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SSAO v0.6 for A7 & A8 #330073
06/25/10 15:08
06/25/10 15:08
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Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,904
H
HeelX Offline OP
Senior Expert
SSAO v0.6 for A7 & A8

SSAO v0.6 for A7 & A8

This is the 0.6 release of SSAO for Gamestudio A7 & A8!

It has been in development for about 1,5yrs now. After working on the new version for nine months, it has improved in many areas: it is ~21% faster than it's predecessor, it introduces a CHM manual, and automatic GPU-bone support, and a new demo (gpu animated characters with SSAO, DOF and PSSM shadows), and support for decals, and user events, and functionality for attached post-processing chains that want to re-use the depth- and normalmap, which is generated by SSAO, even if SSAO is disabled.

Core features
  • Compatible to A7.86.6 & A8.30.3, shader model 3 required
  • Easy integration into any existing renderchain
  • Supports fog and particles; static meshes; solid-, alphatesting and softalpha entities; decals (new); animated sprites
  • Automatic GPU bone support (A8 pro only) (new)
  • Works with (blurred) stencil shadows and PSSM shadows
  • Can sample depth- and normal map, even if SSAO is disabled (new)
  • Lots of showcase demos included + source
  • CHM manual (new)
  • Free to use in any project (MIT license)

Download (2011-10-10)
SSAO v0.6 source + demos ~44MB


Donation
If you like this software, if you find it useful or if you use it in a project (that maybe goes commercial), - and you would like to help me to find the time to work and improve this, please consider a donation via PayPal smile

Behind the scenes
The main targets for the current release were driven by structural- and performance related changes. While introducing GPU bones, I noticed that the amount of surface shaders exploded. I was also sick of having doubled code in all shader, so I wrote a unified shader which is being compiled during startup several times in different flavors for the support of all surface types and cpu- and gpu-animation support. I also pass compiler #defines to the shaders, which caused a huge boost on the performance in general, and, depending on what you dis- or enable, you get lots of extra frames. I also made the encoding scheme for the upscaling stage based on a texture lookup, which gave me also a instant boost. Plus, I made the sky pixel rejection right now, so, the performance is now also dependent on the amount of sky you have, so, SSAO will now run in space- or racing games, where the sky makes 50% of the screen two or more times faster! Another big win is the newly introduced manual.

Forecast & Call for projects
The upcoming features are now listed in the manual! The list is quiet huge and if you need some of them in a hurry, don't hesitate to contact me! It would be really cool to be in touch with developers, who actually use it, because they give me almost all the time hints how to improve it.

Kudos
The GPU-bone support was mainly targetted to be used for the zombie hordes in Call of Death, thanks to Zapan who actually came up with that feature request. The release takes also advantage of some custom engine features added by JCL, thank you very much for that! I also want to thank Slin, JustSid, Superku, Firoball, PadMalcolm, Jane, Kitsu and ChrisB for their assistance to make this possible! Also thanks to the whole community, I love you smile A8 ftw!

Have fun and best regards,
-Christian

P.S: don't forget to post bugs and comments wink and in the case that you don't like it, tell me why!
Last edited by HeelX; 10/09/11 19:28.
47 Comments
Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: HeelX] #352800
01/05/11 22:53
01/05/11 22:53
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,218
Germany
Rackscha Offline
Serious User
Rackscha  Offline
Serious User

Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,218
Germany
Looking good so far laugh.

Just did this video to show how its running on my ATIHD 4870. Sponza is running on its standard def. Sadly, i see some kind of TV-Effect on the ground o.O.

Heres the video(Private, so just visible here):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih3905F0j2o

Greets
Rackscha


MY Website with news of my projects:
(for example my current
Muliplayer Bomberman,
GenesisPrecompiler for LiteC
and TileMaster, an easy to use Tile editor)
Sparetime-Development

Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: HeelX] #353201
01/08/11 11:49
01/08/11 11:49
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 379
Flevoland, 5 meters under wate...
Roel Offline
Senior Member
Roel  Offline
Senior Member

Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 379
Flevoland, 5 meters under wate...
Quote:
hmmmmm makes me almost want to upgrade to A8

It works also for A7 (although there is a particle bug in A7 which lets them look darker - emulate particles with sprites then).

In fact I used free the free version of A7, I would have to upgrade from A6 commcrazy

Quote:
The size of the microspheres could indeed be based on a depth-based variable

that's exactly what I meant!
I just didn't know how to call them, glad you understand.
some pictures that might explain it even more:

http://www.freewebs.com/mention3d/ssao_close.jpg
http://www.freewebs.com/mention3d/ssao_far.jpg

On the first picture the ssao is fine, but on the second picture it is pretty losing it's detail.
with a smaller microsphere(as they seem to be called) it might look better, and because of the distance, you don't need that many texture lookups

something I don't get from ssao shaders:
why is there a white-ish glow around objects sometimes?
it would be easy to clamp the value of the ssao, so the white scene would look like this:

http://www.freewebs.com/mention3d/ssao_clamped.jpg

I inserted this code before the return in ao_pp_combine:
ao = clamp(ao,0,0.7)*1.35;
without the 1.35 it would be a little dark...

just another suggestion, but I might be completely wrong!


Last edited by Roel; 01/08/11 12:21.
Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: Roel] #353204
01/08/11 12:45
01/08/11 12:45
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,904
H
HeelX Offline OP
Senior Expert
HeelX  Offline OP
Senior Expert
H

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,904
@Roel: Ok, now I got what you meant. The white halo is caused by the SSAO algorithm. When I did the things I planned for 0.6, maybe also 0.7, then I will think of experimenting with other SSAO fragment shaders, like the StarCraft2 one.

That further objects in the White demo look different (or for some eyes "distorted") belongs to some circumstances caused by the blur stage. Nevertheless - in practice, SSAO is not commonly used on uniformly colored surfaces because of highly visible artifacts or other sideeffects due to optimizations and/or approximations (like I do here as well). If you run for instance the testscene demo without fog - which contains textured objects (which carry lots of high frequency details) and then you move as far away as in the White demo, you won't notice any distortions because they are just visible on plain white ground.

I don't want to clamp the calculated AO terms now, because you lose details on convex edges then which are an explicitely adressed part of the SSAO fragment shader. But you are free to change it on your own! smile

@others: I got some reports about the particle-view not in sync with the camera-view. Has anyone else problems with that?

Last edited by HeelX; 01/08/11 12:46.
Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: HeelX] #353231
01/08/11 16:07
01/08/11 16:07
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,218
Germany
Rackscha Offline
Serious User
Rackscha  Offline
Serious User

Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,218
Germany
@HelliX:
HAve you watched my video above wih the "TV-Effect" ?


MY Website with news of my projects:
(for example my current
Muliplayer Bomberman,
GenesisPrecompiler for LiteC
and TileMaster, an easy to use Tile editor)
Sparetime-Development

Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: Rackscha] #353284
01/09/11 01:34
01/09/11 01:34
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,904
H
HeelX Offline OP
Senior Expert
HeelX  Offline OP
Senior Expert
H

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,904
Originally Posted By: Rackscha
@HeelX: Have you watched my video above with the "TV-Effect" ?

I don't know what a "TV-effect is". I can see two phenomenons which are already known: 1.) if you have small holes, they can be fast darkened if they are "closed" by viewpoint change. This is caused by A) SSAO calculated on lower resolution and B) the fragment shader. 2.) you can observe horizontal lines, if you are looking along a plane with the camera orientation nearly parallel to a plane tangent. This is caused by the blur stage and my depth threshold algorithm.

The second issue will be adressed when I am working on the blur stage again.

Last edited by HeelX; 01/09/11 01:35.
Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: HeelX] #353307
01/09/11 09:53
01/09/11 09:53
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 2,113
NRW/Germany
alibaba Offline
Expert
alibaba  Offline
Expert

Joined: May 2008
Posts: 2,113
NRW/Germany
I think the second one is his Problem, because i have got the same. If you look to the ground, you can see some dark lines, which are moving, if the camera moves.


Professional Edition
A8.47.1
--------------------
http://www.yueklet.de
Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: alibaba] #353310
01/09/11 10:30
01/09/11 10:30
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,904
H
HeelX Offline OP
Senior Expert
HeelX  Offline OP
Senior Expert
H

Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 6,904
Originally Posted By: alibaba
If you look to the ground, you can see some dark lines, which are moving, if the camera moves.

This is what I am talking about. I will adress this in the future. Or are you developing a game in which these perspectives are very common and you really are in need for this to be fixed?

Last edited by HeelX; 01/09/11 10:30.
Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: HeelX] #353313
01/09/11 11:38
01/09/11 11:38
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 2,113
NRW/Germany
alibaba Offline
Expert
alibaba  Offline
Expert

Joined: May 2008
Posts: 2,113
NRW/Germany
No, i am not in hurry laugh


Professional Edition
A8.47.1
--------------------
http://www.yueklet.de
Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.52 [Re: alibaba] #353335
01/09/11 15:43
01/09/11 15:43
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,218
Germany
Rackscha Offline
Serious User
Rackscha  Offline
Serious User

Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,218
Germany
@HeeliX: (german) Habe das TV Eeffekt genannt weil diese streifen ziemlich an einen Monitor mit niedriger Herzzahl errinerten wink.
Aber gut, da es schon bekannt ist du du dran arbeiten wirst, warte ich mal gespannt 8-)

(english) i called it TV effect, cause it reminds me of an old TV-Screen with low reshreshrate^^. Anyway, as its already known, and you said you'll work on it, i'll wait 8-).

Greets
Rackscha


MY Website with news of my projects:
(for example my current
Muliplayer Bomberman,
GenesisPrecompiler for LiteC
and TileMaster, an easy to use Tile editor)
Sparetime-Development

Re: SSAO for A7 & A8 v0.51 [Re: painkiller] #354146
01/16/11 04:03
01/16/11 04:03
Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 125
Brazil - São Paulo
Ericmor Offline
Member
Ericmor  Offline
Member

Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 125
Brazil - São Paulo
Geforce gtx 460 here.
216/230 frames more or less in all demos, but it dropped to 60 frames when full screen. Odd.
In any case, good work! This is a helluva contribution to all gamestudio comunity.

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