#sparse voxel octree

[proceduralcaves]

Source notes: Procedural feature generation for volumetric terrains using voxel grammars

(Dey, Doig, and Gatzidis, 2018)

Type: Journal Article

Keywords: Procedural generation, Terrain, Voxels, Grammar

(Dey, Doig, and Gatzidis, 2018) present a semi-automated method of generating overhangs and caves in existing volumetric terrains using a rule-based procedural generation system utilising a grammar — describe in the paper as "a set of axioms and rules that recursively rewrite the initial state until a termination condition is met" — composed of user-created operators. The application of the system over a voxel-based terrain to create the terrain features is performed on the CPU, with the final mesh being generated real-time using a GPU-based Surface Nets algorithm (adding to the examples of iso-surface methods in the discovered literature).

As in the work by (Becher et al., 2019), a volumetric approach is used as the basis for the method to overcome the limitations of heightmaps. The relative merits of various data structures, such as Sparse Voxel Octrees and Brickmaps, are discussed, with the authors stating the suitability of Volumetric Dynamic B+ trees for dynamically changing terrains, due to "a number of key advantages to volumetric representations, such as good cache coherence and fast random access capabilities, including insertion, traversal and deletion operators". The justification behind a shape grammar based system over a fully automated noise utilising approach is given, noting the former's ability to control variation by altering input state and/or rules as well as previous use of such systems for procedural generation. Shape grammars were also used by (Zawadzki, Nikiel, and Warszawski, 2012), as discussed previously.

To create real-world terrain features through the manipulation of existing volumetric data, the authors created a method that operates on a voxel grid representing the bounds of a terrain, formed by creating voxels from a heightfield generated with 2D Perlin noise. Voxels have density values to represent their contained material. A subset of voxels is sampled at a time, offset each iteration by a user-defined parameter, to check if they satisfy any rule criteria within the grammar. If a rule match occurs, shape transformations are performed on the voxels within the subset. Start and end positions within the grid can also be determined by the user. The rules within the grammar consist of: symbols — an array of dimension the same as the voxel subset, containing conditions to test voxel density values; transformations — an array with same dimension as symbols specifying an operation to perform on the voxel density values. If multiple conditions pass for a subset of voxels then the condition with the highest priority (a value assigned by designers) is chosen, or the choice is stochastic if priority values are equal.

The authors constructed two separate grammars with different rulesets — one used to create cliffs and overhangs and the other caves. The ruleset used to create caves works by having a first rule to create an initial point for a cave to be generated, emulating an entry point for groundwater that would form a cave via erosion in reality. Second and third rules lower the density value of the lowest vertical point within a terrain cavity (further mimicking gravitational forces and erosion) and a forth rules widens cavities as well as providing variation to the internal structure.

Multiple compute shaders (for calculating centre of mass of voxel edge intersections, building vertex and index buffers, and calculating normals) are used to execute a Naive Surface Nets algorithm to extract a polygon mesh from the voxel grid and density data. This approach is beneficial as it capitalises on the parallel nature of the algorithm - many threads can work on individual segments of the voxel grid data concurrently. Triplanar texturing is used when rendering the mesh to blend textures (a similar technique is used in the Masters project method).

The results of the method are discussed in terms of their structure and visual appearance. Different types of caves can be produced by changing the voxel subset size and the offset between subsets. Additional cave features such as speleothems and tunnels are not shown in the paper, and the description of the method suggests they would not be trivial to create. It could be postulated that columns and tunnels could be created by forming caves beside each other that eventually meet inside the surface of the terrain.

The performance of the method is analysed in terms of generation, surface extraction and rendering times at different grid resolutions and for each type of result (cave or overhang). Grid resolution appears to be the dominant controlling factor for generation time. The researchers state as a possible improvement parallelisation of the grammar system. It is a single-threaded CPU implementation as presented. This consideration influenced the decision to implement a degree of parallelism in the Masters project method.

(Dey, Doig, and Gatzidis, 2018) present a method that generates a mesh that is recognisably cave-like, and has the advantage of being usable on existing volumetric data (albeit dependent on the structure of said data). Variation can be achieved by editing the rules of the grammar system, if the requisite knowledge is possessed. It could be argued that more focus on, and further development of, the method with regard to cave features specifically would be required for it achieve results that are sufficiently realised, structurally complex and explorable for use in modern computer games.

[fabiankiss]

The convergence of voxel modelling and VR promises to create rich, dynamic worlds where users can interact with every detail. This blend of technology is exciting because it pushes the boundaries of what virtual environments can be, making them more detailed, interactive, and immersive than ever before.

Performance Optimisation in Voxel-Based Models Sparse Voxel Octrees (SVOs): This technique involves creating a hierarchical data structure to efficiently manage large amounts of voxel data. By organising voxels into octrees, where each node represents a cubic volume that can be subdivided, only the visible or relevant parts of the voxel model are rendered, significantly improving performance.

Compressing voxel data helps reduce the memory footprint and increases rendering efficiency. Techniques like run-length encoding (RLE) and other compression algorithms can store voxel information more compactly.

Utilising the power of modern GPUs for voxel rendering can greatly enhance performance. Graphics cards are well-suited for handling the parallel processing required for voxel calculations and rendering.

Although it starts with relatively simple graphics, recent updates and mods have significantly improved the detail and complexity of voxel-based assets in Minecraft. Shaders and texture packs can add realistic lighting, shadows, and detailed textures.

[projectmutants-blog]

Shadows and dust

Welcome, dear reader to the first blog post of the development of our first game project  “Mutants” using our in-house game engine “Cellbox”. This blog will cover some of our technical advancements during development.

Cellbox is a voxel engine of which you can read more about on our site: http://www.cellbox.io/

This blog post is about shadows and lighting. Our graphics programmers implemented shadows utilizing the variance shadow maps (VSM) technique this week.

The way we render our geometry is with the help of a raycaster and raymarcher to detect visible voxels that are resident in our data structures. Previously, we haven’t been able to implement shadow mapping due to the fact that we only could detect voxels inside the main camera’s viewing frustum. For the shadow mapping to work we had to develop a new way of handling our voxel data and upload all of it to the GPU, this is done with sophisticated compression methods and level of detail schemes but that is to be covered in another blog post. If you are familiar with shadow mapping techniques you know that the scene needs to be rendered from the point of view of the light source.

[latvianthunderowl]

By Cashworth.net, this new YouTube post: "First video in a while. Little video of a sparse voxel octree navigation plugin for UnrealEngine I've been working on." UESVON WIP

Trivia: Author is previously known on his procedural UE4 terrains, “CashGen”

[pes2019patch]

Digital Foundry's love of Crysis is well documented and the announcement of its remastering remains one of our highlights of the year. Delays to the launch were a sign that not everything was running to plan, but our hopes remained high, especially when Saber Interactive delivered an excellent Nintendo Switch port of the game. However, the PC and consoles versions have now arrived and even our faith in the franchise is being tested. Crysis Remastered has potential and some stand-out technology, but the fact is that key technical decisions have been made that brutally undermine the quality of the final product. Especially on PC, the game is a disappointment.

We'll be talking about the console versions in a separate article - principally because we're informed that a performance patch for Xbox One and Xbox One X will address key issues we have with the game, as mentioned on launch day. Having seen pre-release Xbox One X code operating at a better level of performance than the final release, we retain some level of optimism here. With PC, we find ourselves highly conflicted about the game. On the one hand, Crysis Remastered pushes technology forward in some remarkable ways, but on the other, it's clear that the whole enterprise is based on the legacy CryEngine 3 versions released way back in 2011 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. With that comes compromises to the art that are objectionable, but more crucially, there's a reliance on single-thread performance that means that it's almost impossible to run this port at a locked 60 frames per second - even on a Core i9 10900K, the fastest gaming CPU on the market today.

We'll start with the positives though. Sparse voxel octree global illumination - SVOGI - from the latest CryEngine has been incorporated into the PC build. This technology essentially performs a specific type of software ray tracing to simulate how diffuse light is bounced around an environment, significantly upgrading the lighting of any given scene. All together, SVOGI has a huge effect on the game's visual quality, which can be easily seen by turning it off and on in the options. The difference between real-time GI and a system based on screen-space ambient occlusion and ambient colour probe lighting is profound, and it's one of the standout improvements in the game.

Read more

[entergamingxp]

yes, a handheld really can run Crysis • Eurogamer.net

Can it run Crysis? It’s been 13 years since Crytek’s epoch-making release hit the market – and in some respects it’s still capable of monstering modern day PC hardware. But now, the game is playable on a handheld console using a mobile processor with power consumption that barely troubles a watt meter. So just how good is the port? How does it compare to the sub-optimal last-gen versions and can it possibly match up to the original experience?

Much has been made of the leaked material for Crysis Remastered – with negative fan reaction causing Crytek to hold the game back for further tooling. However, the Switch version arrives on the original July 23rd release date and just from the first ten minutes of play, it’s easy to see why. Based on the code available, and the sheer complexity of Crysis’ systems, it’s difficult to imagine a port that’s anything better than what has been delivered here. It’s not without its faults, but Crysis has been expertly retooled to scale graphically to the console hybrid – and it pushes Switch’s ARM Cortex A57s to breaking point. It’s a remarkable, fascinating port, but not without issues and strictly speaking not complete – the Ascension mission that’s missing from the PS3 and Xbox 360 ports is still MIA here.

Let’s start with the basics in taking a look at what Crytek and developer partner Saber Interactive has delivered. On Switch, Crysis Remastered uses dynamic resolution with temporal upscaling. Pixel counts suggest that 720p is the average resolution you’ll experience during gameplay. In busy situations I counted resolutions such as 540p and even lower but this isn’t especially common especially in docked mode. The resolution is capped at 720p in portable, of course, but can also jump slightly above this when docked. Based on information from the developer, the full dynamic resolution scaling range is 540p to 900p while docked, dropping to 400p to 720p in mobile configuration, where Crytek leans into the 460MHz ‘power’ GPU mode (up from the typical 384MHz used in most Switch games). The main takeaway is that image quality isn’t bad – it’s not pristine, but it’s significantly better than the heavily blurred presentations seen in the likes of the id Tech 6 ports, The Witcher 3 and Warframe.

There are some noticeable omissions to the visual feature set (this is essentially a mobile port after all) – there’s a reduction in geometry on elements like the nanosuit, an elimination of ray-marched volumetric light sources and parallax occlusion mapping, but there are dramatic upgrades too. We understand that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 CryEngine 3 ports are the foundation on which Crysis Remastered is based, but side-by-side, it’s clear that the Switch version looks significantly better in some respects. The first major shift stems from lighting: on the surface there are tweaks made to the time of day compared to the original game, along with the introduction of image-based lighting which helps with material quality – especially indirectly lit metals and plastics. However, the most significant and surprising addition here is sparse voxel-based global illumination, also known as SVOGI.

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The Digital Foundry video breakdown of Crysis Remastered on Switch. Essential viewing, even if we do say so ourselves.

Essentially, global illumination is typically precalculated or ‘baked’ on most games. Instead, SVOGI delivers a real-time global illumination system that offers both ambient occlusion and indirect light bounce, delivering a standard of realism that easily eclipses the last-gen ports and indeed the lighting found in the PC original. It’s surprising to see this on Switch but as I understand it, SVOGI is highly scalable. According to the team responsible for its conversion, this implementation of the systems runs at a very low resolution on Switch but the primary optimisation work centered around optimising data formats to reduce size, limiting the distance rays can be traced into the octree and using smaller kernels. Naturally, this reduces precision which can lead to more visible light leakage and light rippling in some cases but it still works surprisingly well. Presumably, the PC and other console releases will use higher precision.

This is perhaps the most significant improvement – it’s Crytek making good on its promise to bring high-end CryEngine features from the latest iteration of the engine back into Crysis and it’s fully armed and operational on Switch – even in handheld play. Beyond that, the rest of the lighting sees more subtle adjustments. Time of day tweaks can be seen in missions such as Assault where the sun rises much earlier on Switch than it does on PC. In general, most changes seem designed to create a more dramatic looking game – similar to many of the mods available for the original PC version. More importantly, the new lighting model more closely resembles that original PC version which cannot be said of the PlayStation 3 and 360 release. That version relies too heavily on strong bloom and blue-tinged colour grading. Throughout, it’s a cold, harsh looking game that strays too far from the original for my tastes. Crysis Remastered is a huge improvement in that sense and the more immersive, naturally lit environment really pops.

The entire post-processing suite has been enhanced as well. Per-object and camera motion blur remains intact with a higher sample count than the previous console release. The PC version uses a different technique – it only applies motion blur to dynamic objects and camera rotation but not player movement so in that sense, Switch delivers an improvement all around. The bokeh depth of field used (most notably with iron sights) is also really impressive. It’s an improvement both over the original release and the last-gen versions of the game.

Another key pillar on which Crysis is founded is destruction. The idea is that trees, bushes, and entire buildings interact and break apart based on your actions. Harking back to an era where video games went to extraordinary lengths to deliver realistic physics, destruction in Crysis was a remarkably impressive element which heightened combat and enabled some amazing moments. Impressively, everything is intact on Switch – but the fact that every feature is delivered means that there are some compromises. Objects and builds on just about every scale can break apart in real time, but this does cause momentary drops to frame-rate. Thankfully, this dissipates quickly so it’s not a huge deal. I can’t imagine Crysis without destructible buildings so it’s worth the performance hit – and despite its meagre CPU resources, Switch still manages to outgun last-gen console frame-rates.

In delivering these features on Switch with just three available 1.0GHz mobile cores, there are also further compromises. As you blast palm trees and other flora, branches react to every shot but these interactions are time-sliced on Switch, updating at a lower rate than the main renderer. As a result, when you unload on a tree, it appears somewhat choppy. In comparison, the PC original and even the last-gen console versions of the game updates these interactions at full frame-rate. However, while we’re on the subject of foliage, it’s good to see that density in this respect is far closer to the original PC game than the rather sparse last-gen console releases: there’s more grass, trees and bushes used throughout, just as you’d hope.

As for shadow rendering, the fidelity of shadow maps is reduced compared to the PC original with higher settings, as you’d expect, but CryEngine’s method for shadow filtering saves the day here and even distant cascades are clean and devoid of artefacting. I still love the use of small bokeh shapes resulting from the filtering techniques used – this is a brilliant approach to handling lower resolution shadow maps as it lends these shadows a natural softness that is pleasing to the eye. Flashlight shadows are in the game as well but similar to PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, they are absent from the first stage for some reason. I do appreciate how, when using two flashlights, each beam projects shadows from the environment. I’ve already mentioned that parallax occlusion mapping is also removed on Switch – Crytek tells us that this requires too much power for mobile mode but may return at some point in a future patch, but only for docked play.

Beyond that, another key change lies in water rendering – Crysis Remastered makes the jump to the DX11-class water simulation featured in newer versions of CryEngine and the water surface itself is more visually pleasing as a result. Remarkably, computationally expensive planar reflections are still in use in for world reflections as well. However, the rendering of underwater areas has taken a noticeable hit compared to the original PC version. Basically, the rocks and plants featured beneath the ocean are completely absent, often leaving you with an empty sandy expanse instead, while the water caustic layer also has exhibits a visible cut-off line that you can see while swimming. You won’t necessarily spend a lot of time underwater in Crysis so it’s not a huge loss but it is curious to see.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Crysis Remastered is that of all the impossible ports we’ve seen so far on Nintendo Switch, there’s less of a sense that we’re having to work with a vast array of technological cutbacks. Of course, part of this is down to the fact that fundamentally, the base game is 13 years old now, while the conversion is based on nine-year-old PS3/Xbox 360 code. But the point is that the remaster has been improved with modern, cutting-edge rendering techniques including temporal upscaling and dynamic resolution – and actual real-time global illumination. Aside from the resolution drop, the only difference between mobile and docked play is shadow map quality – and even then, the drop in fidelity in handheld mode is not much of an issue.

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The only other way to play Crysis on consoles at a reasonable frame-rate is via Xbox One/One X back-compat – but you don’t get the Switch version’s various improvements, obviously.

All of which bring us to the final, crucial aspect of the analysis: performance. Crysis is exceptionally heavy on the CPU – it always has been. Thankfully, the developers did have access to the last-gen console ports, which moved a game that operated mostly on a single core to leverage six available hardware threads (or SPUs in the case of PS3). Regardless, this still required extensive optimisation on Switch to deliver the same workloads using just three CPU cores. Occlusion culling – basically removing objects that you don’t see from being rendered in the first place – was a CPU task on last-gen consoles, but on Switch it’s moved to the GPU. Other tasks were sped-up simply by virtue of the fact that Switch has around 3.5GB of usable memory up against the mere 512MB of the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Even so, hitting CPU limits does impact performance – especially when engaging multiple enemy Ais while putting the physics system through its paces. Unsurprisingly, this is mostly evident in areas where the game was always heavy on the CPU, such as the village in the second mission, for example. Expect frame-rates in the low 20s when this happens, and sometimes even lower in Crysis’ most packed combat scenes. With that said, the use of motion blur and triple buffering does mitigate some of the impact, but I would hope to see improvements here. In mission four, I actually noted that the game could freeze for a moment – Crytek says that this is a bug unrelated to CPU performance and will be fixed in the next patch.

Outside of the heaviest combat scenarios though, Crysis actually runs rather well. Even with its enhanced feature set and real-time global illumination system, it still manages to outperform the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. Much of the action plays out at 30 frames per second, and again, performance overall is much the same whether you’re playing docked or in handheld mode. Crysis Remastered is CPU-limited in most scenarios and the Switch’s ARM cores run at the same clocks whether you’re playing docked or in mobile mode. However, even when running in optimal conditions, there is a problem: the frame-rate cap is actually 31fps, not 30fps. It may sound like a matter of little importance, but the whole reason 30fps is a developer choice at all is that new frames are synchronised with every other screen refresh – so it still looks smooth and consistent.

As things stand, an extra frame is added every 12th frame and even if the frame-rate is notionally higher, this adds unwelcome stutter. This seems to be an artefact of the last-gen versions of Crysis which mostly went unnoticed as performance was generally so poor – we only noticed it running under back-compat emulation on Xbox One where many of the bottlenecks are removed. However, it’s a little disappointing that the same scenario is there on Switch. CryEngine titles like Homefront The Revolution and Crytek’s own Hunt: Showdown deliver 30fps on console the way it should be – and Crytek tells us that they’re looking into the issue here. Overall, performance isa mixed bag: it isn’t exceptional but it’s perfectly playable by Crysis standards and a far sight better than any other console release of any Crysis game and even at its worst, it’s still generally on par with other examples of Switch’s ‘impossible ports’.

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While we’re on the subject of CryEngine, why not check out Hunt Showdown – it’s wonderful on PC and the console ports are also terrific.

Beyond the visuals, Crysis Remastered also leans into Switch exclusive features. The game offers full support for gyro aiming, allowing you to more easily dial in your shots. The game controls surprisingly well in general, honestly. Crysis is an experience designed around the mouse and keyboard but the introduction of gyro aiming combined with snap targeting helps alleviate these issues. As expected, the game retains the same basic interface as the original console release as well. Suit powers are mapped to shoulder buttons – you can toggle between armour and stealth mode – while speed mode and strength mode are mapped to longer presses of the sticks. You jump higher via strength mode by holding down A, just as you did in the last-gen Crysis games. One thing that seemed a little odd to me is that walking speed seems a touch slow, while speed mode drains suit power and essentially rushes you into the next encounter. It doesn’t feel quite right.

So at this point, we have a clear picture of what Crysis Remastered actually is on Switch. It’s undoubtedly the best console port of the game released to date – until its Xbox One and PS4 siblings arrive, at least. Stacked up against Xbox 360 and PS3, it has the best image quality, vastly improved overall performance and the most impressive visuals. Yes, it’s still missing features from the PC original and dropping parallax occlusion mapping is a shame but even considering Crysis’ vintage, the basic concept of a Switch port of the game still seems insane, even before we factor in the new CryEngine features added here. Put simply, the porting team did a great job – but fundamentally, so did the original developers. Since the release of the original game, many folks have suggested that Crysis is nothing more than eye candy but I feel differently. Even today, this is a brilliant action game.

First and foremost, Crytek nailed the concept of scope. Crysis features massive maps to explore but it is not an open world game and this is fundamental. It’s an example of wide-linear design – the beginning and end are fixed but the path to victory is open-ended. This is coupled with the special features of the nanosuit, allowing for a lot of flexibility in how you approach each skirmish. It’s stealth and action but it’s also everything in between – and it works. The stealth and the shooting still feel great but by adding in the physics, destruction and a wealth of vehicles and items, the player’s toolbox is expanded, allowing for a lot of creativity along the way. It feels satisfying to try out an idea and have it all work out thanks to the systemic nature of the core game design.

Despite its more linear design, Crysis puts each of its maps to better use than any open world game I’ve played to date. When traversing the environments in Far Cry, most areas are ultimately just window dressing – they don’t factor into your strategy and have little impact on the game. This is not the case with Crysis and it’s fundamentally what makes it so special. Honestly, this is just scratching the surface but the point is this – Crysis itself remains a classic experience even to this day and even with the limitations of the Switch, it’s absolutely worth checking out.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/yes-a-handheld-really-can-run-crysis-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=yes-a-handheld-really-can-run-crysis-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[runewake2]

Last episode we built a quadtree from our previous octree implementation. That was cool but now it's time for some real fun! Lets make that quadtree into a sparse quadtree! What's that? Think of it as a quadtree, but only for the places where actual data exists. We will in the parts we need and ignore everything else. For data with a lot of empty space such as terrains this can be really helpful because we don't have to dedicate a lot of time and resources to considering all the empty space. In addition to building a sparse quadtree we're also going to be making our original quadtree useful so we can actually insert data into it. This and the sparse nature of the tree go hand-in-hand and we'll implement both of them together! We don't have a way to delete anything from our terrain yet and we probably won't for a while but what we can do is start inserting points into the tree and debugging things to make sure everything is functioning as we intended. The next steps now that we have a fairly solid data structure in place are to begin building our actual voxels. We'll start by completely randomly generating the tree and build up from there to something more complex. The next few steps in no particular order: build a terrain, generate the mesh, gener Catch up with part 1 of building our Quadtree here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkLI0s7phyU

[formgeneration]

sparse voxel octree

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=94489

[gloosted-blog1]

opencl sparse voxel octree raycasting using bencl (opencl wrapper included in the gloost framework)

[pes2019patch]

The release of Crysis Remastered draws closer and today we can reveal a technical feature of the console versions that we simply didn't believe possible just a few short months ago - the implementation of real-time ray-traced reflections. In a console game? Really? You can cut to the chase by checking out the embedded video below to see this technology in action on Xbox One X, but the fact is that via clever optimisations, the software-driven RT found in Crytek's Neon Noir demo has been optimised for Microsoft and Sony's enhanced consoles - and it looks very, very impressive.

This continues a trend of Crytek delivering cutting-edge visual features to hardware that just doesn't seem capable of running them. For Crysis Remastered on Switch, Crytek and partner developer Saber Interactive impressed us by dramatically relighting the game using actual real-time global illumination via SVOGI - sparse voxel octree global illumination. In effect, SVOGI allowed surfaces to approximate the way light bounces, a form of ray tracing in itself... running on Switch! Crytek's software ray traced reflections work as an extension of that technology, covering specular reflections around the player view.

It's computationally expensive, limited in certain respects, but very definitely makes a positive impact to the overall presentation. Metal surfaces and glass produce accurate reflections - even on objects that are not present in screen-space. A very subtle but impressive effect is delivered via RT reflections that are mapped onto the nanosuit itself, as seen in the game's various cutscenes. Limitations? For a start, the technology is so GPU-intensive that it's only implemented on the enhanced consoles - PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. The vanilla variants of each machine are not invited to the RT party. Secondly, should you select the ray tracing option (there are performance and resolution/quality modes too), resolution is busted down to a dynamic 1080p.

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[pes2019patch]

It's been almost a year since games using hardware accelerated ray tracing first arrived in the market, and it's clear that the use of RT technology continues to gain momentum, with hardware support baked into both Sony and Microsoft next-gen consoles. However, the debut of Crytek's Neon Noir demo earlier in the year raised eyebrows - what we were seeing here was software-powered RT, delivered by a Vega 56 and still looking quite performant. We've been testing this demo ahead of its public release and results are intriguing.

To get right to the heart of it, this demo utilises DirectX 11 and requires no specific ray tracing hardware. Rather, this version of ray traced reflections leverages Crytek's mature sparse voxel octree global illumination technology with a new spin, delivering a simplified version of the scene that can generate diffuse lighting, while being traced via a technique known as cone tracing to give glossy reflections. This technique has its limitations though: it has trouble capturing moving/skinned animated objects and the specular reflections it generates are not pixel accurate.

This is where Neon Noir comes in. On top of the information from voxel cone tracing and cubemaps, Neon Noir also injects ray traced specular reflections of geometric on top. This geometric ray tracing handles moving objects like the flying drone in the seen in the demo, allowing for pixel accurate reflections and indeed self reflections.

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[runewake2]

Time for a new and longer project. We're going to be building a voxel terrain system so we can replicate the kind of terrain destruction you'd get in games like Worms. We're starting small, creating a simple quadtree we can use to store our voxel data.

Why a quadtree? Good question! A quadtree, or specifically a sparse quadtree allows us to build a graph that is optimized for reading data at specific positions quickly but also able to encapsulate a large amount of data at once without requiring additional space for empty areas (this is where the sparse bit comes in). For now, we don't care too much about this but as we begin editing our data and doing other more complicated operations on it we'll need to be able to quickly access and modify the data in our graph. A quadtree allows us to do this and can be scaled up better than a flat 2 dimensional array.

In order to build our quadtree we're actually going to start with the octree base we have already created in our Unity Graph video (link below). We're mostly going to be slamming it with a hammer to drop the third dimension we no longer need. Instead of building the quadtree from scratch then we're performing an octree to quadtree conversion. This ideally would save us a lot of time. More if I actually knew what I was doing.

Now that we have our quadtree built the next step is to develop our actual voxel system. We'll look into solving that and actually building our mesh in the next videos!

Things will go smoothly he said. The other ones will crash and burn he said. Nope, the struggle is real. I have no idea what I'm doing... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Catch up on how we built our original octree here.

[gloosted-blog1]

SVO raycasting using OpenCL and Out-Of-Core memory management. This project is using the gloost framework and the include BenCL OpenCL wrapper. Per-vertex ambient occlusion was baked with meshlab. Both models (Lucy and David) are voxelized at least to level 12 (some leaves are much deeper though). Download the source (GPL) from http://sourceforge.net/projects/libsvo/ This is my work repository, there is no written documentation at the moment but the source is well documented.

[gloosted-blog1]

voxelizer