Saturday, March 20, 2010
at
7:49 AM
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As mentioned, previously, I pointed out two method to render volumetric lights. I have successfully implemented the first technique for both point and spot lights. Here's a screen shot of it in action(4 point lights & 1 spot light):
Notice the frame rate with my crappy hardware. This is with shadow, HDR and refraction on. Previously, when we were still using forward rendering, I get about the same FPS at ~40. This has proved my speculation was right that when all features are on, I will not see any significant frame rate changes. In fact, we gain the ability to do cheap lighting! The old renderer would have done a horrible job to produce the screen shot above. Hence, deferred lighting FTW! :)
However, since the current method is rather brute force in that all lights will use stenciling technique, this means we might hit a limit quite quickly(probably around 30+ lights). To solve this issue, I have plans for light batching. The idea is to group lights that only encompass a small area in screen space. Then we use shader instancing to render the lights without the stencil pass. Obviously this will end up rendering some redundant portion of the screen. However, I do believe the optimization on less render state changes will offset this cost. As to what is the right screen ratio, I currently have no clue. I probably need to build a test level with tons of lights to figure out. :)
As for the second technique I mentioned during the last post, I intend to use that for custom non convex light volumes. This method allows me to scrap the light group masking idea I had which not only complicates rendering, it also gives the level designers a lot of headache. The goal for this custom light volume is to allow level designers to define light volumes that will not leak into areas they do not want to due to no shadowing; for example spot light casting across adjacent room.
So there, deferred lighting conversion, success! Woot! :-D I must say I have learned a lot over the course of attempting this rendering "upgrade". Now I finally understood the tricks of getting view space position from depth buffer. I was having some trouble especially on figuring how to generate proper far clip plane coordinates with a volume mesh on the screen. But thanks to nullsquared the genius, he solved it for me in a forum post I found. Still, let's not get into the details less I become too long winded; which I already am. :-P That's all for this post.
Ciaoz
Notice the frame rate with my crappy hardware. This is with shadow, HDR and refraction on. Previously, when we were still using forward rendering, I get about the same FPS at ~40. This has proved my speculation was right that when all features are on, I will not see any significant frame rate changes. In fact, we gain the ability to do cheap lighting! The old renderer would have done a horrible job to produce the screen shot above. Hence, deferred lighting FTW! :)
However, since the current method is rather brute force in that all lights will use stenciling technique, this means we might hit a limit quite quickly(probably around 30+ lights). To solve this issue, I have plans for light batching. The idea is to group lights that only encompass a small area in screen space. Then we use shader instancing to render the lights without the stencil pass. Obviously this will end up rendering some redundant portion of the screen. However, I do believe the optimization on less render state changes will offset this cost. As to what is the right screen ratio, I currently have no clue. I probably need to build a test level with tons of lights to figure out. :)
As for the second technique I mentioned during the last post, I intend to use that for custom non convex light volumes. This method allows me to scrap the light group masking idea I had which not only complicates rendering, it also gives the level designers a lot of headache. The goal for this custom light volume is to allow level designers to define light volumes that will not leak into areas they do not want to due to no shadowing; for example spot light casting across adjacent room.
So there, deferred lighting conversion, success! Woot! :-D I must say I have learned a lot over the course of attempting this rendering "upgrade". Now I finally understood the tricks of getting view space position from depth buffer. I was having some trouble especially on figuring how to generate proper far clip plane coordinates with a volume mesh on the screen. But thanks to nullsquared the genius, he solved it for me in a forum post I found. Still, let's not get into the details less I become too long winded; which I already am. :-P That's all for this post.
Ciaoz
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