A Large Rocky Scene August 15, 2010
These are screenshots of a new scene featuring some voxel-based rock formations with sand and a polygon-based vehicle.
Watch the new video dev-blog featuring a real-time footage of the engine rendering this scene on a mainstream notebook.
The volumetric fog is applied with a minimal performance penalty;
the cast soft shadow as well as a proof-of-concept solution for simple indirect illumination are CPU-based and therefore quite slow.
The engine performed on interactive framerates on a mainstream notebook due to the 3x3 super-sample anti-aliasing in combination with per-pixel geometry detail.
The pre-shader DOF and Bloom effects were also contributing significantly to the pixel-bound performance penalty with this particular SSAA settings.
The anaglyph images should be viewed with red-cyan glasses.
Click on any image to view its full-size version.
(opens in a new window or tab)
Pickup model by Twayan
Indirect Illumination, SSAA, Bloom, DOF July 22, 2010 Atomontage Engine now performs much better than it ever did.
The re-written parts of the renderer boosted the performance by 400% and at some situations by over 1000%!
Right, the modern GPUs, I mean the GPUs from 2004 and up, are definitely well suitable for massive voxel scene rendering
with per-pixel or even sub-pixel geometry details in real-time.
The industry will change. It must!
The Indirect Illumination effect is an almost entirely CPU-based solution.
It performs well but it is clear that it will get maybe up to 10 times faster after the non-intelligent part of the code is moved to the GPU (and even much faster with a properly optimized code).
The Depth of field and Bloom effects are a pre-shader solution (so is the rest of the renderer).
As such they would most probably work on any archaic PC with OpenGL 1.2.1 or so if it supported OpenGL Frame-buffer object.
These effects as well as the rest of the renderer will get faster and better with shaders.
The last three screenshots show what I call render-atoms.
Temporarily such atom is an atomic chunk of data (re-)optimized for rendering before it is plot on the screen.
The shiny squares or segments are groups of render-atoms that were invalidated in the past and needed to be re-optimized for hi-speed rendering.
Click on any image to view its full-size version.
(opens in a new window or tab)
Armored vehicle model by WormSlayer
Wheel Tracks
Atomontage Engine supports content alteration as a response to physics-simulation events.
A relatively small number of simple content alteration response types can make a game look and behave much more realistically.
Small scale destructions can be an essential gameplay feature and they can also greatly improve replayability af a game.
Most action games would benefit a lot from a technology that would make it possible to use for example newly created craters and furrows as a barrier, or a trap for enemies.
Non-predefined blowing up of walls and other obstacles could make it possible to use the static content as a vital part of a totally dynamic gameplay.
The following video contains one of the little more complicated real-time content alteration effects.
Althought 3D wheel tracks are an example of a small scale destruction, the fact that it is an almost continuous process that affects numerous
locations at once on each frame and that the locations are potentially overlapping make it a more resource-demanding feature than effects
like generation of craters, bumps, small depressions and similar.
These effects are usualy single events with little need for making the generators efficient.
Note that wheel tracks generation also interferes with car physics while a typical exploding grenade results in nothing more than the crater and some smoke.
This video also shows a lot of exposed rock that was just beneath the surface of the layer of sand before the wheels passed above.
The depth of the track depends on the force applied at that location as weel as on the ratio of slipping of the particular wheel.
Similar functionality might soon become useful for hiding relevant gameplay objects, traps, ammo and similar.
Fri Dec 15, 2009 | 3D Wheel Tracks Video This video shows an example of simple content alteration as a response to physics-simulation events.
The scene was generated without supersampling leading to a lower quality of the surface of the rocks.
Download: atomontage_wheeltracks_hi.avi 1280x720 XviD MPEG-4 (82MB) atomontage_wheeltracks_lo.avi 640x360 XviD MPEG-4 (13MB)
Ready For A Gameplay
Finally Atomontage Engine is ready to be integrated into computer games.
The following video demonstrates a few basic rendering-related effects and car physics.
The video also features destruction physics - now only in form of wheel tracks generated in real-time.
The geometry and coloring of the content is modified depending on the pressure of the wheels.
At some places buried rock is exposed after a wheel passes above it.
This is only possible with a volumetric scene representation.
Some of the 16 LODs of the content maintained by the engine are shown for a few times.
You can see how well the engine updates the lower LOD data after changes have been made to the content.
All volumetric data is unique no matter how large the scene is.
Therefore physics simulator as well as the user can modify the content in any useful way, in real-time.
This will be a key feature in most future computer games.
The video also features an old-style polygon-mesh based model of a truck.
The support for volumetric as well as vector content seems to be the best solution for switching from now usual vector engines to modern volumetric or hybrid solutions.
This way every game developer can decide about how much volumetric his new game will become.
Fri Dec 04, 2009 | Car Physics And Content Alteration In Real-Time This video presents a volumetric scene with a high spatial resolution.
The scene has been generated with our content generators without supersampling.
Note the numerous artifacts - floating rock, holes and a number of badly colored voxels.
Most artifacts are the result of overdone optimization of the generators, others of the disabled supersampling.
Up to tens of billions of voxel attributes have to be calculated and analyzed to create this kind of fractal-like geometry.
It would take a dozen hours or more to generate content like this on one computer without an aggressive optimization.
Download: atomontage_redrock_hi.avi 1280x720 XviD MPEG-4 (79MB) atomontage_redrock_lo.avi 640x360 XviD MPEG-4 (20MB)
LODs, Interactive Editing
This video presents a few voxelized plant models.
It is shown how a number of LODs represent the volumetric scene redundantly.
The basic idea behind LODs is that all tasks use the lowest LOD that provides enough information about the content while making the task execute in shortest time.
Rendering and collision detection including.
Typically some LOD of a voxelized content contains up to eight times lower number of elements (voxels) then the next higher LOD.
Atomontage Engine provides 16 LODs of volumetric content.
Only the top 10-12 LODs are useful for rendering and physics simulation.
Because of the dynamics of the content it is often necessary to maintain the integrity of the data by updating all LODs of the altered data.
Fri Nov 27, 2009 | LODs The video demonstrates the multi-LOD volumetric scene representation.
The content can be modified in real-time. It is necessary to maintain integrity of the content so that all LODs contain an up-to-date version of the content.
It can be seen that at some point the engine failed to determine the right LOD to be updated when the orange balls have been plot.
As a result the balls are missing in the top LOD while they can be well visible when the content is rendered at a lower level of detail.
Download: atomontage_plants_LODs_midres.avi (42MB XviD MPEG-4)
Smooth Voxel Rendering + Content Generation With Supersampling A comparison between the most basic boxy voxel rendering and the more advanced smooth voxel rendering technique can be seen on the following screenshots.
The smooth voxel rendering can be parametrized to produce a better picture while maintaining a relatively little video-memory usage.
There is almost no performance penalty for using smooth voxel rendering.
The generators are capable of producing volumetric data with a high level of supersampling.
This leads to a temporary higher demand on (main) memory and it usually takes much longer to create the near the same content.
Supersampling might be useful for the production of milestone and release quality data.
Thu Apr 09, 2009 | Smooth voxel rendering + supersampling The scene on the left was generated with no supersampling and drawn by the boxy voxel renderer.
The scene on the right was generated with 2^3 supersampling and drawn by our smooth voxel renderer.
The difference in picture quality becomes significant during camera motion as the usually very noticeable aliasing of boxy voxels becomes negligible.
The improvement is also well visible on closeups of objects in static images (see the zoomed-in flowerpot).
Some artifacts are still visible on the right images due to a low level of supersampling and overdone optimization of some rendering algorithms.
The scene was rendered with 2xFSAA.
Download: Click here to view the images.
Voxel Rendering / Volumetric Plant Models The following screenshots have been rendered with our real-time voxel renderer.
The largest scene contains over 100M explicitly defined voxels, out of which about 50M voxels define solid matter.
Over 7M surface voxels are rendered in each frame.
The content has been generated by our volumetric content-generator.
Fri Nov 07, 2008 | Voxel rendering - 100 million voxels scene This scene is made of over 100M explicitly defined voxels. About half of them define solid matter. The scene was volumetrically modelled in our engine and rendered on a per-pixel-geometry basis. Over 7M surface voxels are rendered in each frame. Download: Click image 1 | image 2 | image 3 to view the whole scene from a distance.
Fri Nov 07, 2008 | Voxel rendering - 100 million voxels scene The voxels closest to the camera are about one pixel across. The voxels at the edge of the scene are renderd on a subpixel basis. Use the red-cyan glasses to view the anaglyph image. Download: Click RGB image | color anaglyph to view the hi-res image and its anaglyph.
Fri Nov 07, 2008 | Voxel rendering - 100 million voxels scene These are a few of up to 16 LODs of the scene content. LODs are automatically generated by the engine. Distant parts of the scene are usually rendered at lower detail. This makes the performance of the renderer depend on the screen resolution rather then on the extents of the rendered scene. Download: Click here to view the images.
Fri Nov 07, 2008 | Voxel rendering - Multi-million voxel plants This is a close-up of a geometrically complex plant made of tens of thousands of segments. It would be uneasy to render such an object in real-time if modelled as a triangle mesh. Using bump-mapping to reduce triangle count wouldn't help much to simplify the mesh without a significant degradation of the apparent complexity of the object. Download: Click here to view the images.
Fri Nov 07, 2008 | Voxel rendering - Multi-million voxel plants This is a close-up of hundreds of nicely round tiles and a plant pot. You can recognize particular voxels making up the tiles lying close to the camera. Download: Click here to view the images.
Fri Nov 07, 2008 | Voxel rendering - Multi-million voxel plants This is a work-in-progress version of the plants above. Each of the thorny plants is made of tens of thousands of segments. Download: Click image 1 | image 2 to view the thorny bushes.
Voxel Rendering / Large-scale Voxel Landscape These are a few screenshots showing two geometrically complex scenes.
The scenes have been rendered with our voxel renderer in real-time on a mainstream PC made in 2003.
The scenes contain dozens of square kms large rocky and sandy landscape including more than 100,000 boulders in the area close to the camera.
If defined and rendered using vector graphics, any of the scenes would hardly fit into the main memory of a mainstream PC.
It would be necessary to render some 2 millions of polygons per frame to resemble the presented geometrical detail.
Sun Sep 28, 2008 | Voxel rendering - image 1 A multi-million voxel geometry rendered in real-time. Use the red-cyan (red-green) glasses to view the anaglyph version. Download: atomontage_rock0927b.jpg (434KB Hi-Res JPEG) atomontage_rock0927b_anaglyph.jpg (color anaglyph, 655KB Hi-Res JPEG)
Sun Sep 28, 2008 | Voxel rendering - image 2 A multi-million voxel geometry rendered in real-time. Use the red-cyan (red-green) glasses to view the anaglyph version. Download: atomontage_rock0927c.jpg (479KB Hi-Res JPEG) atomontage_rock0927c_anaglyph.jpg (color anaglyph, 633KB Hi-Res JPEG)
Sun Sep 28, 2008 | Voxel rendering - image 3 A multi-million voxel geometry rendered in real-time. Use the red-cyan (red-green) glasses to view the anaglyph version. Download: atomontage_rock0927a.jpg (558KB Hi-Res JPEG) atomontage_rock0927a_anaglyph.jpg (color anaglyph, 828KB Hi-Res JPEG)
These are a few outdated videos of testing of an older Atomontage physics implementation:
Dec 2007 | Vehicle and particles Example of a vehicle and particle cloud interaction. You can see how the fluid dynamics determines the behavior of particles that are not in contact with the moving rigid body. Download: atomontage_fluiddyn2.avi (10MB MPEG4, 1 min/16 FPS)
Dec 2007 | Massive particle simulation Example of a massive simulation of particle systems. The wind direction is slightly changing over time contributing to the chaotic behavior of the particle flows. Download: atomontage_fluiddyn_massive3.avi (12MB MPEG4, 1:09 min/16 FPS)
The following videos are from an early work-in-progress version of the engine. A slower, memory demanding version of the volumetric scene data model has been used as collision geometry. Still the engine performed exceptionally well. Sorry for the ugly generated graphics.
Jun 2006 | Water and buoyancy This video shows a simulation of rigid bodies interacting with a liquid environment. The engine automatically generates a suitable optimized collision geometry of entities to allow a fast, realistic simulation within such environments. The simulation is so accurate that you can skip a stone if its shape and velocity make it possible. Download: atomontage_liquid_rigids.avi (19MB MPEG4, 4:08 min/20 FPS) atomontage_liquid_rigids.mpg (47MB MPEG2, 4:08 min/29 FPS)
Jun 2006 | Gravitation - shots This video shows a number of slowly moving projectiles deflected or captured by local gravitational fields. Download: atomontage_gravity_shots.avi (9MB MPEG4, 1:49 min/20 FPS) atomontage_gravity_shots.mpg (18MB MPEG2, 1:49 min/29 FPS)
Jun 2006 | Moving fields This video shows a number of rigid bodies affected by moving gravitational fields. Download: atomontage_gravity_ramble.avi (6MB MPEG4, 1:08 min/24 FPS) atomontage_gravity_ramble.mpg (10MB MPEG2, 1:08 min/24 FPS)
Jun 2006 | Gravitation - lift and attraction This video shows a number of rigid bodies attracted or deflected by local gravitational fields. Download: atomontage_gravity_lift.avi (2.5MB MPEG4, 0:38 min/24 FPS) atomontage_gravity_lift.mpg (4MB MPEG2, 0:38 min/24 FPS)
Jun 2006 | Gravitation - attractor object This video shows a large number of rigid bodies captured in a gravitational field until they become repelled after the field has been switched to repel objects. Download: atomontage_gravity_attract.avi (19MB MPEG4, 2:04 min/24 FPS) atomontage_gravity_attract.mpg (29MB MPEG2, 2:04 min/24 FPS)
The following videos are from an early, experimental implementation of the engine.
2005-2006 | Shots and rigid bodies This video shows interaction between projectiles and rigid objects. The projectiles bounce off or penetrate the surfaces based on their mass, speed, the impact angle and the properties of the interacting materials. Download: atomontage.com.shots_rigids.avi (25MB MPEG4, 2:19 min/12 FPS)
2005-2006 | Shots, rocks and sand This video shows the behavior of fast and slow projectiles when hitting surfaces made of rock or sand. Download: atomontage.com.shots_maps.avi (10MB MPEG4, 1:05 min/12 FPS)
