Newest Technologies

[csven]

i've been watching the seemingly rapid development of normalmapping and now parallax maps/virtual displacement maps in the game industry over the past year (as shown in the new game "Far Cry" and the latest Unreal 3 Engine news). none of this is of particular interest to those delivering static image renderings, i suppose, since real displacement mapping (using mesh deformation) has been around for quite a while and is already used for photoreal renderings. but for those doing animations or VR presentations, i'm curious what your thoughts are regarding the increased complexity of the content.

 

game developers are already talking about content being a huge sticking point in new development. and even the modmaking community is lamenting that amateurs won't have the skills to generate the realistic content that's now capable of being delivered to the consumer/client. many of the content libraries i've seen are fairly low-resolution; rare to see models of 1,000,000+ triangles.

 

what are your thoughts on this trend? how will it impact you - assuming it does? will furnishing manufacturers be willing to make available their CAD files given the potential of competitors to reverse-engineer the work more easily - esp in countries where the practice is legal?

[csven]

i assume no one's seen the shakey cam video of the Unreal 3 engine. ugly, but amazing, architectural detail done in realtime.

[3D Plans Jason]

I haven't seen this yet. Perhaps you could provide a link to the footage.

 

thanks,

Jason

[csven]

i originally downloaded the video thinking it was official but it's not, so i prefer not posting a direct link. however, a quick websearch for "unrealengine3" still yields hits at gaming news sites where the shakeycam vid is still hosted. perhaps Epic isn't concerned or maybe they'll be releasing an official sample video in the coming days.

 

however, comments and reviews on the technology can be found here:

 

http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=21751

http://archive.gamespy.com/gdc2004/unrealengine3

 

and demo's of the nVidia technology can be found here (although i've not watched these and don't know if they comment on realtime applications:

 

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/sdk_home.html#NV40_Video_Clips

[csven]

official website just went up. here's a couple images of what can be done on the newest video cards already on the market....all in realtime:

 

 

 

the shader editor looks very much like Maya's Hypershade to me. for more info their site is http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml . no official video yet, but with E3 this weekend it's probably only a couple days away.

 

btw, what's the forum code for resizing images. can't find it.