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Stone Giant Tech Demo (Image heavy)

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PixelGoat
polycounter lvl 12
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PixelGoat polycounter lvl 12
This is a tech demo that Belltann and I have been working on here at Fatshark, along with Bitsquid. It is a tech demo for the new features in DX11, shown in the new Bitsquid engine.

The primary focus of the demo is to show of hardware tesselation aswell as improved DoF. I was responsible for creating all environmental assets in the scene and placing them, aswell as lighting some of it. Belltann created the Stone Giant and the Spidery creature. Technical/lighting artist for the demo was Isak Bergh and FX by Staffan Ahlström. Animation by Mikael Hansson

I'm sure Belltann will jump in and post some screens of his own later, WIP images and what not.

Everything was done over the course of a few weeks, at the same time as the engine was being written, so there was alot of testing, trial and error and experimenting to figure out the workflow and pipeline as we went along. Need I say it was a bit stressful and demanding at times :)

Really interesting working with new tech that you have no idea how it works. I had to unlearn alot of what I knew in order to adapt to the new pipeline and way of thinking. Especially when it came to mesh optimization and topology layout.

The entire demo can be downloaded here: www.stonegiant.se

Youtube-Video: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOEDf33AZh4[/ame]

Here are some(many) screens taken inside the demo:

SG_big_1.jpg

SG_big_2.jpg

SG_big_3.jpg

SG_big_4.jpg

SG_1.jpg

SG_2.jpg

SG_3.jpg

SG_4.jpg

SG_5.jpg

SG_6.jpg

SG_7.png

SG_8.png



To give you an idea of the kind of tesselation the Bitsquid Engine is capable of, here is the spider-creature in its basic, non-tesselated form, aswell as zoomed in very close to it:

tesselated.jpg



http://www.bitsquid.se/

www.fatshark.se

Enjoy :)

Replies

  • Sean VanGorder
    That....is....awesome. I love the DoF you have in these images. Just makes the environments seem that much more epic. Tessellation is ace as well.

    Very nice job guys

    Are there any other projects currently working with this engine? Or are there any plans for future projects already set?
  • Rufuss
    This looks amazing, love the DoF and tesselation.
  • ScoobyDoofus
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    ScoobyDoofus polycounter lvl 19
    I saw this in video form, since I run XP. Looks amazing though. I was wondering who the artists were behind it. Really stunning work. I cannot wait to learn this tesselation pipeline workflow myself someday soon.
    Darnit, I need to upgrade to Win 7!
  • Snefer
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    Snefer polycounter lvl 16
    OM NOM NOM. Tesselation and DOF <3

    Good job u guys ^^
  • Chclve
    Looks awesome. Tesselation is insanely cool. Is it a lot different building meshes when you have tesselation in mind? What are the differences? :)
  • 3DRyan
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    3DRyan polycounter lvl 8
    Stunning work. I love the concept behind the golem-esque guy. Was this all done from scratch? Very nice stuff indeed.
  • Synthesizer
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    Synthesizer polycounter lvl 11
    Very cool stuff :) I've been missing working with the Diesel engine since Grin went down, it'd be fun to try this stuff out. The engine's come quite a long ways in a short amount of time.
  • Makkon
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    Makkon polycounter
    I doubt this'll run on my rig, but I'll give it a shot. Looks revolutionary! Some of the best environment art I've ever seen, and I really mean that.
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    a video would be cool :)

    me loves the dof too
  • NinthJake
    This is absolutely stunning :O

    I would LOVE to see my models displayed in the game engine. Any chance to see a free toolbox like Marmoset in the future? ;D

    Also it is nice to see some Swedes working on it :D
  • Fishypants
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    Fishypants polycounter lvl 18
    Damn looks really nice! The DOF and tessellation are really impressive!

    -Quick, small, unimportant funfact:
    In terms of DOF, at least with a real world camera, if you are focussed on something that is over 20 feet away, there is zero DOF because you are focused into infinity.

    Some of the shots are hard to tell the scale because of this, it looks like a miniature. BUT that doesn't mean it isn't kick ass and looks beautiful! Plus I understand the point is to show off DOF so I can suspend reality and enjoy the pretty visuals.
  • Spitfire
    Awesome stuff, way more fun to fly around in on your own =D
  • vcortis
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    vcortis polycounter lvl 9
  • PixelGoat
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    PixelGoat polycounter lvl 12
    rollin wrote: »
    a video would be cool :)

    me loves the dof too
    ¨

    But there is a youtube video up there? :)


    @sXe Seany

    We have projects planned, but I can´t say any more than that ;)

    @Chclve

    Well the biggest differene is that now every triangle counts so much more than before, since they are being tesselated to such an insane degree, you have to remove every unneccessary tringle posible to maximize performance. Also since it is being tesselated you have to have evenly sized quads/tris in the basemesh to get the best and cleanest tesselation. So no more single quad house walls ;)

    @3DRyan

    Everything but the Stone Giant himself was done from scratch. Belltann used his Dominance War entry as a base for the giant. But to be fair he basically had to redo the entire giant anyway, more than once hehe.


    @Simon

    This isnt actually the Diesel Engine, its a completely new one, done from scratch. But Tobias an Niklas are still behind it :)

    @Fishypants

    You are absolutely right. The DoF is not correct in most of these screens. I went for more "coolness" rather than realism :) I think the miniature thing just makes it cooler hehe :)


    Glad you all like it!
  • vargatom
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    http://www.pixelgoat.se/projects/stone/SG_1.jpg

    This image intrigues me. A lot. are the tiles modeled in the floor, or as floaters, or are they being made via some parralax map or a heightmap or something? Same goes for the closeup of the giant's hand and the bug's zoomed in shot.

    I thought tesselation worked like a meshsmooth/turbosmooth so i'm wondering how it get this extra detail instead of becoming really rounded. Do you need really high poly base meshes?

    How many polies are there in one bug?
  • Skamberin
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    Skamberin polycounter lvl 13
    Tesselation <3, downloading the demo now :)! Looks ace!
  • PixelGoat
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    PixelGoat polycounter lvl 12
    Snader wrote: »
    http://www.pixelgoat.se/projects/stone/SG_1.jpg

    This image intrigues me. A lot. are the tiles modeled in the floor, or as floaters, or are they being made via some parralax map or a heightmap or something? Same goes for the closeup of the giant's hand and the bug's zoomed in shot.

    I thought tesselation worked like a meshsmooth/turbosmooth so i'm wondering how it get this extra detail instead of becoming really rounded. Do you need really high poly base meshes?

    How many polies are there in one bug?

    We use Displacement maps to displace the tesselated geometry. Just like you would do with a regular renderer like Mentalray or Renderman :) In this demo we use 2 different kinds of tesselation. regular tesselation with no smoothing, aswell as phong-tesselation that rounds off any nonsmooth edges you might find. I'll see if I can get some screens showing the phong tesselation in action.

    As for the floortiles. They are separate meshes with displacement map applied to remove their lowpoly look. :)
  • Synthesizer
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    Synthesizer polycounter lvl 11
    PixelGoat wrote: »
    ¨
    This isnt actually the Diesel Engine, its a completely new one, done from scratch. But Tobias an Niklas are still behind it :)

    Yes, I know, I still miss it though :p
    I'm looking forward to see what a full game done with this engine will look like :)
  • Swizzle
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    Swizzle polycounter lvl 15
    A few questions:

    Do you run into problems using displacement and normal maps on the same meshes?

    Any weird issues with normal maps conflicting displacement info for lighting?

    I can't run the demo at the moment, so how does the lighting work—is it baked lightmaps everywhere, or is the lighting dynamic?

    Are there any problems with popping when the meshes are tesselated as they get close to the camera?

    Do the displaced areas self-shadow?
  • PixelGoat
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    PixelGoat polycounter lvl 12
    Swizzle wrote: »
    A few questions:

    Do you run into problems using displacement and normal maps on the same meshes?

    Any weird issues with normal maps conflicting displacement info for lighting?

    I can't run the demo at the moment, so how does the lighting work—is it baked lightmaps everywhere, or is the lighting dynamic?

    Are there any problems with popping when the meshes are tesselated as they get close to the camera?

    Do the displaced areas self-shadow?

    We make sure the info in the normalmap and displacement map match as closely as possible, so they complement each other instead of working against.

    It's all dynamic lighting.

    As for the tesselation, it is based on screenspace so each triangle is occupying about 8 pixels on the screen at any given time. So there is no popping, the tesselation is dynamically increased as you get closer and closer to the object. Hope that makes sense?

    At the moment we only have the base meshes casting shadow, but it is possible to have the tesselated geometry cast shadows, at the cost of performance ofcourse.
  • cman2k
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    cman2k polycounter lvl 17
    Really interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing, especially the insight into the workflow!
  • Rens
  • conte
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    conte polycounter lvl 18
    looks sweet. lovely art.
  • OzMa
    That's fucking brilliant, I love that giant... really cool! Congratulations for that work :)
  • elte
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    elte polycounter lvl 18
    That's ZZZZAwesome
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    @Awesome work, I saw this tech demo a while ago.

    Are you excited for tessellation and the future of game art?
    I've seen some tessellation stuff where the houses were still basically flat walls but with floaters for windows + details.

    How easy will it be for artists to switch to a tessellation based work flow?
  • Fang
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    Fang polycounter lvl 7
    Funny I was just browsing the Fatshark and Bitsquid websites yesterday before I saw this post today :) Coolness nevertheless.
  • 3dflasher
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    3dflasher polycounter lvl 17
    I saw this cruising the web a couple weeks ago ...amazing work guys. Love new tech and you guys are showing it off properly. Can't wait to see more. Did you guys lock at 30 or can this run at 60 since there is no game logic running. It would be awesome to see some hardware specs with that answer, but I totally understand if you can't post that stuff this early on. Your whole team from engineer to artist deserve a freaking high five for a job well done.

    BTW: Screen Space Tesselation = Mind Blowing!
  • felipefrango
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    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    PixelGoat wrote: »
    As for the tesselation, it is based on screenspace so each triangle is occupying about 8 pixels on the screen at any given time. So there is no popping, the tesselation is dynamically increased as you get closer and closer to the object.

    I assume that makes it less CPU/GPU intensive and makes it viable? I don't have a DX11 GPU so I've never seen any DX11 games running in realtime but tesselation looks so intensive, as I understand it is meant to work in a way that your tri count is pretty much the same on your screen regardless of how many objects are on it and how big they are?
  • PixelGoat
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    PixelGoat polycounter lvl 12
    3dflasher wrote: »
    I saw this cruising the web a couple weeks ago ...amazing work guys. Love new tech and you guys are showing it off properly. Can't wait to see more. Did you guys lock at 30 or can this run at 60 since there is no game logic running. It would be awesome to see some hardware specs with that answer, but I totally understand if you can't post that stuff this early on. Your whole team from engineer to artist deserve a freaking high five for a job well done.

    BTW: Screen Space Tesselation = Mind Blowing!

    It is not locked at any fps. heres a guy running it with quad SLI GTX480 :P

    250fps hehe.

    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM0uRcY6828&amp;feature=fvw[/ame]


    @felipefrango

    Since im just an artist I just know what our engineer told me, but yeah, something like that.
  • vj_box
    Damn that is just epic! cant wait to play a level on this. Awesome job!
  • vj_box
    I downloaded the exe and it says it needs the Windows NT version to install, any clue?
  • Ajax
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    Ajax polycounter lvl 18
  • dang87
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    dang87 polycounter lvl 12
    That was FREAKIN' SWEET! Look very nice. Great job! :)
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    ha.. the video didn't showed up the first time ..

    nice vid btw.. :)
  • man_o_mule
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    man_o_mule polycounter lvl 18
    grr, can't watch vid at work.
  • aphexx
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    aphexx polycounter lvl 12
    awesome stuff, well done!
    nice idea, when the golem took a crystal for the light! also the crystal shading was amazing!
    too bad only a few of us can take the advantage of developing with this kind of technique within the next 2 years :/
    i.e. our team is way too small to evaluate this technique besides the standard schedule
  • r4ptur3
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    r4ptur3 polycounter lvl 10
    awesome stuff :) good memories :P
  • ShaDoW
    I tried out the demo today and it was absolutely beautiful! I love the artwork. Sometimes it was hard to believe the amount of triangles that were visible in wireframe when your close up to something. Good performance too!
  • TrevorJ
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    TrevorJ polycounter lvl 9
    Hey cool its the rock monster from the last dominance war, i think. i was following it, i recognized the staircase on his arm. I'm glad to see its looking as awesome as it does.
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    Fantastic Art all around. Loved the little tech demo vid too. All the info shared is great too :)

    I clicked the vid to watch it full screen on youtubes website. On the side bar there were links to other earlier iterations im assuming. A few of them showed what seemed to be the tessellation in action. It would occasionally jump from what one would assume to be the LP scene to the tessellated scene.

    My question is what kind of performance hit do you take when this happens? Going from a LP mesh to a tessellated one seems like it would have to have some kinda hickup. Then again my tech knowledge is low.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Autocon wrote: »
    My question is what kind of performance hit do you take when this happens? Going from a LP mesh to a tessellated one seems like it would have to have some kinda hickup. Then again my tech knowledge is low.

    from what I can tell its the same mesh, no swapping, its just the mesh smoothly get tessellated as you get closer, in the wireframe videos on youtube you can see the edges slowly move in as the mesh tessellates.
  • katana
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    katana polycounter lvl 14
    outstanding sound.
  • doeseph
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    doeseph polycounter lvl 7
    I'm confused, you did all that in just a few weeks? Did you not have to worry about poly limits/low poly so you were able to model everything in Zbrush? How the heck did you manage that kind of detail in such a short amount of time?

    This is really impressive.
  • PixelGoat
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    PixelGoat polycounter lvl 12
    doeseph wrote: »
    I'm confused, you did all that in just a few weeks? Did you not have to worry about poly limits/low poly so you were able to model everything in Zbrush? How the heck did you manage that kind of detail in such a short amount of time?

    This is really impressive.

    Never said it was Easy :) not every asset is up to the level I would like them. But when put together it works nicely :)
  • felipefrango
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    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    How did you do the cave walls and stones, how much of it is modular? Do them all use tiling textures? How many assets have individual texture sheets?
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    Great work....simply stunning :D
  • sprunghunt
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    sprunghunt polycounter
    this looks awesome and the engine looks like it's got some very innovative ideas in there.

    You guys absolutely have to release an editor for this when it comes out!
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    Great work for the time guys. I get a woody for new tech, so nice video you got going there!

    You mentioned earlier that you don't have the tessellated stuff casting shadows for performance, if that is turned on is the scene even playable?

    I always like to imagine where the next gen stuff is going (ps4, xbox, etc) and these features seem a generational leap ahead of what current consoles can do. But with the big companies extending the life of their consoles, for cost reasons, it seems like this is the tip of the iceberg and tech like this won't become anything more then "just" PC stuff. That combined with the much stronger focus on consoles and web based gaming from developers, it will be interesting to see how long this tech sits and develops on PC with not many games using it, before it gets to everyones living room.
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