Missed the content for March? Don’t worry. The summary is now availbale on my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jendrikillner
- part 3 of tutorial series in building a path tracer in Unity
- shows how to trace a ray against a triangle and extends this by integration of Unity mesh interactions from the scene
- new Nsight graphics release adds improved DXR support, D3D12 fence visualization and Vulkan support for the range profiler
- whitepaper presenting the Autodesk uber surface shader based on the Arnold shading model
- based on ten components that are layered and mixed hierarchical to form the final surface appearance
- defines a “preview” model that simplifies the shading model for real-time use
- shows the effect of the individual components and exposed parameters
- partial Open Shading Language implementation is provided
- presents how to render maps using WebGL
- shows how to convert color maps to elevation
- generate normal maps from a height map
- apply soft shadows, ambient lighting and combine with color map information
- collection of links to presentations from GDC 2019
- collection of resources aimed at helping beginners get started with graphics programming
- overview of Variable Rate Shading which is starting to become part of the D3D12 API
- will have a two-tier hardware support level
- tier 1: per draw shading rate changes
- tier 2: can vary shading rate within a draw, with a screenspace image or per-primitive
- next Windows update will add support for library subobjects
- these allow configuring raytracing pipeline state from HLSL, removing the need for boilerplate C++ code
- the author presents his thoughts on the current state of raytracing in games
- where it can bring an advantage, weaknesses and the need for hybrid solutions
- how it might influence art direction
- explores a stable filter further
- presents a new test that can be used to validate the filter quality better
- performs experiments to find a filter that is stable and introduces less blurring than the filter discussed in part 1
- ARM released a best practice guide for Vulkan
- consists of runnable samples that show best-practices and shows common performance pitfalls
- on-screen information visualizes the performance impact of different methods
- look at the disassembly for parts of the skydome, sun, and stars shader from The Witcher
- covers overview of color theory, color spaces, and encoding
- presents what problems FreeSync 2 solves and what guidelines it requires hardware manufacturers to follow
- list of best practices for ray tracing
- how to manage the acceleration structure construction and building efficiently
- how to manage pipeline objects, shaders, and resources
- denoisers and memory budget
- occupancy graph is now supported on Turing GPUs too
- Variable Rate Shading is supported
- a small article explaining the difference in the viewport coordinate system when using Vulkan compared to OpenGL
- shows how to flip the viewport to match OpenGL convention
- presents how to precalculate an energy preserving microfacet BRDF with a diffuse-like lobe
- presents the authors’ views on “do”’s “do not”’s for the future use of raytracing in games
- how RTX gives new opportunities and also challenges
- performance vs. quality tradeoffs will still be required, and raytracing will not make this simpler
- unreal tech talks from GDC 2019 are available
Thanks to Warren Moore for support of this series.
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