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by klodolph
4474 days ago
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You might feel differently if you ever had to do shadow mapping on traditional hardware. Even in AAA games, there are tons of artifacts in the shadows. Same goes for reflections. I don't see why it's harder for artists to control the results... can you elaborate? It seems like it's going to be 90% the same. You have a point on a surface, you have a camera vector and light vectors, you supply a small piece of code and out pops a color. The major differences in the pipeline are in the scaffolding: depth tests, reflections, and shadows will be done in different ways. The differences for artists are that they'll have to learn a system with different limitations. My guess is that game graphics are going to follow the developments in movie CGI. Pixar switched to ray tracing in 2013, and games will switch when hardware powers up and expertise filters down. |
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If current-generation AAA games are any indication, either very few artists ever learned the raster workarounds or few artists ever had time to implement the workarounds.
I think ray-tracing will be a game changer. Raster shadows are easy to get subtly wrong and very difficult to get right. Cube-maps are easy to get subtly wrong and very difficult to get right. Transparency is easy to get subtly wrong and very difficult to get right. The list goes on.
> Even in AAA games, there are tons of artifacts in the shadows. Same goes for reflections.
Exactly! I can't count the number of times I've seen shadows pointing in the wrong direction, having the wrong color, having the wrong penumbra/antumbra, casting through solid objects, etc. Cube-map reflections are even worse (yay for faucet handles reflecting forrest scenes) especially when they're moving. Expect to see a reflection slide up the body of a car as it comes to a stop? If you're not in a car-racing game, forget about it.
All of those problems can be overcome with artist sweat and tears. The code has already been written and is in the big engines, but the effects still regularly fail to happen in AAA titles.
Ray-tracing makes it easy to do things right. None of the raster techniques have achieved that landmark. This WILL be a game changer.