• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

NVIDIA Demonstrates Witcher 3 With Hair Works – Talks Hair Simulation, Next-Gen FleX PhysX and Turbu

Gregster

Gregster

Gregster

Caporegime
Joined
24 Sep 2008
Posts
38,283
Location
Essex innit!
Even though the RPG release was delayed to 2015, at the GDC today Balázs Török Lead Engine programmer CD Project RED gave important insights into it’s development process. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the first games that relies on the GameWorks tools for programmers released by NVIDIA , particularly the Hair Works component.
NVIDIA GeForce Witcher 3

Problems encountered in realistic rendering of hair discussed
In the real world, hair might not be given than much importance. But in the Witcher world, which is dependent primarily upon interaction of characters, importance on their realistic representation is the greatest. It is in this realistic representation Török and his team of 50 programmers encountered difficulties. “In movies like ‘ Frozen ‘ it comes together by quickly piecing together a few million units ,” says Balázs Török . “In game simulation and rendering, such a set of realistic simulated hair will swish the display speed and fun in the basement.”
To solve this problem, and to achieve the most realistic rendering possible, Török and his team tried the Hair Works tool by Nvidia, which has previously also been used in Call of Duty: Ghosts for Dynamic Fur simulation of animal characters. Hair Works works by reducing the memory required in the GPU for hair creation by optimizing rendering algorithms and DX 11 tessellation. Even though the initial results looked promising, the designers were not satisfied, according to Török. The hair appeared too dense and clamped. The solution was in random number generated parameters, which not only allowed density differentiation but also allowed for wind effects. ”A physically correct simulation of these chaotic currents would devour too many resources ,” says Török . The conclusion? “The rendering of fur and hair is difficult , but possible.”
Next was Dane Johnston, GPU content manager at Nvidia who gave a brief about the working of the Hair Works tool. Templates of hairstyles and skin from 3D Max and Maya end up in a hair description file. This file includes the base details of the hair to be rendered and properties such as flexibility. Upon designer satisfaction, the file ends up in the game engine with Photoshop or Gimp created textures.
Monier Maher, APEX Product manager at Nvidia then proceeded to provide a brief about the GameWorks tools. The GameWorks list includes VisualFX , PhysX and OptiX SDK for optimal game development. The VisualFX component includes sub-tools such as HairWorks, FaceWorks, Turbulence, ShadowWorks and CameraWorks for effective Visual effects. The PhysX allows options for rendering and creation of physical objects such as clothing, liquids and other objects. The OptiX SDK is all about ray tracing, ambient occlusion and Light Baking.
A few videos demonstrating the Hair Simulation, Grass PhysX and FlameWorks have been uploaded by the guys over at PCGamesHardware.de which you might want to check out below.
NVIDIA GDC 2014 GameWorks Demos:



What is NVIDIA GameWorks?
NVIDIA GameWorks

Advertisements


The NVIDIA GameWorks program is part of NVIDIA’s latest strategy to empower developers with tools that ease in game development providing rich and quality gaming experience to PC gamers. This is done through the help of 300 visual effects engineers from NVIDIA who will be dispatched to developers across the globe offering library of SDKs, technology and algorithms and finally developer tools. Part of this strategy includes three new SDKs – Flex, GI Works and Flame Works.
‘We’ve dispatched our engineers to work onsite with top game developers and add effects, fix bugs, tweak performance, and train developers in open standards and work hand-in-hand with our game laboratory.’ NVIDIA
NVIDIA’s Flex is the latest unified GPU PhysX system which allows developers to use a combination of rigid body and fluid simulations. In past game development processes, it was hard to let the two simulations work aside each other due to their complex nature but NVIDIA’s Flex with the right tools would unify this process allowing the use of both rigid body and fluid simulations.
Next up is the new GI Works SDK which is the short term for Global Illumination Works which allows real-time global illumination in any scene required. Currently, developers use pre-backed global illumination effects in their scenes placing several light sources in a particular place which is a burden for developers and at the same time, it gives off a non-dynamic presentation. This is solved with the use of real-time global illumination which is more realistic and offers a more dynamic experience to gamers.
Last up is the Flame Works SDK which includes a film-quality volumetric effect solution to render flame and smoke. NVIDIA is adding these features along with various other effects in a lot of upcoming titles such as Batman: Arkham Origins, Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag, Watch Dogs. Some of the new titles such as Project Cars and the multi-million dollar funded Star Citizen are also offering rich NVIDIA Turbulence and NVIDIA PhysX and PhysX Particles support plus HBAO+, TXAA, Cloth Simulation and many more to name.
NVIDIA’s Next Generation FleX Unified PhysX and Turbulence (Next Gen) Particle Effects Coming to Unreal Engine 4 and CryEngine
NVIDIA also showcased several slides during the event at their conference at GDC 2014 which confirm that their next generation FleX Unified PhysX and Turbulence particle effects are officially headed for PC and would be inte grated in Unreal Engine 4 and CryEngine. The Turbulence particles will be added to Unreal Engine 3, 4 and Cry Engine via a patch while FleX would be headed to Unreal Engine 4. Only PC is the supported platform for these new features so titles developed exclusively for PC or multi-plat titles which are optimized for PC will adopt the new features.
Following slides are courtesy of PCGamesHardware:


Read more: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-demonstr...lex-physx-turbulence-particles/#ixzz2wp6xdtn0
Click to expand...

 
Last edited:
I like how the grass's is flattened and comes back after a time. Nice feature i could see being useful in games especially when your stalking one of those nasty snipers in some games :)
But i'm not a fan of propriety tech do wish they could all work together:(
 
triss said:
I like how the grass's is flattened and comes back after a time. Nice feature i could see being useful in games especially when your stalking one of those nasty snipers in some games :)
But i'm not a fan of propriety tech do wish they could all work together:(
Click to expand...

Yer, looks pretty damned good to me. As for proprietary...Honestly, I don't care :D
 
Gregster said:
Yer, looks pretty damned good to me. As for proprietary...Honestly, I don't care :D
Click to expand...

If a game implemented TressFX but not Hair Works that'd be a loss for you. If it did it the other way around that'd be a loss for AMD. If they implement both thats a loss for the developer as it's extra work. If they'd just, say, share an agreed API then the dev could implement once, both sides of consumers would get the results which helps both sides as if almost all customers will benefit then devs are more likely to bother in the first place.

The actual implementation details could potentially remain proprietary if a API could be agreed, or if a shared mechanism were used it'd be easier yet and would avoid most issues where one company were faster at using some bits of the API, the other company faster at other bits.

So, you should care as it's you & me that are losing out. Both nVidia customers and AMD customers should be bothered by this.
 
David Bisset said:
If a game implemented TressFX but not Hair Works that'd be a loss for you. If it did it the other way around that'd be a loss for AMD. If they implement both thats a loss for the developer as it's extra work. If they'd just, say, share an agreed API then the dev could implement once, both sides of consumers would get the results which helps both sides as if almost all customers will benefit then devs are more likely to bother in the first place.

The actual implementation details could potentially remain proprietary if a API could be agreed, or if a shared mechanism were used it'd be easier yet and would avoid most issues where one company were faster at using some bits of the API, the other company faster at other bits.

So, you should care as it's you & me that are losing out. Both nVidia customers and AMD customers should be bothered by this.
Click to expand...

TressFX works on my GTX660 fine!!

:confused:

Agreed,if some common ground could be found between both companies. They need to be weary of Intel as time progresses(at least at the lower end).
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
TressFX works on my GTX660 fine!!

:confused:

Agreed,if some common ground could be found between both companies. They need to be weary of Intel as time progresses(at least at the lower end).
Click to expand...

Oops, meant to start my post with 'if TressFX was proprietary too' then discuss why both sides should care. Missing that line kinda screwed it up :(

And yep, they should both be wary of Intel making their rivalry irrelevant...
 
David Bisset said:
If a game implemented TressFX but not Hair Works that'd be a loss for you. If it did it the other way around that'd be a loss for AMD. If they implement both thats a loss for the developer as it's extra work. If they'd just, say, share an agreed API then the dev could implement once, both sides of consumers would get the results which helps both sides as if almost all customers will benefit then devs are more likely to bother in the first place.

The actual implementation details could potentially remain proprietary if a API could be agreed, or if a shared mechanism were used it'd be easier yet and would avoid most issues where one company were faster at using some bits of the API, the other company faster at other bits.

So, you should care as it's you & me that are losing out. Both nVidia customers and AMD customers should be bothered by this.
Click to expand...


While I agree with what your saying in some aspects, in others the competition is good. Just think if both red and green team agreed to work together, where would it end. one would always have some form of advantage over the other, unless they decide to completely level the playing field.

That of course mean that we the consumers wont be happy at all. both AMD and Nvidia cards costing the same, having the same performance, memory, features, etc.
Unfortunately with opposing companies you will always get differences, benefits in certain areas. It is this competition that drives the companies to innovate and improve the products.


CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Agreed,if some common ground could be found between both companies. They need to be weary of Intel as time progresses(at least at the lower end).
Click to expand...

Agree some common ground would be nice, but it seems that the AMD and Nvidia seem to be moving further apart rather than together, especially with the whole low level API arena.
Not wanting to lay blame at any ones door but AMD knew about Microsoft's plans for DirectX 12 because they have said they were working on it with Microsoft from the beginning, as were Nvidia and yet they still decided to go ahead with their own API (Mantle) only helping to split the market even more than it already was. Of course Nvidia are not blameless either with numerous proprietary features themselves.

Bottom line, yes more common ground and working together would be great. but I don't expect it to happen because both companies wont to make money and be better than the competition.
 
“The OptiX SDK is all about ray tracing, ambient occlusion and Light Baking.”
That must have been really embarrassing for NVidia at GDC.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom