
GPU Performance for Game Artists - mnem
http://www.fragmentbuffer.com/gpu-performance-for-game-artists/
======
midnightclubbed
This is a great article for programmers too - maybe too much for non technical
artists.

The article doesn't really go into how to make more performant art, and thats
probably for the best - a lot of that will be game and engine dependent. It's
really easy to 'optimize' in a way that hurts the engine (or for programmers
to build/configure the engine and shaders in a way that is counter to the
artists workflow or visual targets).

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rhaps0dy
"Some engines (most notably the latest version used by Assassin’s Creed) have
even gone in a radically different direction, using the capabilities of the
latest GPUs to drive rendering and effectively doing away with draw calls
altogether."

I'm curious about this. Is it procedural generation? How does it work? The
only thing I could find with a while of searching is:

"AnvilNext [...] is capable of generating structures in a flexible and
automatic manner while following specific design rules and templates, which
reduces the amount of time and manual effort required for artists and
designers to create an intricate urban environment. Specific landmarks, such
as the Notre Dame de Paris, are still designed by hand [...]."

\--
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_(game_engine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_\(game_engine\))

~~~
mnem
He refers to a talk from the Assassin's Creed team in comments, and I
discovered the person who gave the talk wrote a fairly extensive set of forum
posts on it (including links to the original slides) here:
[https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/gpu-driven-rendering-
sigg...](https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/gpu-driven-rendering-
siggraph-2015-follow-up.57240/)

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ktta
Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MRJVrSS...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MRJVrSSSJosJ:fragmentbuffer.com/gpu-
performance-for-game-artists/)

~~~
miahi
Unfortunately without images :(

------
thomastjeffery
This is a great, concise explanation of the openGL pipeline.

It would be great to have a similar explanation for Vulkan.

~~~
Impossible
The Vulkan graphics pipeline isn't any different than the OpenGL graphics
pipeline (or DX11/12, gnm or Metal) although the details of how commands and
data are sent to the GPU change. This article is pretty high level, so it
applies equally to both APIs...

