Zetheros
Developer
This week we've been optimising and cleaning up the new renderer, trying to fill the gaps and adding some new features too. We have to provide various quality levels for different hardware, and we've done a lot of optimisations for everything from integrated graphics to the best GPUs.
One thing in particular that needed attention was sampling for shadows and GI, which have varying quality requirements at different times. We came up with a very elegant and efficient solution which we're very happy with. Before the new renderer, we were adding a new higher quality setting for people who were put off by the sometimes grainy shadows, now we have much better results and it's faster. The new "low" setting is comparable in quality to the current "high".
One of the new arenas is to feature vegetation, so that's one of the new features we've been working on. Here's a screenshot of a tree in the new renderer:
We're working on many vegetation models, and something like this still needs a little work, but a lot of thought and care has been put into making dense looking vegetation without breaking the performance bank. The view from below is to show the back-scattering in the lighting. Placed in an environment, we'll also be taking advantage of our new GI, which will make it look even better.
In the meantime work continues on new arenas, many new items, some future content for the story and also updating our core character assets to streamline further development, solve many issues and support new items. As part of this effort we just improved our skinning, which not only produces better results but is almost completely automatic. This will be a huge help going forward.
One thing in particular that needed attention was sampling for shadows and GI, which have varying quality requirements at different times. We came up with a very elegant and efficient solution which we're very happy with. Before the new renderer, we were adding a new higher quality setting for people who were put off by the sometimes grainy shadows, now we have much better results and it's faster. The new "low" setting is comparable in quality to the current "high".
One of the new arenas is to feature vegetation, so that's one of the new features we've been working on. Here's a screenshot of a tree in the new renderer:
We're working on many vegetation models, and something like this still needs a little work, but a lot of thought and care has been put into making dense looking vegetation without breaking the performance bank. The view from below is to show the back-scattering in the lighting. Placed in an environment, we'll also be taking advantage of our new GI, which will make it look even better.
In the meantime work continues on new arenas, many new items, some future content for the story and also updating our core character assets to streamline further development, solve many issues and support new items. As part of this effort we just improved our skinning, which not only produces better results but is almost completely automatic. This will be a huge help going forward.
