Author Topic: Prometheus pod  (Read 8114 times)

Patrice Terrier

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Prometheus pod
« on: November 23, 2018, 09:04:14 am »
A long and fastidious work...
Patrice
(Always working with the latest Windows version available...)

Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #1 on: November 23, 2018, 12:42:49 pm »
I like what I'm seeing, Patrice! :)

However as seen from a distance, I'm afraid we might be facing problems similar to what we had with the bubble ship and 166 drone. There may be black jaggies in the AO maps along the edges where the smaller meshes intersect with, and go under, the surfaces of larger meshes.

The intersections of cylindrical and spherical parts, like in the below picture, would be the most critical ones.

Please tell me whether you're seeing the jagged AO artifacts under close examination there?
« Last Edit: November 23, 2018, 09:41:08 pm by Patrice Terrier »
Mike
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Patrice Terrier

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #2 on: November 23, 2018, 02:03:42 pm »
Yes, i see it however all in one there is no comparison with the previous version.

Let's complete first the new model, then we can clean up some of the most obvious jaggies
Patrice
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Patrice Terrier

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #3 on: November 23, 2018, 09:37:59 pm »
Slow progression.
Patrice
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Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #4 on: November 23, 2018, 11:04:35 pm »
Looks quite nice, I must admit! :)
Mike
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Patrice Terrier

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #5 on: November 24, 2018, 01:34:01 pm »
Now in its full glory.

I shall post the WIP zip as soon as i am back home this afternoon.
Patrice
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Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2018, 02:04:15 pm »
Strictly speaking, the Prometheus landing site scenery was somewhat different but the model looks very impressive anyway! :)

Did you texture the control room insides as well?

Mike
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Patrice Terrier

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2018, 03:31:38 pm »
Here is the huge model.
Patrice
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Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2018, 05:33:40 pm »
Thank you for your effort, Patrice!

The model looks gorgeous despite a few jaggies in the AO maps here and there. Hopefully some day I have enough spare time to motion-blur the offending edges like I did in the bubble ship and drone...

And that's an arduous task, I must say, primarily because you can never know where in hell the offending edge lies in the mesh AO map; there are no tools to guide you. Then, so much time is lost reloading the model constantly for inspection. I guess, alongside the info tip, it might be the very first and very helpful Edit function to implement in ObjReader:
  • Have a splitter to divide the viewport in two halves (or actually add a second OpenGL control and hRC)
  • Use the right viewport in an ortho projection to depict the texture of interest with a wireframe overlay of the mesh UV's unwrapped
  • Detect mouse clicks in the left viewport to guide you through the texture map in the right viewport to the offending spot/edge
  • Add a selection of Photoshop style image filters (e.g. blur) to be able to edit the texture in the right viewport in real time
  • Add an option to reload one texture selectively into ObjReader from the disk (similar to current bulk texture reload on changing the texture mipmap option)
  • Update the model in the left viewport in real time to immediately see the results of texture edits
8)
Mike
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Patrice Terrier

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #9 on: November 24, 2018, 06:03:59 pm »
I may have a solution (however very time consuming) to reduce the most offending jaggies, experimenting with it right now
Patrice
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Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #10 on: November 24, 2018, 06:09:00 pm »
You know what else, Patrice? ???

We must certainly do something about those huge 32-bit grayscale AO maps we're using. There are so many of them that the model simply refuses to load in my ATi Radeon box that has only 2GB of VRAM. If I disable mipmapping, the model does load. But 15 extra mipmap levels add exactly as much VRAM footprint as level 0 alone, and at some point during model load my Radeon complains I've requested more VRAM than it can offer, and then aborts ObjReader altogether. :(

I think we should add a texture preparation stage whereby all the grayscale maps the model uses (AO, specular, displacement, metalness, roughness, etc. in various combinations) would be combined in memory as separate grayscale "channels" into one or more 32-bit auxiliary textures to be loaded and optionally mipmapped for subsequent use in our shaders on a per-"channel" basis. It would save us a lot of VRAM and also some time it takes OpenGL to mipmap our current grayscale textures separately into an absolutely unnecessary "fruit salad" of 32-bit images each.

Secondly, 16 levels of GLU default mipmapping are far too many for our current ZFAR depth field of less than 100.0f. My Objector texture loader and renderer implement selective choice of mipmap levels to create and render (8)). I'm actually creating 6 smaller mipmap levels besides level 0 and I have never seen any need to generate more of them. We should also add a similar option to ObjReader, I think.
Mike
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Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #11 on: November 24, 2018, 06:57:40 pm »
I may have a solution (however very time consuming) to reduce the most offending jaggies ...

THE solution is to set many more ray bounces in the ray tracer you editor uses to generate the AO maps. Judging by their current granulation, the default number of ray bounces is currently set at only 6 or 8 at the maximum, which is too few for high-quality renders.

Increasing the number to at least 16 is going to make the shadows much smoother and consequently less jagged but it's going to increase the time to generate an AO map of such size dramatically, especially if the ray tracer isn't multithreaded.

There simply must be a corresponding setting to change in your C4D editor, Patrice. Just take your time to locate it and use it.
Mike
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Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #12 on: November 24, 2018, 07:33:15 pm »
It's difficult to tell definitively at such a distance and scale but if you say it's better, I'm inclined to rely on your word, my friend. :)

(Seems like the two huge "pilot" consoles immediately in front of the glass cockpit remained untextured. They are difficult to examine due to the [0,0,0] limitation but still...)
Mike
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Patrice Terrier

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #13 on: November 24, 2018, 07:44:35 pm »
Try with this texture, and compare with the other pods, to see the difference…

Added:
I am now using only one single AO texture for the pod_white_AO, thus saving memory, i shall further optimize the texture memory.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2018, 08:49:57 pm by Patrice Terrier »
Patrice
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Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky

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Re: Prometheus pod
« Reply #14 on: November 24, 2018, 10:00:13 pm »
Sorry but this texture doesn't work for me at all; I downloaded it twice to the same effect. :o

(it's about 100KB smaller than the old one)
Mike
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