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I'm making a game engine based on dynamic signed distance fields (SDFs) [video]

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Re: I'm making a game engine based on dynamic signed distance fields (SDFs) [video]

#51

Post by MITSardine »

Jarmsy wrote: post #46
MITSardine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possibility, a little backwards maybe, is to produce a discrete SDF from e.g. a mesh, by inserting it in an octree. The caching becomes the SDF itself, basically. This would let rendering be done via the SDF, but other logic could use the mesh (or other spatial data structure). Or could the engine treat animated objects as traditional meshed objects (both rendering and interactions)? The author says all physics i…

Sampling an implicit function on a grid shifts you to the world of voxel processing, which has its own strengths and weaknesses. Further processing is lossy (like with raster image processing), storage requirements go up, recovering sharp edges is harder...

But isn't this what the author is doing already? That's what I got from the video. SDF is sampled on a sparse grid (only cells that cross the level set 0) and then values are sampled by interpolating on the grid rather than full reevaluation.

Re: I'm making a game engine based on dynamic signed distance fields (SDFs) [video]

#52

Post by andybak »

tamat wrote: post #42

the problem with SDF engines is that you have to reinvent everything, as current pipelines rely on triangles. That means: - Software to model using SDF (like Womp) - Technique to animate skeletons using SDFs - Tool to procedural texture surfaces using SDFs At least he solved the physics part, which is also complex. And also, his way of carving is by instantiating new elements, which works for small carves, but if you…

Although a decent chunk of modern tooling is there to handle the limitations of triangles. And modelling is often using higher-level abstractions that are only turned into triangles at the end of the process.

Re: I'm making a game engine based on dynamic signed distance fields (SDFs) [video]

#54

Post by nkrisc »

eviks wrote: post #43

Excellent technical presentation! Though the style itself is a bit too "clay-like", like I wouldn't expect a cube melding with the terrain sand to be a smooth glued connection. Is that some "inherent" SDF thing or just a style of the demo?

Basically it's the result of a smoothing function that blends the sampled SDF value of the two nearest bodies. You can simply pick the minimum SDF value and get no blending at all.

Re: I'm making a game engine based on dynamic signed distance fields (SDFs) [video]

#55

Post by tomashubelbauer »

eviks wrote: post #43

Excellent technical presentation! Though the style itself is a bit too "clay-like", like I wouldn't expect a cube melding with the terrain sand to be a smooth glued connection. Is that some "inherent" SDF thing or just a style of the demo?

I think it is an artifact of the optimizations he uses and while it's artistically limiting, I think a right game with the right visual language could make this work to its advantage in terms of uniqueness/distinctiveness. It's a one trick pony if not avoidable though.

Re: I'm making a game engine based on dynamic signed distance fields (SDFs) [video]

#56

Post by kaoD »

cepacked wrote: post #48

I use SDFs on my render engine to render text. It allows me to debug values inside shaders. (I can print value of an uniform, texture value etc.) (It's a combination of line segments for each letter and digit)

Are you aware of Valve's paper[0] for glyph rendering via SDFs? You can get amazing results from a low res glyph atlas.

[0] https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/2007/SIGGRAPH2007...

Re: I'm making a game engine based on dynamic signed distance fields (SDFs) [video]

#58

Post by lifeformed »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #25

stupid question to anyone reading this: not a gamedev, not even by a long shot but i had to ask - with the advent of all the AI tools, is it actually possible to vibe code a 3D FPS shooter from scratch like if you wrote a 2000 page prompt, can it actually be done?

Not a good one.

Re: I'm making a game engine based on dynamic signed distance fields (SDFs) [video]

#59

Post by nnevatie »

turtledragonfly wrote: post #22

This is super cool, and I like the no-nonsense presentation. I'm curious to know where he takes the gameplay. He mentions it being digging-focused, and also mentions the digging/terrain deformation aspects in other games like No Man's Sky are relatively low-fidelity. I wonder what a "high-fidelity digging game" looks like (: Aside, if I may self-plug: I wrote a small series on SDFs, for those who might be interested[…

Seems you're not familiar with how game projects with a custom engine typically go. Let me elaborate on this - the steps involved are:

1. Create a custom game engine.

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