A bit more Deferred - CryEngine 3

Triangle Game Conference 2009

Martin Mittring Lead Graphics Programmer
 Crytek

Main office:
Germany Frankfurt
More studios:
Kiev, Budapest, Sofia, Nottingham, Seoul
English as company language
30+ nationalities
CryEngine 1: PC only (Far Cry )
CryEngine 2: PC only (Crysis )
CryEngine 3: PC, XBox360, PS3
(announced GDC09)
 32/64 Bit, WinXP/Vista, DX9/10, Multi CPU/GPU
WYSIWYP
ResourceCompiler
Source asset -> Platform specific
Direct Light: Shadow mapping
Indirect Light (AO): SSAO / RAM / ...
No precomputed lighting
Production time saver, Memory, Consistency, Dynamic content
bershaders
[Mittring07]
 Goals after CryEngine 2
PS3 / XBox360
GPU, CPU, memory
Improve streaming
Improve multithreading
Improve lighting
More predictable performance
Tackle the shader combination issue
 What is the shader
combination issue?
bershader is one shader with many features
(e.g. 0..4 lights, light types, CM reflection, fog, detail texture,
normalmap, specular texture)
Compiling all possible permutations is a
memory, production and performance problem
Usual solutions:
dynamic branching / separating into multiple passes / reducing
combinations and accepting less functionality and less
performance
Asynchronous shader compiling
Distributed Job System to compile the shader cache
 Why Deferred Rendering?
Rendering is a multi-dimensional query:
View x Geometry x Material x Light

Classic Forward Rendering:

for each light render geometry from scene query with shader

Classic Deferred Rendering:

render geometry from scene query outputting GBuffer
render each light from scene query and shade with GBuffer

=> Decouples geometric complexity from lighting and shading

=> Helps on shader combination issue and predictable performance
 GBuffer in CryEngine 2
Z

Minimal GBuffer (depth)

Slower Early Z pass when outputting linear depth
Formats:
R16
R16G16
R32
Proved to be very useful
 Deferred in CryEngine 2

Main use:
Deferred shadows, Per pixel fog

Additionally:
Soft Z clipped Particles, Motion Blur, Beach/Ocean, EdgeAA,
Sun Rays, SSAO, Fake lights, 2.5D TerrainAO

SSAO ShadowMask
 Deferred Lighting in CryEngine 3
Z (native) Normal Specular Power

Passes:
1) Forward GBuffer generation
2) Deferred light accumulation into texture (Phong)
3) Forward shading with light accumulation texture => No deferred shading

Deferred Lighting*
+ Multiple light primitives are possible
+ even Image Based Lighting (IBL)
+ easy to extend

Compared to Deferred Shading

+ Less bandwidth and memory problems (10MB EDRAM XBox360)
+ More flexibility on shading (besides Phong)

* [Geldreich09] aka Light Pre-Pass Renderer [Engel08]

 Options for the light accumulation texture
* sRGB helps to distribute more details in dark areas

6 channels: Diffuse and Specular

two 7e3 7e3 7e3, A16R16G16B16f or A8R8G8B8*

4 channels: Diffuse and Specular strength

a single A16R16G16B16f or A8R8G8B8*
(specular approximated by diffuse*strength)

The following pictures show lighting with two differently coloured lights:

6 channels (correct) 4 channels (fast)

 Light accumulation texture in IBL
The following pictures show lighting with Diffuse and Specular Cubemaps:

Diffuse RGB
Specular RGB
High Quality
(left)
Diffuse RGB
Specular Strength
Fast Rendering
(right)
Difference often
neglectable (depends
on environment)
 Storing normals in the GBuffer
XYZ world space
8 bit: problematic with extreme reflections/specular
10 bit: good, but what about specular power and PS3

Solving Quantization Artefacts

Detail Normalmaps, Noise, Dither

XY view space (Z reconstruct)

8/10/16 bit, negate Z bit (perspective and normal mapping)

=> Problematic
[Lee09] [Lob09]
 Alternative: VS Normal in 2 scalars
-1..1 => -1..1

Normal to GBufffer:
G=normalize(N.xy)*sqrt(N.z*0.5+0.5)

GBuffer to Normal:
N.z=length2(G.xy)*2-1
N.xy=normalize(G.xy)*sqrt(1-N.z*N.z)
+ more precision where it matters (bright part)
+ framebuffer blending friendly
+ no z reconstruction issues
- wasted area
- more ALU than WS
=> still, WS normals are faster
Improved SSAO (with normals)
 Light rasterization in
2D (Rectangle) or 3D (Convex Object)
2D
+ cheap WS position reconstruction (Interpolator+MAD)
+ Combining multiple lights
- Stencil prepass (if not fullscreen)
- Coarse blocks can be rejected based on z min/max
3D
+ Z buffer
+ tighter bounding object (less pixels to process)
Depth bounds test (only on some HW)
 Deferred Light Types 1/3:

Directional light
optional with cloud shadows, multiple shadowmaps

Point/Projector lights
optional with projector texture

Procedural Caustics
(before this was multi-pass, one drawcall for each object under water
including terrain)

Interleaved Shadowmap lookups

no extra memory
less bandwidth needed
no limits on shadow mask channel count
 Deferred Light Types 2/3:
Image Based Lighting (IBL)
Light Probes are the high quality solution for distant light
Cubemaps allow efficient HDR lighting in real-time
Diffuse CM can be computed from specular CM
Mip adjusted lookup allows different specular power values
Improves shading in ambient lighting condition
by adding normal dependent and specular lighting
Light Probes can be generated at specified level positions
Deferred Lighting allows blending of localized Light Probes
Looks even better with SSAO
 Ambient without SSAO
with hemispherical lighting
 Bright ambient Black ambient
SSAO Shadow casting light source
SSAO

Grey ambient (hemispherical) IBL ambient (Specular and Diffuse)

Shadow casting light source Shadow casting light source
SSAO SSAO
 * brightened up for better display

IBL ambient (Specular and Diffuse)

SSAO
 Deferred Light Types 3/3:
Real-time Dynamic Global Illumination

Details will be presented at upcoming

Siggraph 2009 by Anton Kaplanyan
who developed that at Crytek
Implemented and fast on XBox360, PS3 and PC
No precomputation
Fully dynamic (geometry, materials and lights)
Unified for static and dynamic objects
Global Illumination off

black ambient
(to emphasize where GI
affects the image)

color bleeding
bump without light
fully dynamic
real-time

Global Illumination on
 * brightened up for better display

Global Illumination
 Something missing?
Transparency
=> falling back to well known techniques:
Per pixel global fog and fog volumes (deferred)
Back to front sorted alpha transparent objects
Volume texture clouds, Imposter clouds, Distance clouds
Particle systems avoiding per particle sorting

Anti-aliasing
=> Nasty but possible
EdgeAA,
... we work on it
 References
[Mittring07] Finding Next Gen CryEngine2
Siggraph 2007, Martin Mittring
http://ati.amd.com/developer/gdc/2007/mittring-finding_nextgen_cryengine2(siggraph07).pdf
[Engel08] The Light Pre-Pass Renderer
ShaderX7, Wolfgang Engel
http://diaryofagraphicsprogrammer.blogspot.com/2008/03/light-pre-pass-renderer.html
[Lee09a] Prelighting
Mark Lee
http://www.insomniacgames.com/tech/articles/0209/files/prelighting.pdf
[Lee09b] Pre-lighting in Resistance 2
GDC 2009, Mark Lee
http://www.gdconf.com/conference/Tutorial%20Handouts/200_insomniac/gdc09_insomniac_prelighting.pdf
[Geldreich09] Deferred Lighting and Shading
GDC 2009, Rich Geldreich, Matt Pritchard, John Brooks
http://archive.gdconf.com/gdc_2004/pritchard_matt.ppt
[Shish05] Deferred Shading in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
GPU Gems 2, Oles Shishkovtsov
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter09.html
[Lob09] S.T.A.L.K.E.R : Clear Sky a showcase for Direct3D 10.0/1
GDC 2009, Igor A. Lobanchikov, Holger Gruen
http://www.gdconf.com/conference/Tutorial%20Handouts/100_Advanced%20Visual%20Effects%20with%20Direct3D/100_Handout%202.pdf

[Valient07] Deferred Rendering in Killzone 2

Develop Conference 2007, Michal Valient
http://www.guerrilla-games.com/publications/dr_kz2_rsx_dev07.pdf

Slides should be soon at http://www.crytek.com/technology/presentations

Special thanks to all the passionate people at Crytek