No wonder Peter Molyneux is so optimistic about Xbox 360's future: Lionhead has developed a video texture tool for Milo & Kate that it says surpasses anything seen before in terms of polygon count.
The new sculpting tool has been dubbed 'Mega Mesh' by the studio, and allows its team to work with multi-billion poly models. You can check it out in the video below.
Sugden's overall aim was to create a "world to appear be a coherent, single whole, like one huge painting or sculpture".
However, Sugden told a behind-closed-doors audience at GDC that this objective created a major problem: an issue with scale.
"The current crop of sculpting tools are great for discrete models, but start to hit a wall when you hit very large polygon counts," he said in a talk entitled 'Modelling, rendering and lighting a world made of 100 billion polygons'.
"For example [industry standard tool] Zbrushworks brilliantly for characters, but as soon as you start to push beyond 10 million polygons or so, things really start to slow down. To give you an idea of scale, a typical level in our game - if we worked at roughly a 5mm texel resolution - would require around 10 billion quads."
Milo & Kate - GDC Demo
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The studio set about programming its own tool, which eventually became known as Mega Mesh. When Molyneux talks of Milo & Kate's tech being used to create "amazing new stuff" in future, we're guessing this is what he has in mind.
Sugden explained how studios conventionally model environment meshes - and the stumbling blocks this process creates.
"First you build a mesh in the modelling tool of your choice," he said, "Then you UV unwrap everything. And then you move to Photoshop or something for authoring textures, bumpmaps etc. We're all pretty familiar with this, but there's a problem: it means artists have to work first in 3D and then in 2D.
"We felt this could easily result in models which look like triangle meshes [with] textures plastered onto them, rather than a good representation of the geometry.
"By contrast, character artists have more freedom to overcome this. Since we usually allocate relatively large budgets to character models, sculpting tools [to build environments] become viable."
"[Using sculpting tools] artists can work at any level of detail they wish, and can paint directly onto vertices. Normal and albedo maps are generally derived from the high polygon model, rather than painted independently.
"And when artists are modelling, if they want to increase the resolution they need for painting, they just subdivide the geometry.
"Since our world required a painted look we felt that to paint and sculpt our whole world would allow us to deliver on our art ambitions.... it seemed pretty obvious that we should be using a sculpting tool - so why isn't everyone already?"
Here, Sugden explained the problem with "scale" when using current industry standard tools - and how they can't handle those mega-high polygon counts.
"We've developed a tool which allows us to overcome these problems, enabling us to manage multi-billion poly models," Sugden explained. "It's the core of our pipeline and is called the Mega Mesh tool.
"It sits between the content creation tool producing the rough low-poly model and the sculpting package, enabling multiple users to work simultaneously through integration with version control.
"We work around the 10 million poly limit [problem] by allowing the user to select regions of the world using a window. So with a large selection window, you edit the world at a lower resolution, and with a smaller window you have finer detail available. And finally the tool ties the pipeline together by coordinating the build process."
Regarding the video, Sugden has qualified it was "running on a stock Xbox 360 at 30fps - although the video capture has made things look choppy". He added that the tech "is totally viable on either an Xbox or a PS3". One love.
[Thanks to CVG reader MattyR95]
Read Ben Sugden's full GDC presentation sheet (in all its technical glory) through here.
Comments
38 comments so far...
StonecoldMC on 21 Mar '11 said:
Thats it Devs, keep wringing our consoles dry! Just not in the way that some on here would like too
.
buffig on 21 Mar '11 said:
Lionhead. You have my approval in this matter. Continue
crimbo on 21 Mar '11 said:
looks s**t they have used a bluring affect to make it look better.
same thing that was used in halo reach.
MattyR95 on 21 Mar '11 said:
I heards about this quite a while ago.
StonecoldMC on 21 Mar '11 said:
He added that the tech "is totally viable on either an Xbox or a PS3". One love.
Come on crimbo, where is the Love
?
DavidVM on 21 Mar '11 said:
There is no way that the shot of the bedroom is blurred. Maybe you're starting to go blind because you keep jerking off into your PS3.
P.S. - That's probably why your disk drive keeps failing in it as well.
Nightmare on 21 Mar '11 said:
Isn't this a variation on Tessellation?
shogunreaper on 21 Mar '11 said:
So why is the title "Xbox 360's bright future" if it works on both PS3 and 360?
Currychips on 21 Mar '11 said:
If that looks like s**t to you, I suggest the next time you take a dump, you squeeze it into a container and take it down the V&A gallery.
It looks gorgeous. The game, not your bum waste.
g_marrs on 21 Mar '11 said:
I think it has a wonderful stylistic affect.
Xavier WB on 21 Mar '11 said:
That looks incredible, if that can be realised in a full game that would surely be a new graphical benchmark
Good work Lionhead.
GunstarHeroX on 21 Mar '11 said:
That's amazing. Really amazing. There's life in the current gen yet.
How come Petey Mollynux didn't spend 4 hours praising himself and Lionhead for this? He does it with everything else, but this is actually impressive.
gmcb007 on 21 Mar '11 said:
His speech was on his laptop in his car.
Fr33Kye on 21 Mar '11 said:
You can go blind from jerking off into your ps3!?
I understand vertex painting, i hate UV s**t, but i dont completely get mega mesh. i'll have to take a look when i get home, but it seems awesome, i'm all for it!.
crimbo on 21 Mar '11 said:
My eyesight is perfectly fine. Your tunnel vision on the other hand is deluding you from the obvious truth.
A bluring effect has been used if you look more closely. It is really sad that now the 360s s**tness has now made developers resort to using illusions to try and make the game look better.
gmcb007 on 21 Mar '11 said:
Crimbo are you just annoyed that this isn't on the PS3 so you can brag about it?
altitude2k on 21 Mar '11 said:
Bunnies!
Glad to see you using the old screen name rather than all these new ones.
djreplay on 21 Mar '11 said:
That looks very good, we need more colorful games as I for one am getting sick of brown and grey.
MrPirtniw on 21 Mar '11 said:
Yay! Bunny boy is back!
That looked pretty incredible- it looks like it'd adapt to Fable's cartoony style too.
Paranoimia on 21 Mar '11 said:
Regardless of it being viable on 360 or PS3, it's still lacking.
Looking at the video, when the view turns near the shed in the garden, the plants rotate as well, making it glaringly obvious that they're 2D. This exact same issue can be seen prominently in Just Cause 2 when flying over treetops in a helicopter and rotating left or right.
Once again, it's just a tech demo, which runs at 30fps. Start trying to process controller inputs and game AI as well, and I'm guessing the frame rate will suffer. Pretty it may be, but I don't see it as being particularly viable for the current generation. Maybe the next, or the one after that.
divinebeetle on 21 Mar '11 said:
All he needs to do now is make a decent game with it
Windowlicker79 on 21 Mar '11 said:
Clearly you've not seen the Crysis 2 PS3 v Xbox 360 screenshots. Everything in the PS3 version looks like its being viewed by someone with cataracts. That is how you cover up poor graphics with a blur effect.
Comparatively this looks fine.
RustySpoon80 on 21 Mar '11 said:
Someone already did, it's called Heavy Rain.
liveswired on 21 Mar '11 said:
Wow, for once Peter Molyneux has impressed - lets hope its licensed out for use in actual games now!
BenThomasFoster on 21 Mar '11 said:
Then your next fable better have the art style of fable 3 with the power or milo behind it then instead of draw distnce 30m
trzarector on 21 Mar '11 said:
Is this similar to the id Tech 5 idea. They have something called Mega Textures, used in the upcoming Rage?
Dewin on 21 Mar '11 said:
It looks ok, until it moves that is. The framerate is horrible.
g_marrs on 21 Mar '11 said:
Actually, that was just the video capture that sucked. The demo's minimum speed at GDC is supposed to be 30fps
kmcroc on 22 Mar '11 said:
@shogunreaper do you really think MS is going to let this tech be used on any other console but their own . especially if its being developed in house at LION HEAD STUDIOS.
Cryotek on 22 Mar '11 said:
The smoothness and the lighter are impressive, but... well, that's a cartoony scene, and it's running at only 30fps with *nothing* happening and *no* character models or animation.
But hey, Peter Molyneux and Lionhead have never over-promised and under-delivered, right?
lonewolf2002 on 22 Mar '11 said:
I wouldn't mind a new Fable looking like that, never been too impressed with Fables GFX generally seem a bit smeared imo.
Welsh Jester on 22 Mar '11 said:
Looks visually similar to Viva Pinata which i've never played but seen screens of, does look nice though.
PandyBear on 22 Mar '11 said:
Heh, is that how people are measuring their peens now-a-days? in polygons instead of inches
RandyChimp on 22 Mar '11 said:
Meh!
I walk around my living room in real life, what else you got?
Adding to that, it looks no more impressive than a lot of games that already exist. Not sure what the fuss is.
Obscure_Metaphor on 22 Mar '11 said:
sounds like they've developed the modelling equivalent of p-tex texturing...
Honestly, Lionhead are the pixar of games... their road is just a little rough right now.
if they just let us play milo and kate, id be happy!
jtthegame on 22 Mar '11 said:
now to make a game that plays as good as that looks.
TykerD3 on 23 Mar '11 said:
If this works, could it not change the face of xbox games? It could make games look like next gen games?
PS3UberTool on 23 Mar '11 said:
And used way before that in the PS3 version of GTA4... even with the help of the Sony software engineers they couldn't get the PS3 version to look that good.