Page 2 of 5

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:00 am
by centaurism
Looking very nice. Very impressive indeed!

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 3:14 pm
by SiENcE
Looks good.

But, what about the leave edges? They don't look soft for me. What techniques does Games use for this problem? I have seen nice vegitation with smooth leave-egdes in the Game Drakensang (also uses SpeedTree).

I ask, because we have the same Problem with Trees and Grass.

Code: Select all

alpha_rejection greater 128
looks bad from a far distance

and

Code: Select all

scene_blend alpha_blend
depth_write off
depth_check on
produces wrong sorting.

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:35 am
by sinbad
MattMihaly wrote:Ahh, very sweet. I desperately wish SpeedTree could render trees in the cartoony style we use. I'd be all over this in a heartbeat.
I don't believe there's anything stopping you doing this, you'll probably want a combination of shader modifications, your own NPR textures and some work in SpeedTreeCAD to create the sorts of shape trees you're looking for. You're right though that the primary aim of SpeedTree is realism so this isn't necessarily a common use for it, but offhand I don't think it's impossible. You might want to get the trial version of SpeedTree and let your artists play with it to see what they can do.

@SiENcE: what you say is true, although on more recent cards you can enable MSAA on alpha rejected edges (e.g. NVIDIA control panel, Transparency AA - MSAA), which certainly helps. These shots have that option on in fact. Ironically it made it look smoother before I added normal mapping on the leaves - flat leaf section shading seems to play nicer with the MSAA calculations because it varies less.

Practically speaking alpha_rejection is the only way to go, it's more efficient by far. You just have to compensate by using good quality textures and transparency MSAA where available.

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:16 am
by ahmedismaiel
i havn't seen Game Drakensang but one of 2 technique is possible here


1-generated diether texture from SpeedTreeCAD to mask out the leaf as it get's far enough

2-Alpha to coverage :plays nice with MSAA (haven't tried it but most demos i saw is slooow)

Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:58 am
by JekaX
Pretty damn awesome !!! :) Been working with IDV's SpeedTree some time ago. With hands growin from right place , it gives great results. Looking forward for release. :) .

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 12:11 pm
by SiENcE
MSAA was new to me. Thx for this hint.

A while ago i did some research and here are my results: http://www.iris2.de/index.php/3D_render ... t_Textures

A2Coverage is no option, because it's only DX10 or OpenGL.

MS says:
Drawing Transparent Objects with Alpha To Coverage
...
Alpha to coverage is not designed for true order independent transparency like windows, but works great for cases where alpha is being used to represent coverage, like in a mipmapped leaf texture.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... S.85).aspx

My aim is is a simple method using scene_blend/alpha_blend with fast and simple sorting or a better sollution :).

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 1:22 pm
by Kencho
Can't tell how amazing and exciting this is :D

Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:52 pm
by Assaf Raman
Nice work! Astonishing! Great shadows!

Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:26 pm
by sinbad
For those who were asking for a video:

http://www.vimeo.com/1572168

You can get a higher quality version if you log in to Vimeo.

Nice video!!!

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:20 pm
by n00b3 Gamer
This is a bit off topic, but what cloud system are you using for your demo?

Re: Nice video!!!

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 12:23 pm
by sinbad
n00b3 Gamer wrote:This is a bit off topic, but what cloud system are you using for your demo?
None, that's just a skybox :)

Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:08 pm
by joew
Awesome work!

I do have one quick question, is the OgreSpeedTree library already using SpeedGrass? Also is the SpeedWind animated foliage stuff in or planned on being incorporated?

Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 5:17 pm
by sinbad
NdotL wrote:Awesome work!

I do have one quick question, is the OgreSpeedTree library already using SpeedGrass? Also is the SpeedWind animated foliage stuff in or planned on being incorporated?
Thanks :)

SpeedWind is already incorporated, and there will very soon be a separate OgreSpeedGrass library, which like SpeedGrass will be included as part of a yearly support subscription to OgreSpeedTree.

Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 12:50 pm
by ahmedismaiel
love the shadows casted on the grass
what's the frame rate for those screens with what machine configurations?

Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 1:11 pm
by sinbad
Time for some updated screenshots :) This time I'm showing OgreSpeedGrass, a complementary library to OgreSpeedTree based on (but also improving on) IDV's SpeedGrass.

Image
Image
Image
Image

The grass pages & fades around the camera, at distances you can configure to suit the performance of the machine you're targetting. It's batched up for efficiency but can be placed however you like - I've used a jittered grid distribution in this demo, but you could place the grass to your liking (more distribution loading routines are on the way). The grass has vertex colours so you can vary the look based on where it is without breaking the batching, and both respects lighting and can have dynamic shadows cast upon it, as is happening in this case (the trees are casting dynamic shadows on the grass).

OgreSpeedGrass is a separate library from OgreSpeedTree (it's the same setup as SpeedGrass is to SpeedTree) but can be combined easily, as is happening here. As with the original SpeedGrass, OgreSpeedGrass is bundled with a 12-month support contract for OgreSpeedTree, which costs $599.

Both OgreSpeedTree and OgreSpeedGrass are still in beta. I'm not looking for any additional beta testers right now, but if you would like to be notified when 1.0 is out (which should be before the end of the month), please contact me on enquiries (at) torusknot.com .

Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 1:15 pm
by sinbad
ahmedismaiel wrote:love the shadows casted on the grass
what's the frame rate for those screens with what machine configurations?
Sorry, had to re-post because of a problem with the images.

It's pretty scaleable, with all the options enabled here and quite a far LOD distance setup, I get 80-100fps on my 9800. I can easily double that by pulling the LOD a bit closer, and also you could opt to drop the dynamic shadows and use pre-baked ones, drop the normal mapping etc to make it run better on low-end machines.

Looks amazing...

Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2008 2:55 pm
by sisyphus
Looks amazing....

Makes me wish I had the funding to afford SpeedTree/SpeedGrass :(

For anyone who has the funding, or already has the products, this would be a no-brainer...great job Sinbad!

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 12:29 pm
by sinbad
Thanks, here's a video:
Image

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 1:31 pm
by ajs15822
sinbad wrote:Thanks, here's a video:
Image
Simply beautiful!

Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 5:21 am
by joew
Very outstanding job Steve, it looks really nice :) We will definitely be licensing this in the coming months rather than building it ourselves. I worked on SpeedTree integration with Reality way back and it wasn't exactly my most favorite thing to do.

Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 7:32 am
by lonewolff
Not bad! 8)

Sinbad does it again :D

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 3:29 pm
by freegamerblog
If only you had a GPL version that open source projects could use... ;)

(GPL could work for this kind of library - commercial projects would still have to pay for licensing unless they want to open source their own products)

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:11 pm
by Jabberwocky
freegamerblog wrote:If only you had a GPL version that open source projects could use... ;)

(GPL could work for this kind of library - commercial projects would still have to pay for licensing unless they want to open source their own products)
Methinks if you can afford to license SpeedTree for your project, you can afford to pay Sinbad for the OgreSpeedTree integration.

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 1:23 am
by freegamerblog
Jabberwocky wrote:
freegamerblog wrote:If only you had a GPL version that open source projects could use... ;)

(GPL could work for this kind of library - commercial projects would still have to pay for licensing unless they want to open source their own products)
Methinks if you can afford to license SpeedTree for your project, you can afford to pay Sinbad for the OgreSpeedTree integration.
Oops. Methinks I forgot SpeedTree required a license and/or this was not a reimplementation of SpeedTree.

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 10:30 am
by scroogie
Looks great. Just out of curiosity, what kind of geometry generation does SpeedTree use? Is it similar to Prusinkiewicz´ algorithmic botany?