ROAM Planet rendering

A place to show off your latest screenshots and for people to comment on them. Only start a new thread here if you have some nice images to show off!
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Sovaka
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by Sovaka »

We are going to implement Havok more than like... Probably with PhysX chucked in there as well.

As of today, the physics engine hasn't been coded in.
azer89 wrote:Hi, i want to ask if your system can implement RaySceneQuery. Right now i am developing planet rendering based on JohnJ GalaxyEngine and i need to implement RaySceneQuery to obtain current height at a point in planet surface. The planet uses MovableObject and somehow i can't get any result on my RaySceneQuery.
I can't answer this question, but I will direct Alex to your post so that he may answer it :)
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by LordBaal »

Oh thanks... I feel a little silly for not being able to encounter it... anyway, I'm just glad the business is taking shape!
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by DavlexDesign »

G'day guys,

I've been working with reflections for the ocean, and with my failed efforts, I have managed to figure out a way to map a LatLong texture (like the blue marble textures on the Nasa site) to the unit cube mesh I have without using a weird texture coordinate setup, or re factoring the way the mesh is built up. What a relief that is, and the beauty is, it is pretty much resolution independent, so that if I need to go down to a silly resolution in the textures, I can, without a hitch.
LatLongToCudeMapping.jpg
Here's a blue marble texture 4096 x 2048 mapped onto the unit cube sphere of the paged ROAM sphere. Could be handy for something like Google Earth or something like that, because it is resolution independent, making texture coordinates unnecessary !!!. All you need is a data supply system like the GDal library or something like that, to supply the data to the system. Food for thought.

Alex
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by DavlexDesign »

G'day again,

For you guys that might not have picked up on it, the beauty of this setup is the removal of the age old problem of oversampling at the poles, no need for a ton of duplicated vertices, as well as uvs that make the GPU do allot of work at the poles of the globe at the same point.
LatLongToCudeMapping02.jpg
If you look in the center you will see a small light colored dot, that's the actual pole of this image, there is no convergence of the mesh there. Very handy.

Alex
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ImpScary
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by ImpScary »

You're doing great work. But have you seen this: http://en.spaceengine.org/ ? What do you think about that project and how is it similar/different from yours?
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by LordBaal »

Darn I had a fine answer, but the forum asked me to log in again just when I was submitting it and the browser deleted it. Anyway, I know I'm not one of the people making this project but maybe I can answer that.

The SpaceEngine is an space simulator. Is not meant to be a game. This project is a game engine, not meant to be a game either but to make games with it.

The space engine creates a replica of the known space (and generate the rest procedurally) for you to navigate, you can go anywhere and look at the planets from orbit and land on some of them. As much as this already is entertaining, that's about it. There are no short or long terms goals, there are no objectives or difficulties, and thats fine because is meant to be a simulator, not a game. Is a software more inclined towards didactic uses.

H.U.G.E. (Hybrid Universal Galaxy Engine, this project) does that and a lot more. It not only creates a whole galaxy, but also fills it with life. Not only creates the planetary bodies, it creates geological, weather, flora and even fauna systems for each one according to it's characteristics and your preferences, because you are in control of almost everything in the engine, you can tweak and customize how things are done and change the things once they are done.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by ImpScary »

LordBaal
I meant technical aspect, not the purpose.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by LordBaal »

Ahhhhhh!!! :D Why didn't say it before! Well... that would have to be responded by the guys from Aussie Genesis. But from what I can see H.U.G.E. manages to do a lot more (with less) and is made from the ground with games in mind, hence I would bet it handles that better too.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by palaslet »

Hi guys,

I think we need to mention it's plugin-based nature as well (if I've understood it correctly). Such as we can create our own fauna engine or height map engine and plug it in to suit our needs. Seems like H.U.G.E is much more "dynamic", so to speak.

I'm sure Aussie Genesis can elaborate for you :)
"It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away"
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by Sovaka »

ImpScary wrote:LordBaal
I meant technical aspect, not the purpose.
Technically they have done a wonderful job with their engine and looks quite beautiful.

As to how it differs to ours, well we use a true 1:1 scale system, all the engines like them use roughly a 1:1000 or 1:10000.
What that means is they are scaling down the actual size of the unit so that their FP numbers work within their shaders.
With that, you lose precision when it comes to things like animations of models, camera distance clipping.
The other limitation to these engines are that they use large data file sizes. We are talking multi hundred MB heightmaps and cloudmaps.
Looking on their site in the addon section; ~600MB just to make the clouds look like they do in the video. (I'm assuming their ~600GB is a typo and they meant ~600MB) :p
So when you start to add all this up, you have already hit several GB in size... WITHOUT game content. (I know it isn't meant for gaming)
Not to mention what it would use in system ram just to run... I'd estimate around the ~1.2GB mark.

As to our engine, we use a true 1:1 scale. We don't scale anything down and we run it just fine. But we need our precision for the game we have in mind.
Then we don't have any data files to worry about outside of tile textures and such.
Look at our cloud system... Plenty of detail for the moment and it uses something like a ~16MB texture as a base.
And at the moment, in system memory, we only use ~300MB.

Overall, considering that these two engines were bred for two completely different purposes... It's like comparing Apples to Bananas.
palaslet wrote:Hi guys,

I think we need to mention it's plugin-based nature as well (if I've understood it correctly). Such as we can create our own fauna engine or height map engine and plug it in to suit our needs. Seems like H.U.G.E is much more "dynamic", so to speak.

I'm sure Aussie Genesis can elaborate for you :)
Correct, our engine is modular.
Meaning if you didn't want our Flora system for example and wanted to use SpeedTree, you can easily comment out a line in the source and redirect it to the right routine.
Or as Palaslet mentioned, if you wanted to use heightmaps instead... You can do that too.

Our engine is about flexibility, versatility and functionality. It is truly HUGE.

.: EDIT TO ADD :.
Just ran the engine to check some things out... Uses about the same as we do in memory, but I didn't download the cloud addon.
To be honest, they are at the stage we were about a year ago in terms of planetary usability.
Plenty of Z-fighting, bad terrain lod adjustments, page seams and countless other graphical issues. Those will be solved with time however.
They are using a 1:1000 scale for their system.
Last edited by Sovaka on Tue May 22, 2012 6:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by ultramedia »

Ok, I've had time to warm to the idea of the engine going commercial... I think I'm all cool with it now :)

Latest screenies look good too, well done guys.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

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ultramedia wrote:Ok, I've had time to warm to the idea of the engine going commercial... I think I'm all cool with it now :)

Latest screenies look good too, well done guys.
It will be commercial... But you won't have a huge price tag.
That price tag will also vary from package to package.
We aim to get his into as many hands as possible, to show the large software houses that they will have to compete again for players money.
Not just release the same IP year after year with only slight changes and expect players to buy. *cough* EA *cough*

But as Alex said in a previous post, we will be releasing the source to the Terrain ROAM code that we have and will use.
The time for that hasn't come yet as it isn't in its final stages.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by ImpScary »

Thank you for the answer, it was quite interesting.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by LordBaal »

Besides I think that going commercial, even when technically right is not quite the appropriate term. They are simply trying to get a compensation for all the hard work both of them has been doing alone, I think that's reasonable and the transparency thing is really awesome!

Also, this way the project have more clear goals, and can only impulse both of them to work more in this baby. If possible, I would pay all of their bills only to ensure they finish this engine pronto.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by DavlexDesign »

Hello People,

Been dicking around with all this stuff again, really working on reflection math and shadows too, planet wide stuff ....
WaterReflections01.jpg
WaterReflections02.jpg
WaterReflections03.jpg
I've yet to get the shadows on the terrain, but I want to first hone the setup to work allot more efficiently.
Starting to really take shape now though.

Alex
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by LordBaal »

Can you take those shoots with a higher resolution please?
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by DavlexDesign »

G'day LordBaal,

I don't know what's happened, but the forum is making those pics look like shit, and no more thumbnails, I don't get it.

I'll upload some better pics later this evening

Alex
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by Zonder »

DavlexDesign wrote:G'day LordBaal,

I don't know what's happened, but the forum is making those pics look like shit, and no more thumbnails, I don't get it.

I'll upload some better pics later this evening

Alex
they just moved server so it could be a php extension is missing and the board has defaulted to large images
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by DavlexDesign »

G'day guys,

Been mucking around with the shaders again .....
PlanetWideEffects_01.jpg
If you look at this shot, you can see the clouds actually cast shadows on the oceans, they actually cast shadows on the terrain also, but it's not so easy to spot in this shot, so ....
PlanetWideEffects_01.jpg
And also if you don't have water on the surface, the shadows affect the whole terrain .....
PlanetWideEffects_01.jpg
This site is still having problems I see :-(

more to come ....
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by DavlexDesign »

Hello again,
PlanetWideEffects_04.jpg
This shot shows the ocean with shadows and a subtle reflection in there too, the reflections are effected by the shadow and also the clouds occlude the sun spot on the ocean surface as well.
I have to work on a better way of diffusing the sun spot at higher altitudes because the sunspot is way too round and defined, but that is just something I have to figure out.

I have to find a nice set of caustics animated textures that don't have a tick in them when the animation resets, but that is something I have to find / make myself I suppose.
Anyone know of any good caustics textures out there that are free ?

Alex
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by ultramedia »

Hi Guys,

My first reaction was, hey cool the coastlines have a little halo effect. It' very cool, but then I was thinking it probably shouldn't be visible from orbit ;)

Then I was like, hmmm, coastlines are starting to look a bit chunky - I wonder if that's just running on lower detail while testing...

Then I was like, HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THE CLOUD SHADOWS :) :) :)
That's just brilliant, they look great.

I'm guessing the generic green mountains spread uniformly over all the land masses is just a testing texture?
Because variation will be one of the big factors in creating a sense of planet sized scale - here's a ref pic that shows what I mean:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentbrew/5242960976/
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Sovaka
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

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ultramedia wrote:Hi Guys,

My first reaction was, hey cool the coastlines have a little halo effect. It' very cool, but then I was thinking it probably shouldn't be visible from orbit ;)

Then I was like, hmmm, coastlines are starting to look a bit chunky - I wonder if that's just running on lower detail while testing...

Then I was like, HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THE CLOUD SHADOWS :) :) :)
That's just brilliant, they look great.

I'm guessing the generic green mountains spread uniformly over all the land masses is just a testing texture?
Because variation will be one of the big factors in creating a sense of planet sized scale - here's a ref pic that shows what I mean:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentbrew/5242960976/
Actually in many tropical parts, you can see similar halo effects from space around the coastline.

They may look like generic green mountains from a distance, but when you get down on the ground, they aren't generic at all.
What you are seeing here is our texture being spread across everything. This really limits showing the kind of variation we actually have in game, but I can assure you that they are quite varied :)

In regards to your reference picture... We are getting there, we know our terrain is rather basic at the moment in terms of visual features from above. We are looking at methods of increasing this without killing the framerate.
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by DavlexDesign »

Gday ultramedia,

Is this better ? ...............
Baal_HiResMesh01.jpg
Baal_HiResMesh02.jpg
Alex
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by ultramedia »

heh heh heh... oh yes, that is beautiful :)

Now, it's just missing a lone winnebago flying out of orbit...
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Re: ROAM Planet rendering

Post by DavlexDesign »

Now! Now! mate, that was meant to be a surprise.

Alex