Fallout 4: A realtime tribute
Last update in the bottom post to understand why the video is gone along with some closure for those who were interested in this topic and some farewell Fallout tribute images.
Greetings, everyone! There is so much awesome work here and I'd like to share something of mine with you, instead of just stalking everyone's beautiful achievements. The whole tribute took about 3-4 days of hobby work to put together, the tech has been an ongoing effort for multiple years (much of it theoretical, actual research in EM theory and figuring out computational models).
Fallout 4: A Realtime Tribute
Essentially, as I played Fallout New Vegas the other day, I thought about how this game would look on the engine I've been working on for some time now. The video linked below is the answer to my question.
To preface this, I am a software engineer first, a patron of the arts second.
As I'm also a huge gamer, a given considering the industry I'm in (development of realtime rendering architectures), After a few years of tenacious development of rendering theory and implementation, I decided to pay tribute to one of my favorite games ever — Fallout. So, I developed a small environment and shoved it into my downgraded rendering architecture (currently figuring out something that works on the PS4). I believe it is only sensible to use the version that most people can run, rather than having the Watch Dogs fiasco.
As you can see, my username is Username. That should indicate something about my desire for privacy and the reason I do not wish to disclose to what company or project I'm attached to, or the usual suspect of not wanting to be associated with something that sucks. Also, it might be construed as an advertisment for my rendering architecture and it's irrelevant essentially.
So, primary "features" of the downgrade:
Bokeh Depth of Field is still a work in progress, you will notice issues when crossing layers and even in layers themselves due to the way the shapes are extruded-splatted from the bright spots. Physically-based bokeh, while I implemented it in the past, it destroys performance for minimal visual gain. In fact, all the false positives of the hueristic layer based approach give rise to interesting shiny stuff play on the screen. Although it is annoying on the boundary.
The shape is free-form, as it is non-physical, but I find the circly shape of a perfect aperture to be the most pleasing one. I've seen The Division use hexagons, unrotated ones with "spikes" protruding up, kind of a turn off.
You might notice there are no "near-blur shots", that's because I still haven't figured out how to accelerate my standard method which enables semi-transparency of the objects in the foreground layer for the light of the background layers to gameplay standards 1920x1080@60Hz. If you're interested, I'll keep you posted.
Special thanks to the guys at QUIXEL who've graciously made the SUITE open to the development community over the past few months, the time nDO and dDO have saved me is off the charts.
Also, to the guy who made the basis of my lens dirt texture, whoever he is. I've been trying to get it look dashing, but extrapolating it was not trivial. If only if it were as easy as mapping the texture in screenspace as a function of local brightness, huh?
And the cool guy who designed the Overseer font.
And you guys for taking the time to read, watch, comment, help improve.
Greetings, everyone! There is so much awesome work here and I'd like to share something of mine with you, instead of just stalking everyone's beautiful achievements. The whole tribute took about 3-4 days of hobby work to put together, the tech has been an ongoing effort for multiple years (much of it theoretical, actual research in EM theory and figuring out computational models).
Fallout 4: A Realtime Tribute
Essentially, as I played Fallout New Vegas the other day, I thought about how this game would look on the engine I've been working on for some time now. The video linked below is the answer to my question.
To preface this, I am a software engineer first, a patron of the arts second.
As I'm also a huge gamer, a given considering the industry I'm in (development of realtime rendering architectures), After a few years of tenacious development of rendering theory and implementation, I decided to pay tribute to one of my favorite games ever — Fallout. So, I developed a small environment and shoved it into my downgraded rendering architecture (currently figuring out something that works on the PS4). I believe it is only sensible to use the version that most people can run, rather than having the Watch Dogs fiasco.
As you can see, my username is Username. That should indicate something about my desire for privacy and the reason I do not wish to disclose to what company or project I'm attached to, or the usual suspect of not wanting to be associated with something that sucks. Also, it might be construed as an advertisment for my rendering architecture and it's irrelevant essentially.
So, primary "features" of the downgrade:
- Precomputation of diffuse global illumination (spherical harmonics)
- fully realtime low-freq, diffuse global illumination (a variation on the proposition of Dachsbacher & Kaplanyan)
- precomputed glossy reflections (semi-online BRDF convolution) at a moderate resolution (no high-resolution HDR photograph trickery)
- Screenspace reflections dynamically convolved with the active BRDF, currently still having some issues compared to the full proprietary method I developed for the tier 0 version of the engine.
- Analytical area lights with energy conservation (spheres, lines, currently working on rectangular shapes)
- Varying & fully programmable multi-kernel screenspace bloom/glare effect, combining up to 8 different ones, although it gets annoying after 4. Still, being annoying might just be what the doctor ordered for some scenes.
- No lens flares. My crowning achievement. Lens flares literally don't exist. I guess JJ Abrams will not be using it.
Bokeh Depth of Field is still a work in progress, you will notice issues when crossing layers and even in layers themselves due to the way the shapes are extruded-splatted from the bright spots. Physically-based bokeh, while I implemented it in the past, it destroys performance for minimal visual gain. In fact, all the false positives of the hueristic layer based approach give rise to interesting shiny stuff play on the screen. Although it is annoying on the boundary.
The shape is free-form, as it is non-physical, but I find the circly shape of a perfect aperture to be the most pleasing one. I've seen The Division use hexagons, unrotated ones with "spikes" protruding up, kind of a turn off.
You might notice there are no "near-blur shots", that's because I still haven't figured out how to accelerate my standard method which enables semi-transparency of the objects in the foreground layer for the light of the background layers to gameplay standards 1920x1080@60Hz. If you're interested, I'll keep you posted.
Special thanks to the guys at QUIXEL who've graciously made the SUITE open to the development community over the past few months, the time nDO and dDO have saved me is off the charts.
Also, to the guy who made the basis of my lens dirt texture, whoever he is. I've been trying to get it look dashing, but extrapolating it was not trivial. If only if it were as easy as mapping the texture in screenspace as a function of local brightness, huh?
And the cool guy who designed the Overseer font.
And you guys for taking the time to read, watch, comment, help improve.
Replies
Thanks! I'd love to provide some gameplay concepts, but I am not sure exactly how far may I take something like this, fair use or not. It started out as a curiosity and a way to work on rendering problems on top of something very dear to me like Fallout.
I'll let this simmer for a few days and then decide could it become somewhat of a hobby. I rigged Type-I Mr. Handy yesterday (one of the things I hate the most, so it was really nice practice), with preexisting rigs for bipeds, fleshed out Nuka Cola bottles and other props. Might combine it into something nifty.
I feel if you could boost them bounces or something, probably read better.
Very true, Fallout with its dark and gritty style, especially in this particular vault with power on 12% is a bad test case of global illumination. I'll try to figure the lighting in more prominently in future extensions of the experiment.
I am also probably going to remove the energy conservation restrictions somewhat, as this method has less scene information to work with. Thank you for the constructive critique!
I have been cheaping out on the geometry, haven't I? I'll probably swap out a good deal and add more interesting surfaces and lights to go along with it.
So, for now:
Thank you! Any suggestions are most appreciated and will be taken to heart in the next iteration!
Figuring out and approximating EM propagation and light-matter interaction in a finite volume is one thing, but blocking in that volume is where the fun is at. Until we meet again!
Just to make sure people remember how Fallout (Gamebryo) actually looks like, as opposed to the romanticized image we create in our imagination of the worlds we enjoy:
Made a few more videos and animations for my own sake, here's a combination of video footage, old and new, in picture form. No more videos, too much attention. But I guess it is okay, my identity is secret, and that of my tech, nobody can say I am advertising anything or infringing in any way through the means of leeching off an established IP, right?