
Rendering of Rise of the Tomb Raider - doppp
http://www.elopezr.com/the-rendering-of-rise-of-the-tomb-raider/
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zawerf
This reminded me of another guy who does graphics study on how frames are
rendered in GTA V, DOOM, etc:

[http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-
graphic...](http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-
study/)

Other games/discussions can be found at:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=adriancourreges.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=adriancourreges.com)

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SirHound
I'm incredibly excited for his hopefully-inevitable RDR2 investigation.

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plq
If I read his stuff correctly, this may not be possible before a PC release of
the RDR2. Fingers crossed! :)

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Lownin
While not as in-depth, this is a fun analysis of Windwaker's graphics
techniques done via observation and and emulator.
[https://polycount.com/discussion/104415/zelda-wind-waker-
tec...](https://polycount.com/discussion/104415/zelda-wind-waker-tech-and-
texture-analysis-picture-heavy) If a PC port of RDR2 never happens, an
analysis may still be possible. We may just have to wait a long time.

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bananatron
"I can safely say without spoilers that in this frame bad guys chase Lara
because she’s looking for an artifact they’re looking for too, a conflict of
interest that absolutely must be resolved using weapons."

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fb03
These "how they render these graphics" breakdowns are always like meditation
to me. Even tho I don't work in graphics programming there's this vibe in
these posts that always puts me in a chill mood. Instead of skimming I'm
actually reading and digesting every sentence.

Does anyone feel the same about these kinds of posts? Were you able to
pinpoint what specific writing features they employ that might elicit such
responses in us?

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1_player
Personally, I like the pretty pictures and as a (regular) software engineer,
game engines are so far from my expertise that it's like reading about black
magic. I'm completely in awe at the complexity, and multiple passes behind a
simple game frame, which are rendered in under 16ms.

Video games are the best showcase of the ludicrous speed and potential of
modern computing, while we're complaining because our text editors are
sluggish to render a few glyphs :-)

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knolan
What's interesting about these kinds of articles is that while very
sophisticated and complex the process is often easy to understand.

There are a lot of cool tricks used that are also used in VFX compositing and
also in image processing in more academic environments.

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dkersten
Yes, its a lot of small tricks and techniques that are combined and its easily
understood what each step does (even if its hard to implement).

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knolan
And all running at 30–60 frames per second.

I’d be very curious to see how Red Dead 2 or the new Resident Evil 2 remake
renders a frame. There are a lot of volumetric effects and heavy post
processing going on in both.

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mrguyorama
>An interesting thing I found is a level of detail (LOD) technique called
‘fizzle’ or ‘checkerboard’. It’s a common way to fade objects in and out at a
distance, either to later replace it with a lower quality mesh or to
completely make it disappear.

As a frequent video game player, I find this LOD switch technique to be
atrocious. It's ugly as all hell and will ruin any immersion. Things don't
checkerboard like that in reality, and it makes modern games look uglier. One
of it's biggest problems is that it is often used to cull things too close to
the camera, so instead of something softly fading out as the camera passes
through it, it turns into Swiss cheese right in your face.

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vagab0nd
I always wondered, how do they get these intermediate renderings from the
game? Is this some kind of profiling tool? And no source code required?

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kennyadam
Interesting post, I enjoyed reading it. I'm not exactly wowed by the
screenshots they chose to use though, especially the one specifically selected
to demonstrate reflections.

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redorav
I'm really glad you enjoyed the article. It's a hard process to select
screenshots that properly showcase as many features of the game as possible,
while also being visually pleasing and interesting. Often I want to take as
few screenshots as possible and showcase as much as possible from that.

I agree that screenshot wasn't the best possible example, however since it
included both fog and reflections I decided to go with it in the end. The
reflections part was one of the last things I wrote.

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speps
Should be "(2018)" even though it's December 31st :).

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dkersten
I don't see the value of tagging the year onto articles, _unless_ the article
is old _and_ the content is time sensitive or not relevant anymore (ie, the
year tag helps to warn you that the information is out of date and interesting
mainly in a historical context). While you could argue that this information
is time sensitive, its still super recent.

I personally do not like when articles are tagged with the year when the above
is not true, because it gives the impression that the article is outdated,
which makes some people pass over them sometimes, making me miss content I
would have otherwise read and also reducing the amount of interesting
discussion if people aren't reading the article. Why do I often pass over old
articles? Because my time is limited, so I pick and choose what I will read
and unless I'm interested in the history of a thing (I often, but not always,
am), I'll skip articles that seem historical or out of date for ones that are
current.

I'm not a fan of always tagging articles that weren't written in the current
year, if the information is just as relevant now as when it was posted.

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detaro
The year also helps with "I've probably already read that one" over "ohh, a
new article about $thing!"

