Graphic Rants

What about small TessFactors?

Let's get into the details of how this integrates with Nanite.

There are many different approaches for determining whether and by how much a patch needs to be tessellated.

Requirements All the original goals of Nanite should apply to our approach here as well.

Nanite Tessellation, aka Nanite Dynamic Tessellation, aka Nanite Dynamic Displacement was the next major feature I worked on after Nanite itself.

$$ \newcommand{\vv}{\mathbf{v}} \newcommand{\rv}{\mathbf{r}} \newcommand{\muv}{\boldsymbol\mu} \newcommand{\omegav}{\boldsymbol\omega} \newcommand{\mudotv}{\muv\cdot\vv} $$ What can we use this for?

$$ \newcommand{\vv}{\mathbf{v}} \newcommand{\rv}{\mathbf{r}} \newcommand{\muv}{\boldsymbol\mu} \newcommand{\mudotv}{\muv\cdot\vv} $$ A normalized SG has the same equation as the probability distribution function for a von Mises-Fisher (vMF) distribution on

$$ \newcommand{\vv}{\mathbf{v}} \newcommand{\rv}{\mathbf{r}} \newcommand{\muv}{\boldsymbol\mu} \newcommand{\mudotv}{\muv\cdot\vv} $$ A Spherical Gaussian (SG) is a function of unit vector $\vv$ and is defined as \begin{equation} G(\vv;\muv,\lambda, a) = a…

Intro and backstory About 4 years ago now I ran into Spherical Gaussian (SG) math in a few different publications in a row, enough that it triggered the pattern detection in my brain.

The big news from Epic at GDC this year was that Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for only $19/month + 5% royalties.

When working with HDR values, two troublesome situations often arise.

$$ \newcommand{\nv}{\mathbf{n}} \newcommand{\lv}{\mathbf{l}} \newcommand{\vv}{\mathbf{v}} \newcommand{\hv}{\mathbf{h}} \newcommand{\mv}{\mathbf{m}} \newcommand{\rv}{\mathbf{r}} \newcommand{\ndotl}{\nv\cdot\lv} \newcommand{\ndotv}{\nv\cdot\vv} \newcommand{…

I'm resurrecting this blog from the dead.

The system I described last time allowed specular highlights to reach large distances but only requires calculating them on the tiles where they will show up.

First off I'm sorry that I haven't updated this blog in so long.

It has been a long time since I updated this blog with substantial content but I wanted to point out that Bethesda just released this new screenshot of Prey 2.

First off it's been a very long time since I made a post.

This entire post turned out to be hogwash.

Epic released UDK today.

We are hiring!

LogLUV There has been some talk about using LogLUV encoding to store HDR colors in 32 bits by packing it all into a RGBA_8888 target.

I got a bogus DMCA notice on this post.

Geometry images are one of those ideas so simple you ask yourself "Why didn't I think of this?"

There has been a lot of talk lately about the next generation of hardware and how we are going to render things.

I just stumbled on this blog the other day that I haven't seen linked in the graphics blog circle so I thought I'd make a point of mentioning it.