This looks really cool and impressive of course, but I still feel the easiest way for most indies (which Godot is aimed at) to stand out is to get away from photo-realism.
Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
11–20 of 150 posts
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#12This is super interesting. The first video on the page sheds some light on how this actually works. It seems like they convert the scene into shapes that can be represented via SDF's and smooth min (https://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/smin/smin.htm) them to blend into an approximation of the actual scene. While also capturing some general texture color data to apply and blend into the shapes. I assume the shader ray marches the scene to compute the lighting reflections and bounces. I am curious how the probes/nodes come into play and how they extract the light data from the shader output to apply it to the scene geometry (is it simply added in screen space?) I would be very interested in reading more detail on how this is actually implemented!
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#13This looks really cool and impressive of course, but I still feel the easiest way for most indies (which Godot is aimed at) to stand out is to get away from photo-realism.
Most 3D games that aren't photo-realistic still need semi-realistic lighting to look good..
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#14> Tim Sweeney and Epic Games for their confidence in helping us finance our research via Epic Megagrant. That’s interesting. Since this is all open source I guess Epic could potentially benefit from this... It’s nice to see they funded another engine.
I may be naive but I think the coder in Sweeny likes to see what Godot is doing, and the skeptic in me thinks that Sweeny knows Godot would only ever really eat at Unity's marketshare.
I don't think there's anything naive about this take..
Why wouldn't a company like Epic, who is the dominant market player by far, put some funding into smaller open source research projects like this? Godot is no threat to them, and quite the contrary brings positive contributions to the whole industry.
Not only is it good PR, but as they say a rising tide lifts all boats.
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#15This looks really cool and impressive of course, but I still feel the easiest way for most indies (which Godot is aimed at) to stand out is to get away from photo-realism.
Good lighting can make simple stylized shapes and colours look better.
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I may be naive but I think the coder in Sweeny likes to see what Godot is doing, and the skeptic in me thinks that Sweeny knows Godot would only ever really eat at Unity's marketshare.
I don't think there's anything naive about this take.. Why wouldn't a company like Epic, who is the dominant market player by far, put some funding into smaller open source research projects like this? Godot is no threat to them, and quite the contrary brings positive contributions to the whole industry. Not only is it good PR, but as they say a rising tide lifts all boats.
Because Unreal doesn't scale down like Unity does, by improving Godot, they reduce Unity's attractiveness to the small coding communities.
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#17> Tim Sweeney and Epic Games for their confidence in helping us finance our research via Epic Megagrant. That’s interesting. Since this is all open source I guess Epic could potentially benefit from this... It’s nice to see they funded another engine.
Godot is more likely to eat Unity's cake than Unreal Engine's cake. Unity is currently the dominating engine among mobile games and 2D games.
And if it is to believe their numbers, the large majority of Switch games as well.
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#18This looks really cool and impressive of course, but I still feel the easiest way for most indies (which Godot is aimed at) to stand out is to get away from photo-realism.
Global illumination is orthogonal to photo realism. In fact, GI and lighting in general can help indies get away with untextured and/or low-poly models and still achieve a pleasant look (check out The Witness or Superhot for some examples.
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I may be naive but I think the coder in Sweeny likes to see what Godot is doing, and the skeptic in me thinks that Sweeny knows Godot would only ever really eat at Unity's marketshare.
I don't think there's anything naive about this take.. Why wouldn't a company like Epic, who is the dominant market player by far, put some funding into smaller open source research projects like this? Godot is no threat to them, and quite the contrary brings positive contributions to the whole industry. Not only is it good PR, but as they say a rising tide lifts all boats.
Not sure what market you mean, Unity has a larger marketshare. Can't find a good source for numbers but a lot of places are quoting that Unity has 48% of the total market and Unreal has 13%. Also not sure how this is being measured, but in my experience Unity is more popular.
Re: Godot 4.0 gets SDF based real-time global illumination
#20This looks really cool and impressive of course, but I still feel the easiest way for most indies (which Godot is aimed at) to stand out is to get away from photo-realism.
Global illumination is orthogonal to photo realism. In fact, GI and lighting in general can help indies get away with untextured and/or low-poly models and still achieve a pleasant look (check out The Witness or Superhot for some examples.
Exactly. There are many aspects to photorealism, and any subset of them can yield interesting, stylized effects. The Witness is a great example of stylized textures and geometry + hyper-realistic lighting; nothing else looks quite like it.