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[akachan ningen]

that's a penis

 

[HMD]

How is that even possible on a PS4? damn.

 

[Crayon]

that's a penis

You're not wrong.

 

[Shin-Ra]

How is that even possible on a PS4? damn.

Power of the point clouds and thinking outside the box.

 

[Eggbok]

If my content creating abilities matched my imagination, I'd make my own little dystopic odyssey when this game comes out. Unfortunately, as LBP very well proved, I'm shit at designing levels.

I'm actually really good at level design, used to stream LBP3 create mode. My problem is giving everything purpose. I would be the guy who builds a bunch of movie sets but has no script, story, or actors so it's just there.

I'd love to be able to make things in Dreams for people to use in their own levels since we know that will be something we can do.
Also those screenshots are amazing, PGW can't come fast enough!

 

[wanderingprostheyltite]

Wow, really impressed with the style they've achieved. Looks absolutely gorgeous. This strokes my desire to merge surrealism, creation, and games together greatly. Really hope their creation tools allow for some unique environments and models to be made and not just a copy+paste template affair. Seems like something that'd be a nightmare to design and implement.

 

[Stampy]

So the final direction of the renderer was basically influenced by the artistic vision, but it happened so that the point clouds were actually the most efficient solution as well. If I understood right all the previous solutions were both technically impractical and not in line with the artistic vision.

I'm actually really good at level design, used to stream LBP3 create mode. My problem is giving everything purpose. I would be the guy who builds a bunch of movie sets but has no script, story, or actors so it's just there.
I'd love to be able to make things in Dreams for people to use in their own levels since we know that will be something we can do.
Also those screenshots are amazing, PGW can't come fast enough!

The point of Dreams is collaboration. So I have no doubts you will fit right in.

I am the exact opposite of you. I am always dreaming of context, high scenarios and trying to find meaning, even if absurd, that connects all the pieces together. I did one collaboration project in LBP2 and it was the most fun I had with any online gaming experience. There is no better stuff than trying to reach some crazy idea while at the same time having other people working with you towards that goal.

 

[serversurfer]

If any of you artsy types are looking for a decent mechanic/engineer, I like to tinker.

 

[Loudninja]

Someone make another topic this is some awesome stuff that I understand very little of

 

[Stampy]

Yeah this would probably deserve a new topic, since lots of people will miss the presentation.

 

[mrklaw]

Power of the point clouds and thinking outside the box.

Especially the latter. Everyone has been so tied to the traditional rendering paths, even as GPUs moved to more general purpose computing devices. This and Tomorrow Children look to be fascinating experiments in what you can achieve if you just look at the GPU as a fast processor and use alternative rendering techniques.

That they tried multiple approaches and rejected them is crazy. The amount of research and engineering done is doubly fascinating when you consider how 'artsy' Mm are considered.

I wonder if the PS3 helped some developers down this road? The weaker GPU plus the SPEs in CELL may make some first party PS3 developers more comfortable with thinking outside of the traditional GPU rendering approach.

 

[mrklaw]

Do siggraph ever release video of the presentations?

 

[Callibretto]

someone please give this game to Yoshitaka Amano,

 

[Stampy]

From the Siggraph abstract, their approach is a little different than I anticipated in the post quoted above.

At the base would still be these signed distance functions, each leaf in the csg tree would be a sdf, and their parents would be some boolean operation.

They're still filling out an explicit representation, a volume texture (signed distance field), from those functions.

But unlike the presumption in the above post, I don't think they're casting a ray through the signed distance fields. They're generating point clouds at various resolutions and then rendering that. They could represent and render the point cloud with triangles and rasterisation, but since they say there are no triangles, they are perhaps doing something else, like maybe splatting the points from a different representation in GPU memory.

I'm kind of curious why there's the intermediate step of generating signed distance fields, though, why they don't generate the point clouds directly from the csg tree and its functions... Maybe the distance fields serve other purposes (e.g. in physics) that the point cloud wouldn't be so suitable for, but the point cloud is more efficient for rendering.

Anyways, we'll find out for sure shortly! Interested also to see the approaches they abandoned.

Can you continue this analysis based on the new info. Your summaries are easier to understand.

 

[gofreak]

The full res image of the talk's preview image is quite stunning o_0 Bronze-y, oil painting-ish.

This is from their current engine.

 

[wanderingprostheyltite]

The full res image of the talk's preview image is quite stunning o_0 Bronze-y, oil painting-ish.

http://i.imgur.com/inVqCD1.jpg

This is from their current engine.[/QUOTE]

I REALLY want to see more of this in motion.

 

[PSOreo]

I feel like this will be one of those games, much like Little Big Planet was and is, where you'll get more out of playing other people's levels than making your own. It would probably take a lot of commitment to learn all the intricacies to be able to make something amazing.
However in saying that I think we will be blown away by other people's efforts.

 

[Nightengale]

Can't wait till PGW.

 

[gofreak]

Another native res shot from the current renderer:

 

[wanderingprostheyltite]

I feel like this will be one of those games, much like Little Big Planet was and is, where you'll get more out of playing other people's levels than making your own. It would probably take a lot of commitment to learn all the intricacies to be able to make something amazing.
However in saying that I think we will be blown away by other people's efforts.

This would be amazing for use with Morpheus and PS Move controllers for sculpting and other creation tools. This looks like it might be a little too crazy in the visuals dept to be a good fit for that though.

 

[monocromo]

Another native res shot from the current renderer:

Ok this thread is starting to blow my mind. That looks amazing.

 

[Sickboy007]

This is basically the definitive wallpaper maker.

 

[Stampy]

Another native res shot from the current renderer:

Where are you getting these screens from?

 

[gofreak]

Can you continue this analysis based on the new info. Your summaries are easier to understand.

There's bits I don't fully get but I think the gist of it is:

At the base, each object is described by a list of signed distance functions, that build up a combination of shapes.

They turn that list into - I guess - a voxelised representation.

They use that voxelised representation to generate a bunch of points on the surface of the object. They could generate those points directly from the signed distance functions, but I guess it is a lot faster to evaluate points against the voxel rep than against the mathematical functions. The voxelisation turns lots of maths into lookups, which is a lot faster, at the expense of a bit of precision.

They 'splat' geometry information for those points - render them, basically - into a buffer, and then beyond that use fairly vanilla deferred shading. They can splat them at various levels of granularity, so if they use a dense point cloud, you get a 'tight', less stylised rendering of the object. Or they can splat coarser, more stylised groups of points in larger splats, which is where you come out with the representation that is more like brush strokes. You can see the effect of that in slides 116-119 - if you flick through you almost get an animation of how the scene can change depending on how they splat the point cloud.

It seems like this is how they create the dream like feel of things becoming more or less stylised, more or less 'solid'/ethereal, and how you can have different objects in the same scene at different levels of coarseness/stylisation.

That's skimming over a lot, though.

There are things I don't fully understand, like the memory consumption for all this. It seems like it could be a lot for even one object, but I guess I am missing something...

 

[gofreak]

Where are you getting these screens from?

If you open the full res slides in adobe reader, you can select the images and copy/paste them into paint or whatever to see the original (native res) asset.

 

[Stampy]

BTW, does this point style rendering mean that in essence they won't be able to get rid of the noise (flecks on clean coloured material) that is pretty noticeable in the trailer?

If you open the full res slides in adobe reader, you can select the images and copy/paste them into paint or whatever to see the original (native res) asset.

Cool, Thanks!

There are things I don't fully understand, like the memory consumption for all this. It seems like it could be a lot for even one object, but I guess I am missing something...

This was my next question. Because from the slides it seems that he is satisfied with performance.

 

[hesido]

Alex Evans replied to a tweet of my feeble self, power of twitter!

https://twitter.com/mmalex/status/631573646050525184

Of all the 3d talk and hard work he mentions, I asked whether there was a 2d path we could take, he said he's sure we could find a way.

I hope he doesn't hate me because he has spent years perfecting the 3d engine and I came up asking about 2d stuff right after his presentation

 

[gofreak]

BTW, does this point style rendering mean that in essence they won't be able to get rid of the noise (flecks on clean coloured material) that is pretty noticeable in the trailer?

Depending on what we mean by 'flecks', I think some is by design and some is a technical by product. From the slides it sounds like some of that is a work in progress.

 

[Stampy]

It seems like this is how they create the dream like feel of things becoming more or less stylised, more or less 'solid'/ethereal, and how you can have different objects in the same scene at different levels of coarseness/stylisation.

LOL, that was the only part I understood from the later slides that delved into point cloud explanations. Probably since it was visible from the trailers as well. E.g. In one of the bubless there is a guy with a pipe with a solid formation, and at the begining of the trailer that same asset is used but cloudified.

Style aside, what do you think are both representations equally taxing or is the softer one more efficient?

Alex Evans replied to a tweet of my feeble self, power of twitter!

https://twitter.com/mmalex/status/631573646050525184

Of all the 3d talk and hard work he mentions, I asked whether there was a 2d path we could take, he said he's sure we could find a way.

I hope he doesn't hate me because he has spent years perfecting the 3d engine and I came up asking about 2d stuff right after his presentation

lol. But when you think about it, your avatar does have the same noise like effect, so it will fit in nicely.

 

[Loudninja]

Hmm

@LondonStudioHQ
We're at the Project Morpheus Content Creators event in London. It's going to be a fun day!

https://twitter.com/LondonStudioHQ/status/631757913833480192

 

[Creaking]

I love the LittleBigPlanet series, and I love making UGC, but I feel so intimidated by this game...

I really hope Paris Games Week makes it easier to wrap my mind around the how of... well everything that isn't just the graphics.

 

[Stampy]

Also, one more technical question. When they talk about shapes, it usually refers to scuplts i guess. But what about 2d painting like clouds and other effects (usually for background, grass, and other stuff we saw in the trailer).
Because in game we will obviously have sculpting and painting tool. But what does the tech behind the paint tool entail?

In the slides Alex said:

"this was the first time I got specular in the game! two layers of loose splats, the inner layer is tinted red to make it look like traditional oil underpainting. then the specular
hi lights from the environment map give a real sense of painterly look".

BTW, what does the non plannar thing bring for the artists?

 

[googleplex]

Another native res shot from the current renderer:

But I was told the PS4 was a weak low tier PC.
/s

This picture is nuts.

 

[420bits]

This is going to be so awesome, can't wait to see what the community creates.

Also, can't wait for the nightmares people will create D

 

[zerodayPopbot]

Looks amazing, too bad I won't be able to do anything good, but I can't wait see the stuff others make.

 

[Sidewinder]

But I was told the PS4 was a weak low tier PC.
/s

This picture is nuts.

Well that's the thing, it's just a picture, maybe PS4 can only display such awesomeness at 1fps...

Spoiler

jk

 

[Shin-Ra]

The full res image of the talk's preview image is quite stunning o_0 Bronze-y, oil painting-ish.

This is from their current engine.

Looks great full res, yeah.

There's a brief mention of collision.

So! now the plan is: generate a nice dense point cloud on the surface of our CSG sculpts.
EVERYTHING is going to be a point cloud. the SDF becomes an intermediate representation, we use it to spawn the points at evaluation time, (and also for collision. but thats another talk)

we started from the output of the existing evaluator, which if you remember was hierarchically refining lists of primitives to get close to voxels on the surface of the SDF. as it happens, the last refinement pass is dealing in 4x4x4 blocks of SDF to match GCN wavefronts of 64 threads.

Think how beautiful the destroy particle effects were in LittleBigPlanet 2, like for the Cakeinator. How much more powerful are those effects going to be when model surfaces are made up of splats.

 

[Ran rp]

 

[spekkeh]

3D impressionistic painting? We may have found that VR killer app much sooner than I thought.

 

[Stampy]

Now I am really confused. Is this sky a byproduct of a renderer, and not an intentional brush stroke?

In some pictures it seems like it just happens.

 

[Mula]

I think it's beyond my imagination what some people can do with this.
cant wait to see that stuff

 

[Dead Prince]

MM blowing minds even further each time they talk about this.

imagine when they do a proper reveal for PGW.

 

[Icyflamez96]

I feel like this will be one of those games, much like Little Big Planet was and is, where you'll get more out of playing other people's levels than making your own. .

Speak for yourself

Yeah I doubt I'll put in as much effort into creating levels in this game as I did in LBP though.... But we'll see...

 

[Eggbok]

The point of Dreams is collaboration. So I have no doubts you will fit right in.

I am the exact opposite of you. I am always dreaming of context, high scenarios and trying to find meaning, even if absurd, that connects all the pieces together. I did one collaboration project in LBP2 and it was the most fun I had with any online gaming experience. There is no better stuff than trying to reach some crazy idea while at the same time having other people working with you towards that goal.

Dreams collaborations sound like absolute heaven (to me lol).
I would love if there was a gaf community of creators and etc. and we work on some things together.
This is the type of game I can spends hundreds of hours in easily and all I would do is making and design things.
Even now there are so many ideas I have on what could possibly be made in Dreams and its driving me crazy lol.
This is probably my most anticipated game for next year.

 

[Kaako]

Whoa...some of these renders and techs they're using makes me feel fuzzy inside. Freaking love the R&D nature of MM and their hard work looks like it'll pay off big time. The results of seeing something like that with that level of fidelity in VR is mindblowing, even if it's mostly an "on-rails" experience.

 

[bock]

There's much more highresy stuff from the old/failed engines in the PDF

 

[gundamkyoukai]

I love tech talk but some of this is really going over my head lol .

 

[mckmas8808]

Wow, really impressed with the style they've achieved. Looks absolutely gorgeous. This strokes my desire to merge surrealism, creation, and games together greatly. Really hope their creation tools allow for some unique environments and models to be made and not just a copy+paste template affair. Seems like something that'd be a nightmare to design and implement.

I see what you did there....

 

[hodgy100]

But I was told the PS4 was a weak low tier PC.

it is, well mid-tier, but still.

 

[Acquiescence]

This is going to be so awesome, can't wait to see what the community creates.

Also, can't wait for the nightmares people will create D

Let's be honest, with the kind of engine they've created here, all manner of nightmare fuel is inevitably going to be created. The graphics have such a surreal and otherworldly style to them that I wouldn't be surprised if the game ends up being more suited to darker imagery than family-friendly stuff. Even in the LittleBigPlanet games there were folks who attempted to create horror levels, but of course they were constrained by creation tools intended for the world's most cuddly 2D platformer, so it didn't really work. Those types of people are going to have an absolute field day with Dreams.

Nightmares. They should just call it Nightmares and be done with it.