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Dev blog: Physically Based Rendering and making EVE look "Real"

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CCP Mankiller
C C P
C C P Alliance
#81 - 2014-12-09 11:08:24 UTC
Xindi Kraid wrote:
Would you folks care to give us a list of all the maps (and specific channels/masks) and other files you guys are using to texture with?


Hmmm, I would have explained that in the devblog, but we have some brand new idea here for how to pack these channels and we are investigating this right now. So as soon as we have something solid, I'll let you know!
Xindi Kraid
Itsukame-Zainou Hyperspatial Inquiries Ltd.
Arataka Research Consortium
#82 - 2014-12-09 11:21:46 UTC
CCP Mankiller wrote:
Xindi Kraid wrote:
Would you folks care to give us a list of all the maps (and specific channels/masks) and other files you guys are using to texture with?


Hmmm, I would have explained that in the devblog, but we have some brand new idea here for how to pack these channels and we are investigating this right now. So as soon as we have something solid, I'll let you know!


Good to know. I look forward to seeing what you guys do. Just don't skimp on the details.

Last time you showed off the new file format you did a great job showing WHAT was possible, but didn't do as good on demonstrating WHY. There was mention of textures boiling down to hull, faction and race, but didn't really get into what each of those entailed (I am assuming hull has monochrome texture and stuff like glow and normal maps while the faction has the factional skin, but am not as sure where race fits in or how generic faction and race map to specific hulls)

The earlier dev blog about the Scorpion and new red files what actually showed example textures were great.

Is the new way of packaging related specifically to PBR, or is it just assorted ongoing improvements (or maybe to help another project like factional skins and ship repainting)?
I figure PBR requires some textures to be reworked since some are kinda meh when actually lit up, but you've been working on other stuff as well it's hard to tell.
Arcos Vandymion
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#83 - 2014-12-09 11:31:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Arcos Vandymion
EDIT:
THe shot in the SOF devblog - is that PBR allready? Cause the longer I look at it the less sure I am +.~
Xavos Shihari
Perkone
Caldari State
#84 - 2014-12-09 11:42:06 UTC
I've been really excited for PBR to hit the Unity engine.
Was over the moon when I heard you guys were beginning the big job of transitioning eve to PBR ^_^

good work, and I cant wait to see stations up close in PBR!!
CCP Vertex
C C P
C C P Alliance
#85 - 2014-12-09 12:01:23 UTC
pinelope1 wrote:
I smell a min spec increase on its way.


We have no change planned currently. :)

**CCP Vertex  |  Senior Development Manager ** | @CCP_Vertex
Zheng'Yi Sao
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#86 - 2014-12-09 12:54:34 UTC
CCP Vertex wrote:
Murashj wrote:
When will PBR be added to T3 cruisers, stations and other structures?


Soon™


Will this eliminate the "shadow problem," as I call it?

The day I got up close to a station, and saw the shadow of my ship reflected thereon, the "Hollywood moment" was ruined. The illusion of scale was shattered, and I have never gotten it back. It would help if maybe the shadows of the ships were somehow miniaturized when reflected on the skin of a station. Then a larger sense of scale might return.

"It's funny the things you people think are mandatory for us, as if we don't do what we do because it's a hilarious good time in a space video game." - Johnny Marzetti
Timai Mutex
Leprosorium
#87 - 2014-12-09 13:56:08 UTC
CCP Mankiller wrote:
Timai Mutex wrote:
That is a little strange formula for BRDF.
Second part look like Beckmann distribution, but were is 'e' it thats case? And whole top part is seems like oversimplified, isn't it should be e^(((n.h)^2-1)/C^4*(n.h)^2)? Assuming that C^4 = roughness^2?

And the third part kinda looks like Cook-Torrance geometric function (because using 'min'), but also look strange.
So, i'm just curious, what distribution/geometry term did you use?



So, the first part of the shown equation is the fresnel term and it's based on Schlick's approximation, nothing special here.

The second part is the distribution model and this one is called GGX, it's good for all non-organic surfaces like metal, plastic, etc. Please find a good explanation here, it's equation (3)

The final part then is the Schlick-Smith based visibility function, a bit optimized for performance.

I hope that helps a bit.


Thanks for response and refs!
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#88 - 2014-12-09 14:21:30 UTC
If CCP artists fancy a realism challenge, here it is:

Implement stars that don't look exactly the same from 100 AU and 1 AU, rather scale all the way from "massive raging inferno" to "small dot too bright to look at".
Nirnaeth Ornoediad
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#89 - 2014-12-09 16:31:33 UTC
Since you may have to re-do some of the normal maps in the near future, is there any disadvantage to releasing the HD textures now as an optional download?

Fix POSes.  Every player should want one (even if all players can't have one).
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#90 - 2014-12-09 17:19:57 UTC
CCP Vertex wrote:
Lil' Brudder Too wrote:
Sooo, i had just looked at those same ships on SiSi moments before i read that blog....

While i was looking at the new ships i kept saying, that looks nothing like it...the one i'm seeing has no color minus a few spots...

Then my borther looks at them on his PC...his looks MUCH different....so we compare graphics settings...

As it was, most ships looked absolutely terribad on my PC...with these settings (note, not exactly 'everything at lowest possible' )

A-A = medium
P-P = Low
Shader = Medium
Texture = High
LOD = High
Shadow = Low
Interior EFX = Medium
Interior Shader = Low

---
Now once i changed everything to max did the ships look decent. Brutix still looks like i'm flying a chrome Christmas tree ornament.

I'm sorry, but did you even consider those of us that don't run our clients on full max GFX settings before you made the non-full versions? Very disappointed.

--
Okay, so i narrowed the biggest "ugliness" culprit down....its the "shader quality"

With everything else set on "high"...here is what happens with the model when changing "shader quality" from high-medium-low....something is off here....

High
Medium
Low

Maybe someone (i don't know, maybe the Imbedded QA????) should test their stuff before saying its 'done'. Good form CCP.

I suspect it is like this for numerous other ships as well. But since i'm paying you (CCP) to test these sort of things while you are developing them...and not the other way around...i have other things more important to do.



Hi Lil' Brudder Too,

We most certainly consider and go to great lengths to investigate the visual and performance impact of our graphic features on a wide range of hardware, specifically using our minimum & recommended specification machines as control points.

You have discovered yourself that the ships don't look as good on Medium shader quality, this is because we do not include the dirt map in that shader model. This reduces the instruction count by roughly 50%, this was done purposefully to ensure players with mid-range hardware that cant cope with high settings can have improved performance at the cost of reduced visual fidelity.

I can see your GPU should be more than capable of running the client with high shader quality, if there is a reason such as performance issues that is forcing you to run on medium shader quality then we'd love to see a bug report from you so we can investigate.








This just in:

CCP Vertex has to explain to a rude player that Low and Medium graphics settings don't look at good as high graphics settings.

Patience of a Saint...

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
Aaron Lex
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#91 - 2014-12-09 17:46:25 UTC
Making EVE look "Real"? Or making EVE look Rheal?Cool
Sprobe
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#92 - 2014-12-09 19:20:27 UTC
CCP Antiquarian wrote:
Don't blame me for all the words. I was obligated to leave some of the rambling intact.


AND THERE'S A TYPO!


I like your words.
Alphae
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#93 - 2014-12-09 23:54:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Alphae
Xindi Kraid wrote:
Would you folks care to give us a list of all the maps (and specific channels/masks) and other files you guys are using to texture with?


^This please ! I can't find any Diffuse information in the packages, where is it ? did you get rid of it ? Are you coloring ships with materials/shaders ?

and good job guys, this looks awesome Smile
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#94 - 2014-12-10 00:35:36 UTC
Great dev blog! Big smile

Thanks for the detailed write-up!
Tryptic Photon
Mad Bads
#95 - 2014-12-10 04:29:21 UTC
Overall a nice improvement but I think you guys got carried away with the shiny/metallic thing. It's kind of making things a little one-dimensional where before you had really nice material break up and differentiation of surfaces.

For example the other day I was thinking about how good the Ishkur looked, with the nice deep black matte areas offsetting the metallic & armor bits. Now it just looks like it was dipped in pewter.
Saturday Beerun
Lost Ark Enterprises
#96 - 2014-12-10 09:53:38 UTC
This needs some serious adjustment.Only one ship seems better,brutix navy.But it looked ok before.Vindicator has been ruined.Black spaceship in black space,beautiful.Not any more.It now has the appearance of a soup tin, albeit with some black ink splashed over it. Gallente ships were ugly enough,but now I'm ashamed to take them out in sunlight.

I Want The Black Vindicator Back
Embsi
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#97 - 2014-12-10 12:12:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Embsi
Aaron Lex wrote:
Making EVE look "Real"? Or making EVE look Rheal?Cool


More like making EVE look less real.
Ambient light on objects in space is about as realistic as... Unicorns.

Traditional lighting and MSAA works much better in space where there is no atmosphere and very harsh shadows.
Deferred rendering is shameful and a massive step back in time to before anti-aliasing was a thing.
How you could give up anti-aliasing, contrast and proper shadows at this time is beyond belief.
In the future Deferred will be better, but for now it's just not playable at a game standpoint.

There is a reason most of Nvidias focus has been on reducing jaggedness from games.
Eyes are automatically attracted to movement, so when edges flicker your eyes jump to it subconsciously.
This leads to eye-strain and eventual headaches, totally unplayable.

Can't get rid of flickering edges and aliasing even with DSR @ 4K with 33% smoothing.
(Not that EVE is playable with 4K resolution anyway due to the UI not scaling.)

You really should wait until there is proper anti-aliasing for Deferred rendering to implement it.
Some interesting techniques are being thought of.
Certainly FXAA is not sufficient seeing as it does nothing to reduce edge flickering in deferred, while reducing the details massively.

Subpixel reconstruction AA

Edit: I cannot play for more than 5 minutes before I go crazy and feel like tearing my eyes out.
Sorry but I cannot with good conscience pay for something I cannot play.
D'Kmal
Variables Unlimited
Urukian Collective
#98 - 2014-12-10 12:47:39 UTC
Was just wondering, are the ships meant to look like these, especially with the graphics settings whacked up to max (and my poor laptop melting)?

I can't tell if it's my laptop or the game, but they certainly look wrong compared to how other ships are rendered in the images in the dev blog.

The Erebus just looks broken.

The Amarr ships look to me like the dark bit is a bit strong - artistic direction or a rendering issue? Especially noticeable on the Purifier stealth bomber, the darker bits. The launchers have the same issue, but I didn't have access to a real Purifier. The extra shiny gold looks nice though, especially on the T3 Destroyer.

The Minmatar ships look way more shiny than in the devblog; I tried to match my screenshot of the Typhoon as closely as possible to the Devblog one, you can see it's a lot more shiny with the textures showing less.

Caldari ships seem fine.

Just wondering if it's only me, or if it's a ~thing~ now.
Bariolage
Control F9
#99 - 2014-12-10 12:57:37 UTC
Anyone else notice that the "sails" on Minmatar ships are more transparent? I like it a lot if it's new; I noticed an issue though.

Either way, I was looking at the transparencies of the sails and tested it against the local star to test a theory.

Though other objects can be seen through the minmatar sails, when full occluded, stars completely disappear instead of looking like "glowing spheres through sunglasses". I figure this is because at long distances, the stars are treated as complicated light sources but not as solid objects. As of now, you can see distant stars through the sails, but the local star disappears. Worth looking into as a visual thing if you guys have the time eventually. I haven't tested it on other transparent objects like the glass domes on Gallente stations, and my computer is dying and I'm too poor to fix it right now so I also haven't tested it on higher graphics settings if anyone else wants to give it a go.
Kalpel
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#100 - 2014-12-10 13:53:06 UTC
PBR is absolute garbage! most ships look fake and plastic

Look at the back of my Ishkur http://i.imgur.com/AUMaeqH.png it lacks color and detail, something this ship once had

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