Efficient rendering of layered materials

• slides for the layered real-time shading model discussed in issue 38
• using a statistical analysis of light transport in layered structures
• a visual explanation of the statistical analysis framework
• presentation of results, comparison against stochastic references and discussion of limitations of the technique

High-Performance By-Example Noise using a Histogram-Preserving Blending Operator

• slides for the technique discussed in issue 45
• explanation of problems with linear blending
• how contrast-preserving blending is able to mitigate some of these problems
• presents a histogram-preserving blending algorithm that has many use cases besides the introduced procedural texturing technique
• whenever you blend
  • weighted data: use premultiplied blending
  • data chosen randomly: use histogram-preserving blending

Fully Automated Mesh UV UnWrapping

• video discussing a fully automated UV unwrapping tool
• explains all steps of the pipeline that tries to find the best projection technique for local parts of the model
• tool available for licensing

NVIDIA Announces Nsight Graphics 2018.4

• added pixel history view for D3D12 and added support for support for Vulkan ray trace extension
• new GPU trace activity view visualizes the GPU utilization in more detail
• provides a breakdown of wrap level activity, connected to events and performance markers

GAME RAY TRACING: STATE-OF-THE-ART AND OPEN PROBLEMS

• overview of the PICA PICA hybrid raytracing pipeline
• thought about DirectXRaytracing constraints related to acceleration structures
• presentation of a texture LOD technique developed with Nvidia
  • preprint available here
• Pica Pica assets are avaible with with a non-commercial license on sketchfab

Not All Blue Noise is Created Equal

• comparison of 3 techniques to generate blue noise
• visual quality comparison of three methods to generate blue noise
• the void and cluster technique produces the best results in the test

Integrating clipped spherical harmonics

• integration of spherical harmonics over spherical polygons
• using a closed form expression with linear cost
• shows applications for area lights and approximating shadows from area lights

May the Source Be with You: NVIDIA Open Sources Material Definition Language SDK

• Nvidia open sourced the MDL SDK (Material Definition Language)
• set of tools that allow materials to be shared between different renderers
• can generate texturing functions for multiple backends; however the GLSL backend is NOT part of the open source release

Introduction to DirectX RayTracing

slides and video for the “Introduction to DirectX RayTracing” track from Siggraph 2018 have been released

Ray Tracing Minibooks Series released as free pdf

• the pdf version of the Ray Tracing Minibooks series has been released for free

SIGGRAPH 2018 Links

• growing collection of links to SIGGRAPH 2018 content

NVIDIA Reveals Next-Gen Turing GPU Architecture: NVIDIA Doubles-Down on Ray Tracing, GDDR6, & More

• new GPU architecture from Nvidia
• dedicated ray tracing hardware
• volta cores have int8 and int4 support
• support for variable rate shading

siggraph course: path tracing in production 2018

• course notes are available

Khronos - 2018 SIGGRAPH

• slides and videos for the Khronos talks from SIGGRAPH 2018

SIGGRAPH 2018 Papers - Machine Learning, Graphics, and Rendering

• list of author’s favorite papers with a brief summary of the content

Fundamentals of color science

• slides for the Siggraph course about the fundamentals of color science and color management for games and film

Introduction to the Vulkan Graphics API

• slides for the Siggraph course
• provides an overview of all API interfaces required to render 3D meshes

Vulkan GPUinfo database - 1.7

• fully vulkan 1.1 compatible
• support for VK_EXT_conditional_rendering, VK_KHR_8bit_storage