and maybe up the saturation for it a bit. Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you, I was just trying to provide critique. I think by lowering the intensity and upping the saturation of the environment, the scene will have more contrast and richness in color, which will show off your awesomeness even more.

Is your environment lit by HDRI? If so, I have some helpful tips.

Also, are you using Perspective Shadow Mapping? I notice some jaggies on the self-shadowing that make it look like PSM. If so, any tips for that? :P We're using it here and are always looking for ways to improve it.

[Marsel Khadiyev]

Michael,

Is there a paper on the technique you're using anywhere? I am just curious at how it is possible to produce indirect illumination at real-time rates with a single pass (I have too, at one point quested into real-time GI but ended up dropping the project, parts of which can be seen here: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=297499&highlight=gpu)

Marsel

[trickypixel]

Originally Posted by torncanvas
Are you planning on sharing anything in the next GPU Gems?
We'll see. I have not heard that they have started the next book yet.

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you, I was just trying to provide critique.
No offense taken I assure you.:)

Is your environment lit by HDRI?
The environment is not lit by High Dynamic Range Imaging or any other image based technique. However, the sky geometry is set to emit light and its texture map is used to modulate the light emitted, and it is a High Dynamic Range Image. Does that make sense? (All the GI calculations are done in floating point so everything is HDR).

Originally Posted by Marsel Khadiyev
Is there a paper on the technique you're using anywhere?

No. I just invented it.:thumbsup:

[torncanvas]

We'll see. I have not heard that they have started the next book yet.


No offense taken I assure you.:)


The environment is not lit by High Dynamic Range Imaging or any other image based technique. However, the sky geometry is set to emit light and its texture map is used to modulate the light emitted, and it is a High Dynamic Range Image. Does that make sense? (All the GI calculations are done in floating point so everything is HDR).


No. I just invented it.:thumbsup:


Yeah, I guess I just assumed there would be another book.


That makes sense. We use 2 DIMs - 1 for in light and one for in shadow. In the shadow one, we just Photoshop out the sun. That way the color and tone of the shadow is a direct result of the difference between having the sun and not having the sun. The result is amazing - shadows are photometrically correct, and all you have to do is make sure the sun is bright enough. For us, the sun went black at like negative 20 exposure in HDRShop I think. With this method you even get color bleeding on soft shadows. You might want to try that with your fancy solution sometime. I bet you'd get great results.

I'd love to see a paper/explanation on what you're doing sometime. Have you thought about submitting to SIGGRAPH? Being able to do what you're doing in one pass is certainly worthy of it IMHO. I bet you can submit for next year pretty soon.

Are you working on any IP right now, or just tech? Have you made any contacts with publishers? Because I know some people that might be interested in what you're doing.

[Layer01]

oh man...*thinks back to the "crysis is soo real" threads*...i think crysis just got pwned lol.

this is amazing. what sort of ETA on this being available to the rest of the world?

[Sonk]

No. I just invented it.:thumbsup:

Can you drop any hints about the technique? ;P Im in disbelief.. any plans on publishing a Sig paper on it?

PS, i would love to see the engine with alot of character on screen(i know you said its scalable, i still want to see it) :D And what kind of spatial subdivision sheme are you using?

[bodoche]

while I have no idea about how to compute realtime GI, I found some paper about GPGPU sub-division and displacement.

this paper :
Generic Mesh Refinement on GPU
Tamy Boubekeur & Christophe Schlick
LaBRI INRIA CNRS University of Bordeaux, France

explains how to subdivise in hardware triangles and how to displace them. They can also apply some subd algorithm, they did implement the curve PN triangle and it looks not bad.

Curved PN Triangles
Alex Vlachos
Jorg Peters
Chas Boyd
Jason L. Mitchell

those guys :
A Realtime GPU Subdivision Kernel
Le-Jeng Shiue - University of Florida,
Ian Jones - University of Florida
Jorg Peters - University of Florida
did implement a gpgpu Catmull-Clark subdivision in GPU. Just for information, Catmull-Clark algo is used in XSI, PRMan and probably in many more software.


I'll be interested to know more about which algo is implemented in Fantazy lab engine.

[JamesArndt]

wow the potential of this is amazing to think of. What will be the first commercial applications?

[Caffeinemonkey]

This is incredible, but I would love to see better real world tests, ecspecially for video games. I.e.

multiple opacity maps at 128x128+ for stuff like vegitation?
large game maps like in WOW with atmospherics. AND how does the atmos interact with oppacity maps?
how many seperate objects can be in a scene? a house, a tree, 20 characters?
What does normal mappinglook like with Global Illm
multiple textures (25+)?
how many lights can be in a set/scene?

any way,
If I have anything to say it's thanks. Thanks for working to advance this science of CG you guys are heros!

[Flog]

forget just video game development. This renderer has to go into our other packages, like C4D, Lightwave, XSI, Maya, then Max.

In that order, I just hate all the tools going to evil Autodesk first. Cool toys like this going there first keep them powerful. LOL

Seriously though this would cut CG render times in half in included in animation packages. Wow this has great implications in the future.

Yes and it would be cool in video games. I can only imagine how nice they will look with this. Wow!!

Amazing, can't wait to see what you have ready commercially. :)

[Sonk]

no disrespect to Mike, but im abit skeptical since there isnt even a demo we can download and run. It could be fake for all we know.

release a demo, then i'll shutup and believe(and jaws well drop again).

[Prevenge]

no disrespect to Mike, but im abit skeptical since there isnt even a demo we can download and run. It could be fake for all we know.

release a demo, then i'll shutup and believe(and jaws well drop again).

While I share your want of a demo, I highly doubt someone of his calibur skill-wise would purposely trash his own credentials by putting something like this out here for the world to see only as a hoax.
He's a published games programmer, and it looks like he has many fans of his work.
I would love to play around with a demo level editor from him. Badly actually.
But, while i don't believe everything I see, it's not unrealistic that this is 100% legit.
It looks like an amazing engine, and time isn't going to go on forever without something like this being developed by someone sooner or later.
So something like this is obviously inevitable.

[trickypixel]

FYI -- Fantasy Lab will be doing demos at Siggraph Aug. 1-3, probably at the NVIDIA booth. I'll update this thread when I have the details. I hope to meet some of you there. :)

[stew]

Can't wait for GPU Gems 3 then :)

I assume indirect light is only computed per vertex and not per fragment? At least, that's what the videos look like to me (might just be their compression, though).

[Sonk]

FYI -- Fantasy Lab will be doing demos at Siggraph Aug. 1-3, probably at the NVIDIA booth. I'll update this thread when I have the details. I hope to meet some of you there. :)

For people who cant go, make sure to tape it :). I mean i want to see someone move the camera, using the mouse and keyboard(i want to see the person , not just a screen capture). that would be proof enough.

"Fantasy Engine - Fantasy Lab's Game Engine delivers real time global illumination with SSS support and displacement mapping." (http://features.cgsociety.org/story.php?story_id=3654&referer=cgnews)

Mike, did you guys added SSS(sub surface scattering) also? i dont remember seeing that in the videos. that would be sweet. or is that a typo on cgtalk part.

EDIT:

i guess they meant, SDS (subdivision surfaces).

[Prevenge]

man now i really want to go to siggraph .. for that demo alone!
just watching those quicktimes , I can't stop but let my imagination go wild with what incredibly interesting and immersive environments and situaitons I could create with it!
I've been waiting a long time for a game engine this good to come out JUST because I didn't want to waste my time working so hard on something and have it look all polygonal and, well... "gamey".
This truly begins the bridge between games and movies.
In the next half decade / decade I'm sure we'll see the advent of interactive real-time games that are as good looking as the pixar movies we see.\
Very excited fantasylabs!

Will you have an educational version without any restrictions open for hobbyists and would-be develpers? I would think that that would be a perfect marketing tool. I mean , let people mess with it and play with it. Not the code, but an editor, and see what they come up with and obiously if what they creat is GOOD, then hell, I'm sure they'll muster up the funds for the liscence.
If anything, it will captivate people and influence ALOT more sales of the engine, not the opposite.
I dont know about programming for this type of thing that much, but if a game pops up, and its obviously done with your engine, and they haven't payed a liscence fee, lol... I'm sure a settlement or sueing them would glean more than the initial fee.
So.. just an idea.. I'm sure everybody would love to see is a useable level editor/game creation interface.

[trickypixel]

Fantasy Lab will be showing its real-time GI demo at the NVIDIA booth at Siggraph in Boston from 5-6 pm Aug 1, 5-6 pm Aug 2, and 2:30-3:30 pm on Aug 3.

(Sorry for digging up this thread, but I promised to give our schedule when arrangements were finalized)

[Sonk]

interview with Fantasy Labs, on the PS3:

http://www.ps3land.com/article-529.php

[bleeper]

So now that siggraph has rolled around has anyone gotten a chance to see it in action?

[Prevenge]

bump! .. i want to know too!
- just read the article on it in 3D world magazine

[CHRiTTeR]

interview with Fantasy Labs, on the PS3:

http://www.ps3land.com/article-529.php

Wow, their game sounds promessing :scream:
And some nice HD-versions of the movies.

The shadows on the floor in the movie with the illuminous club look a little weird, but still verry impressive stuff! :thumbsup:

Any chance we could have a look a some more complex scenes? :D


Also their site states that those demos were rendered @ 300fps on a GeForce go 7900??? :o
300fps is amazing!!! shouldn't it be 30?

[Sonk]

Here is another interview with Mike:

http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/1665/Fantasy-Lab-Interview/p1/

[Joscci]

Here is another interview with Mike:

http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/1665/Fantasy-Lab-Interview/p1/

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the articles. :thumbsup:

Cheers.

[chadmv]

Not sure when it was posted but Fantasy Lab has a screen shot of their game project, Danger Planer, up.
http://www.fantasylab.com/DangerPlanet/dangerPlanet.html

The Subd's give it a really smooth look!

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