Update #49

[rjshae]

In update #49, I was trying to figure out how they got the character shadows to shift when he crossed the river. My guess is they have built a gray scale depth map for the area that gives the actual surface depth once the water and vegetation is removed. That can then be used to compute the perimeter of the water surface and to determine where the projected shadow falls. However they do it, that's pretty nice work; it's an effective illusion.

 

The shifting highlights from the moving point light source is presumably computed from a bump map. But I could have sworn I saw some shifting shadows as well. Maybe it was just my imagination?

 

There were only a couple of really very minors issues. The first was that light from the camp fire was pretty weak even at night. I'd have expected a more expansive lighting circle to appear. The other one was the motion blur, which didn't seem very natural. But perhaps that was an effect caused by the video?

 

The ambient sound was very nice and I thought I got a good directional sound from the water.

[Dewa]

I think you are right. I suspect the technique they use is similar to defered rendering, but in this case the G-buffers are pre-computed, ie. albedo, normals, depth and possibly ambient occlusion. This would allow them to combine pre-computed and dynamic light elements together.

 

I must say I am very impressed at the tech and it can only get better.

[anek]

My guess is they have built a gray scale depth map for the area

 

Then couldn't they also use that to adjust the character's position while walking over uneven terrain?

 

Right now, the character crossing the stream looks like he's walking on an invisible, flat bridge.

[AwesomeOcelot]

 

 

My guess is they have built a gray scale depth map for the area

 

Then couldn't they also use that to adjust the character's position while walking over uneven terrain?

 

Right now, the character crossing the stream looks like he's walking on an invisible, flat bridge.

 

 

No they couldn't and wouldn't need to use that, they've got a 3D geometry map that they don't render so the 3D real-time rendered characters can move through the terrain. They probably haven't implemented a lot of the character animation yet.

[looter222]

As someone currently experimenting with Unity3D, it'd be really cool if the rendering programmer and engine programmer gave some brief outlines about the technology they helped develop for Project Eternity at some point, especially interested in their lighting shader and water shader, very cool stuff.

[Frenetic Pony]

If you want...

 

What you're seeing is a fixed view of a sort of 3d representation of the scene. They've stored not just all the colors of what you're seeing, like a picture, but all the information from that view that a 3d game would have. The "depth" or how far away everything is from the camera, the color of the textures (albedo), the "normal" or rather direction each pixel is facing, a texture that controls how rough/shiny something is (gloss/spec/whatever map) etc. It's all stored in a texture (rather textureS), so it's still 2d and easy to run and can't be moved around really. But you can still do much the same things, such as changing around the lighting, as you could with any 3d game. Heck the lighting direction could be changed, from the sun too, but not the shadows from static stuff. Not that it couldn't work, I can think of a hack to make it work fine, but it would still up the requirements and require development time that could be spent on other stuff.

 

Hope that helps! I'm not sure how technical to get since this is a public forum and I hope I explained it enough for most anyone reading : /

Edited April 13, 2013 by Frenetic Pony