The bit where he made a change to the source code, let it recompile on it's own, got a little alert in the editor when it finished and then had the change apply all without restarting the engine...WOW!
Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
21–30 of 92 posts
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
NeHe's OpenGL tutorials used to be a good (although now kind of outdated) starting point. Shaders didn't use to exist back then. But still a good start: http://nehe.gamedev.net/ A game engine is much more complex than a graphics engine. Maybe somebody can point to guides for creating physics/sound engines and AI/gameplay stuff as well?
When I started learning I spent a lot of time reading NeHe tutorials. But modern OpenGL feels so far removed from those tutorials that it feels like learning a completely different API. The best tutorials I've found for modern OpenGL is "Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming" by Jason McKesson. The only problem I have with these tutorials is that there aren't enough! http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/
lovely, thanks!
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
NeHe's OpenGL tutorials used to be a good (although now kind of outdated) starting point. Shaders didn't use to exist back then. But still a good start: http://nehe.gamedev.net/ A game engine is much more complex than a graphics engine. Maybe somebody can point to guides for creating physics/sound engines and AI/gameplay stuff as well?
When I started learning I spent a lot of time reading NeHe tutorials. But modern OpenGL feels so far removed from those tutorials that it feels like learning a completely different API. The best tutorials I've found for modern OpenGL is "Learning Modern 3D Graphics Programming" by Jason McKesson. The only problem I have with these tutorials is that there aren't enough! http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/
Although, when I go through the code, it feels more like a copy of the (legendary) Red Book. Missing vector/pixel (or fragment in GL-speak) shaders as well.
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#24I find it hilarious that (presumably) my computer could render that smoothly but the video itself stutters.
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#25This stuff is really fascinating. Does anyone have any recommended reading or general advice as to how to learn more about game/graphical engine implementation? I mean, from the ground up. (I'm a CS undergrad and the closest we've gotten to learning about this has been the computational geometry chapter in CLRS, but that was a mildly esoteric introduction to everything that is possible in this field.)
On the flip-side, if you're interested in rendering realistic scenes that appear physically accurate but aren't suitable for real-time rendering (useful for movies, ads, etc.), Physically Based Rendering (aka PBRT) by Pharr and Humphreys should be your go to book.
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#26This stuff is really fascinating. Does anyone have any recommended reading or general advice as to how to learn more about game/graphical engine implementation? I mean, from the ground up. (I'm a CS undergrad and the closest we've gotten to learning about this has been the computational geometry chapter in CLRS, but that was a mildly esoteric introduction to everything that is possible in this field.)
I read Jason Gregory's "Game Engine Architecture" cover-to-cover and I'd highly recommend it for someone new to the industry who's interested in learning about game development. Gregory is a developer at Naughty Dog (Uncharted series). http://www.amazon.com/Game-Engine-Architecture-Jason-Gregory...
Indeed. Having been in the game industry for close to a decade now (apropos of this thread, my first job was at Epic Games as an engine programmer working on UE2 and UE3), I can't say I personally learned a lot from Gregory's book (outside of some tidbits on character animation, where the book is especially strong), but I can say that it's the best book on the subject I've read.
An older book like Eberly's 3D Game Engine Design was more a loosely knit compendium of theory and algorithms. Eberly's more recent 3D Game Engine Architecture is closer to Gregory's in intent. Unfortunately, it's more a reflection of the idiosyncrasies of the author and his personal code base than an investigation of game engines as developed and used in the industry.
I've also heard good things about Mike McShaffry's Game Coding Complete. McShaffry is a game industry veteran, so he knows what he's talking about. However, it seems to be targeted at rank beginners, so a lot of the material might not be very useful to you.
Below that tier, of course, you have an endless array of how-to books written by incompetents. The worst is the "here's my shitty homebrewed codebase" variety.
For rendering in games, you'll need a separate book. Real-Time Rendering is the canonical reference. The first and second editions were my favorites. The third edition added a lot of information on recent techniques but at the expense of reading too much like an annotated bibliography, skating from topic to topic while rarely going into enough detail to be useful and often listing several alternative solutions to a given problem without comparing their relative merits and trade-offs. The first editions flowed more like textbooks and were thus better suited as introductions. Some of that might be hindsight bias on my part; I'm curious what others think who first learned the subject from the third edition.
I also want to give a shout-out to Christer Ericson's Real-Time Collision Detection book. It's full of clear explanations and practical, hard-earned knowledge that you can't get anywhere else. Plus, the accompanying code is robust and well written, a far cry from the usual crap that either straight-up doesn't work or is inextricably entangled with a massive code base (I'm looking at you, Eberly!).
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#27This stuff is really fascinating. Does anyone have any recommended reading or general advice as to how to learn more about game/graphical engine implementation? I mean, from the ground up. (I'm a CS undergrad and the closest we've gotten to learning about this has been the computational geometry chapter in CLRS, but that was a mildly esoteric introduction to everything that is possible in this field.)
NeHe's OpenGL tutorials used to be a good (although now kind of outdated) starting point. Shaders didn't use to exist back then. But still a good start: http://nehe.gamedev.net/ A game engine is much more complex than a graphics engine. Maybe somebody can point to guides for creating physics/sound engines and AI/gameplay stuff as well?
It might be worthwhile to take a look at certain types of game engine architectures.
Since modularity is one of the keypoints of how this editor/game engine work so well together, it's probably a good idea to have some idea of how to structure game components to lessen the 'ball of mud' feeling.
I've been pretty fascinated with data-oriented "entity/component" systems for a while, as opposed to heavily inheritance based models. There's a decent introduction here: http://cowboyprogramming.com/2007/01/05/evolve-your-heirachy...
It seems like a lot of modern game engines (one example would be Unity) utilize this approach to varying degree.
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#28Coming from a film background, it is clear there is a lot of conflation happening in these articles between light that 'behaves' like it would in the real world, and 'good' lighting. That is why you get quotes like in this article 'I light my scene by dropping a sun in'. In reality, there is a whole lot more to lighting then simply having lights and materials that behave naturally. Sure, this gives you more realistic…
> In reality, there is a whole lot more to lighting then simply having lights and materials that behave naturally. For example? (genuinely curious)
Achieving a specific mood or "feel" for an environment requires someone who is very sensitive to lighting, color, and architecture, and who has knowledge of techniques to achieve certain looks.
For example, if you want an ominous feel to a cathedral, you need to know what light colors are more ominous than others, what direction of lighting (maybe bottom up, rather than from the top), what types of lights...many dim point lights? or single directional lights?, if light scattering through a medium like fog would look good, etc etc. And also keeping in mind functional aspects like, can the player still see items or things he needs to do, even with all of this specific lighting.
Another example might be that while lighting and materials might behave naturally, sometimes they still behave in undesireable ways. Suppose the angle of the sun reflected off of a reflective surface right into the player's face right while he was at a specific location where he needed to do something. If you can't move the surface, can you shift the light? Will that effect the scene much? Maybe now that you shifted the light, the rays of light that were going through a tree branch beautifully are not there any more.
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In reality, there is a whole lot more to lighting then simply having lights and materials that behave naturally. For example? (genuinely curious)
Achieving a specific mood or "feel" for an environment requires someone who is very sensitive to lighting, color, and architecture, and who has knowledge of techniques to achieve certain looks. For example, if you want an ominous feel to a cathedral, you need to know what light colors are more ominous than others, what direction of lighting (maybe bottom up, rather than from the top), what types of lights...many dim…
Getting back to UE4, if its lights behave more like real-world lights it may allow game artists to translate real-world lighting knowledge into games or let them spend less time working around kinks in the engine.
Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Achieving a specific mood or "feel" for an environment requires someone who is very sensitive to lighting, color, and architecture, and who has knowledge of techniques to achieve certain looks. For example, if you want an ominous feel to a cathedral, you need to know what light colors are more ominous than others, what direction of lighting (maybe bottom up, rather than from the top), what types of lights...many dim…
Getting back to UE4, if its lights behave more like real-world lights it may allow game artists to translate real-world lighting knowledge into games or let them spend less time working around kinks in the engine.
Definitely true. We draw our experience on lights from the real world, so the closer an engine is to the real world, the faster the artists can prototype and test lighting setups.