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Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

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Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#2
Here's the video of the developer walktrough: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-development-unre...

It's stunning that this runs on a single Nvidia GeForce 680GTX in an editor without any visible lag at all. I wonder why tesselation wasn't enabled though, it may have been because of performance issues.

Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#3
Very Beautiful! The demo has a nice Skyrim/LOTR feel to it and the lava flows were just gorgeous! If that lava flow generation is completely procedural then I'm extremely impressed.

Writing a highly parametrized engine like that with JIT script compilation is plain awesome!

Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#4

Very Beautiful! The demo has a nice Skyrim/LOTR feel to it and the lava flows were just gorgeous! If that lava flow generation is completely procedural then I'm extremely impressed. Writing a highly parametrized engine like that with JIT script compilation is plain awesome!

There is no script. It's all done in C++ with the project broken up cleverly into DLLs which can be reloaded at run-time without interruption. And I believe the lava flow is done with animated meshes.

Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#5
This 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.)

Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#6
Coming 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 looking results out of the box, but it doesn't mean you don't have to sculpt and massage and tune your lighting to achieve the artistic result you want, especially for interiors, or scenes with characters in the foreground.

Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#7
post #5

This 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?

Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#8
post #6

Coming 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)

Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#9

Very Beautiful! The demo has a nice Skyrim/LOTR feel to it and the lava flows were just gorgeous! If that lava flow generation is completely procedural then I'm extremely impressed. Writing a highly parametrized engine like that with JIT script compilation is plain awesome!

There is no script. It's all done in C++ with the project broken up cleverly into DLLs which can be reloaded at run-time without interruption. And I believe the lava flow is done with animated meshes.

I thought Kismet was pseudo-script (albeit with a GUI).

Edit: http://www.unrealengine.com/features/kismet/

Re: Gorgeous Unreal Engine 4 brings direct programming, indirect lighting

#10
post #6

Coming 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)

Raytracing for one.

Also, none of the graphics engines really capture the wave-nature of light - intereference/diffraction etc. Radiosity captures a bit of this but from an intensity/energy point of view.

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