The Vegetation

It is said

It's a great game. Seven years to create world horizon

And we often have to work on sundays

Ah, this is a little to the new dresses. Take talk

Uh welcome everybody

It's good to see. The house is full

You haven't done already

It's appreciated

Allow me to introduce myself

Uh, my name is xu bell sounds and I'm a principal artist during the games

We are responsible for the creation of the vegetation of horizon zero dawn

After working at great game since two thousand six

To uh as an environment artist and killed three as a shade texture artist

Um, and after these two games, at the beginning of 2011

Within the studio that started testing a prototype in what later would become a rise until dawn

I also a little bit of work on cheerful but you should also a little on and from two thousand fourteen on which

Full production on horizon zero dawn

Nice that's good

Let's see. Um. Well playing the game, you might not have a

Focused on on vegetation as much

Also a we should talk about vegetation. So let me start off with little clip to show you

And the creating

I don't have any sound. So usually it doesn't like

I have

Bother you with that

Throw

Just a little bit more

Are you ready?

Okay, um, your, oh, I get it today to him. Talk about the vegetation we create for, again

Most people have dealt with same or similar challenges when it comes to creating, simulating and rendering nature assets

Major assets are still even on this generation of hardware

Annoying offer. Some suggestions of the real world

Which is besides annoying. Also, what makes subject so interesting?

Philosophy of make more with less certainly applies here

I'm gonna string

Together

Uh but first

Uh, let me start off with some overall Information

Um

And as an artist, unable to create maintain my own feathers

Of course

Overtaking

Um, shared creation happens in my through my own shit notes

Find it

Go find the performance officials lies with the artist himself again. And the guidance of detecting

But such

Uh when it comes to the quality of the shaders, the assets as well as the performance of my work

But this one engine used for children

And we dragged present. You don't win the first second attention on a peaceful and four k on april

When we started to develop what much later would be named horizon zero dawn

This new ip worship

If the moment most fish hurt

Especially me

Up there

And seven years later I'm standing here in front of you to talk about it, um, and to talk about

Very slowly formulation creating the world fries. And the rest of the studio was busy building keep a close eye shadow for

Among study of a new piece for

Within this game, bill behind enemy lines

The one nature level and kills them shall fall can be seen as a rising star spirit

And the movement of education

We soon discovered that since education assets are not static assets assets with the latest Information on Top

Outward thing and maintaining them prove to be sleepy, difficult

We also got a good look at the performance of this nature level and learned and learned as that created for it the wrong way

Would work in the open world of rising. We really need to rethink

Before also mark the first hall beginning of placement system

We had an open running in behind enemy lines in the simplest form, but told us that without the placement system

We would not be able to create the world for rising

Not the world that we truly envisioned

The exercises, I would like to point to a dock that my colleagues, yup

With your today is well, again, russia addition

And you can find the paper uh on our website. Uh, and of course you can watch it in the ggc fold

But the short version is we created a system in which an artist can describe a large variety of

Interesting a believable environment

We want the system to be highly are detectable

It is to be fully data drive the journalist

Local stable

 

It

Faces and testing the scale and performance of new assets. For instance

I'm also play a link at the end of this

Presentation on the last flight

OK

From the start, when you

The simulation of nature need to be tied in with the weather system. We were designing for a game that needed to be out in game played riven

It needed to drive the vertex program of vegetation changes

So

 

I'm sorry

They were used locally. They were placed by hand on a way smaller scale than the way we were going to need food water horizon

The global wind force field, as we call it

A global wind force field is a computer

Running at the beginning of every frame

A bitch, three detectors. The shadows can sample

There was one sentence, three

A test player

Uh, this allows the simulation to always be at its highest resolution closest to the player

Uh, over distance, we gradually sample a 3D texture at a larger scale and at a lower resolution

I'm so beautiful

So

And

Also melt bit

This is the second cascade

We have another one for the scaling is a little bit of this one

I guess this

Show you what we do. Um

Thank you. Just saw this is the ability to simulate for different categories of specialty

Without any additional shade of logic. This allows us to set up distinctive different movement

We're divide the assets, as you can see, into three categories

Um

I told you we could simulate at four. So we england

Because special. But in the end, we use the last

Sample to a driver business and touch them

But that's a completely different doing

Um

For rendering and shading are for all intents and purposes, we only use two shades though

We actually started off, I really want to display

China everything

I will talk about grace a little bit later, but I wanted to start off with a look at the vertex program of the shaded the price of trees and plants

So we have a way to simulate wind, but still mr translate into the movement of assets on the screens

To do that, we took similar approaches describing a jeep. You james three were is gaining a population was stored in the vertical information

But can do two thousand eleven did was for the first articles and research when I was

And to this day

It was a few things that did not change during production

Let me show you what we did

Um, experimenting with the wind and looking for it in motion. In real life we found that too convincingly mimic

Decreased american

What's your motion or

Which will deal with the branches and small motion which will deal with a bunch of branches or leaves

So first

I'm because these assets are less rigid. At the top is both the bottom. So we use the height of the exodus gradient

The national movement is the branches and everything attached to it

The president is new to populate rigidity. These plants have simply put which store distance the trunk

Now we're getting to the last level, the leaves or anything that's small enough to act like leaves

What we do here in our channel is

We also use the green channel and we use it as an index. Um

Sorry

Think of it as a time of that them

We also saw a precomputed ambient occlusion in the off channel

Which useful couple of different judgements shade

 

After

With the vertex. Colors in place are vegetation. Shale can go to work

Over as it needs be driving through this furniture. So we ended up

Opening a a couple of variables that allowed us to tweet the animation on as a as a basis

The variables on mike and orange and is five

Enough to handle the Complete amount of variation that we have in game

Reject is an easy one lot of trees with much so certain trees need to be dial down, all booked up

For branches, we have to control

We have bent which is the motion along the vector of the wind

Um we have sweet

To the factor of the wind

Um, that we can bump up or down

The last one

I'm based on the

Strength of the wind

This to move what i've designated to be my leaves. So what you just saw in the right channel

All right, since plants in our game is exactly the same shade as trees, but are usually smaller

Uh, will you build it? A copy of ben's completely from the shelter, reducing costs

Also on want to bending into that ring

Also another big help with the shade. And is this little formula for information

A remote place by the maximum of the winning game. And we have the ability to run book, the influence of the wind

For different assets

Um, I can recall are directional feedback about the leaves of aspen trees

Um

Grace is

Um

I'm first fan

Uh

But we want our class to be geometry. Know all the planes we want

You know, it's squashed with the feed

Use force gonna bring

And we have been running it was pulled apart of our earliest prototypes

I'm and rendering of the cross to a big diaphragm

So we started the journey uh simplifying a glass bit by bit

The to be done to make more with less

And as for me, and an opera

Um

As little or as few triangles as we could

A dedicated crusher

Um

The english answering. Right now, sometimes I talk about high emotions to none

To lock out certain functionality in our shoulders on a per vote basis

For granted, that would mean that a 3 here would not have an animated video program at that distance

And also

Uh, but I'm just a little bit. Let's go to the village program

Um, we sort of our winter a force field a topic center amused hydrolysis grading to mimic which that information

We start splashing overseas of grace. And this will be our base motion

Um, but as you can see that this one will not always give us something spectacular

And we need more than this alone

What I also want to avoid is having the grass field over to one particular direction or standing still in one position

For a long period of time. This gives unwanted artifacts. And so william

Additional motion dr

A drink. But I think the fourth built

I added uh some large scale motion to

And it's

I think

A double bed

We have some small scale motion

The army and animation, large and small together account for about eighty percent of the total information

The rest comes from the winter people

On Top of a simulation. And grass also has to do a little more

I really want to avoid the player looking down on planes and having the

Bill. And the geometry disappears when looking down on a mission. And so we dropped a match bearings

Away from the camera

Like like so

To try to avoid

Goes there. Guards come in

Are reservations. Have a foot print

Of one and a half meters approximately and placing them in the world without looking at the terrain result in some unwanted clipping

Happy offers for littering soft of this. So based on the height, my power to ring, which splits the version of grace and pick space

Finally, we also do too little things

To help moving

And scaling the whole mess down

I'm explaining the assets with the terrain easier. And it gives a little performance boost

All these little programs together make up the Complete program for that program over grass

So we were measures. Sweetheart, let's move on to a shady settle on

Transparency and engines even offered assistance. Policies are expensive

And we did not have a lot of experience with bending over distances during acute and years

And vegetation

So the question was how do we handle the amount of vegetation that we know the world of horizon is going to need?

Well

First, as long as quarters

In this initial, the only path we do our Alpha test

Rendering this pass. First look at all the information

After which we only have to do is that compare when renting a joint reports without an office?

This is important, because offer this is incredibly expensive

The german shepherd is much more expensive

So

Let's analyze the frame of a game to see what that means for rendering times on the gpu

He can see a doctor of a jeep. You prefer intern

I am filtering. And if you look

In the Top right there is a placement and filtering on placement right now. So the percentage that you see here dear deal with all the assets

Please buy our present system

Technically, not all are a officer tests

Uh, we use the placement system for a lot more than only of the first location. Like this, you can bet that 95% is of a test

But look, sophie, are interested in are are deprived bus at almost ten percent over frame

And our job departs at about eleven and a half. So that

The toilet seat, close friend, rain, all this without are the only pass

That's a huge difference

A so

A book. Notice in this early on, it became clear what huge difference

The only path mate

So

We started um horizon zero dawn with signed distance of the pictures that

Could give enormous control over the size of the offer in the shade

We could a large and sugar, often sugar

Are often over distance

We did this to combat the quality decreased uh happens when the texas which is to lower middle class

Also the company we had dynamics, no leadership that could also adjust the offer on the fly

However

Every found

And we really were looking for percent just shape of

So

Let's have a look at our gpu profiler again

And here's a little bitter flavor

Course of a project

What here

It's the jeep. You probably can

The two numbers to look at here are once more the different but also the shadow policies influenced

Shadows are at almost nine percent free. The prices of six

And here is with

Dropped a few percent

So what we do to get into those

Finding a cost of adjusting are all far fewer shade

This makes sense because we already sampled it in a shaded. So many think we can get out of this street

We don't often to do this for us. And this too is described on the slide here

Process

Of the oldest image and build up a normal kitchen

Each map. Um we have sample is made by linear

I offered to sell you england is your bill and five. So dividing job and five until you found who gives the amount

With which we need to scale that map to end up with our original coverage

Sounds logical right

By

And usually presentation of a meeting

And bottom two rows

That appeared to represent the scales of a created by your own custom cover algorithm

George work. That was done by a share in our results in a single decker sample

 

Okay

Making your offer as small as we should be possible is with practice

But another thing to keep an eye on, especially for assets that you know

You will draw a huge amount of

Especially for classes. This simple change was a huge win

Um, abc, abc for compressed texture

That picture over there two five 6.128 comes in at 16 kilobytes without maps

Twenty one killer. But whitney maps

The version without me

Until the graphic programmed it was working on a on the ancient solution

Uh uh saw my chicken and wasn't too pleased about it. Um. So um

We went for the

Larger version

We have under them

Uh, you do really need a good ventilation solution to make this look awesome

So uh

A shout out to a paper

Programmer

This is an short

Again, I will supply a link after the talk. Uh, in my last slide

All right, let's have a look at the rest of the picture program

So I guess my engine uses the fur trading and vegetation shaders right out to these cheap offers

And the suggestions that we supply to a share

With exceptional, with the exception of grass

We also a mid pregnancy when we wonder most box

On the slide you uh you see uh we have which is a teacher too

Excuse me, donation to the lexus. A loading photo files with push a button or practice into compressor delivers files

And what you see here is a typical

So too busy seventh and busy for

Great news

If we are dealing with proper geometry, like plant this light, we do not have to do much more than we would with any of this really acid

We only have to take into account the military, a double sided

So based on the check

The normal accordingly

 

Where as it's rely heavily on airplanes or trying goes on feeding the normal

Incorrectly can be extremely useful in hiding the card by nature over cannabis on the grass

Uh, what we do is we just the normal of our vertices. Uh and take the absolute value of your space normal

To ensure we never uh random normal facing away from the camera

We use a nice service

Surrounding a canopy

And this is what

Um, so let's compare between the incorrect and normal normal

Um

And this is

It's highly artistic choice because you're breaking lighting and transitions in a way

Uh, but again, when dealing with approximation of geometry, it can help in hiding the simple nature of your assets

Especially on grass, when we tried a lot of things to hide the fact that it literally are

Three two drivers

We live to jump to a normal size is uh but we still do the apps on the z component of a few space normal

And again, a g for short

Bill middle

All of education in our game is colorized

And for aggression and graduation in our entire again, we have dictionary in which store sixty four because equal to

Congress the shoes of one twenty eight by a picture

Um

Apart from the conversation of vegetation which is enlarged on that flight, um

The sections also hold graduation of a rock

The rain dust

Um, the place in the world of asset uh dictates which direction to sample. So the w components

Uh different types of what we call world data

Are are captured um in one great culture that drives the components

Um n

Um, and think of this as

Choices for different types of assets within the polarization structure

I'm off at the station. I said steak one sample for the whole object, except grace, which we sample perfect

To facilitate all this, we average out the core of our beta textures to a migraine value

I'm we also have a math teacher in case there are, but we do not want jurors

Um initiator

The resulting color is the background color me to the forum color brighter. Wait for ground is bright

Foreground is dark

And this is what you get when you combine this in China

We derive our office and perfect tense

The european commission based on the vertex Alpha

I'm an variable, which for the factors we fixed at four percent dielectric

From this, we still want the little bit of arms control. So we opened up the variable

Or strange version of a translucent texture. On Top of that

The athletes way to differentiate advance between the leaves and bark should be present in a single picture

Upon brush. Would you have further questions or attempting to push a doctor? Shall we used translation selection to do similar things

 

The first transmission to the first

Three eggs and strain here are happening at the hotel to speak

But I just want to put them out there for classification. The last three items are open for are artist adjust

The surface thickness in formed the amount of absorption inside the surface. And the whiteness of the shattering going scattering gone once

He believes service on the other side

We can go to this

The translucent c amount

We pretty much locked the amount of diffusion for all vegetation at a certain value at some point. And we control the translucent c amount by text sample

And we also lay on top pre computer at all

On which the combination of our a objection until your story in different colors

For class again we use a derivative of the translucent and texture as a pre computed a o

And last one is a big one where we break away from attempting physical correctness is lost face

I'm

Look for the game

All right. That's sort of explain them

You know what we need for winter

Once again, when we started, we were the cute guys. So we knew how to do

This

And things like this

Even found

This

So we knew we had our work cut out for us and to stretch our legs a bit. We build ourselves and our benchmark

Annex found a video of that ad really want to share

A disappointing built, as I believe it's in the beginning

Of two thousand fourteen

How dense we want to go on and how much to them

A different accents we want to do to spawn with enough force

Um

Um but

Most of danger to the highest lord and hoping to creative enough for things of distance to make a bomb

And we continue to do this for some time during production

And then king in three two thousand fifteen

A first few fries and not only trip, but we were playing the play ball

Um

We need to do a huge organization bus on earth allergies through

All sort of software processes

Not so much on the highest note

But we have to look need to go down

Um

What we can do to improve the performance and quality of our lds without having to resort on software solutions to reduce triangles

I'm it would be gone

All of creation

So are most of thirst

So let me illustrate this a little bit better. Um

We built the lowest load of components that we want to address our tree or any other assets with

It's usually the trial court. And we spent a small amount of time sketching out

Um, anyway, so beautiful as to those

Please will you speak with throughout the middle of rising

I'm

Exchanges

So as soon as we feel that the acid works, we go into building the high resolution components needed to create a texture from

And this is an example for of branched them

We are little making. And I think that this is a branch

But this high resolution components and

As long as they match the pictures and text layout that you sketched out when you were beginning this as um

As long as they match, um

Um, and once we have all the high resolution models built and laid out, uh we we get them into my protection beijing

We'll boil on shoulders and the ability to beat down this machine to choosing to live in space

And now with these structures based on present, we return to our speed models

Which we now treat as not three

And start moving more

And first one

The little triangles you see surrounding these measures

Other lds bounding boxes were similar

With you speaking six twelve production and

To make sure the day of land property

We did not want to switch software half way through the bible or the project

Um

With a new lodging

What we did anybody notice that we had in law into the why of speech?

Really is to do, but quite full of people

Um so

We export large enough from speaking

And a o to n f d x

And then we use a custom hoodie process that we created in house

That takes a fresh take the schedule scanning data and converts the data to the vertical that I described at the beginning of this presentation

All that's left for us now is to set the extra mile and exported to our game

So

Again, we used I looked in law watches and you noticed we have

Um

Demonstration special

Um on here

OK

We use for cascades, for essentials

Um, in the compartment. This case that is

And that means that a lake of high quality shadows

Tom, oh, my education does not render in this cascade

Cascades zero and one

Our standard standard shadow maps. And we have a discount ticket

But let's talk about cascade zero and one of the standard treatments since these are the ones uh vegetation rendered into

And when entering

We do something a little bit unusual

The natural way to select load is for sheltering is distance. That camera please

This course as shadows to put noticeable, because there's no cross feeding between the most. When it comes to share a memory

However

So what we decided to do is render objects into the shadow maps

Based on fixed distances and only one object purpose gate

So every object rendered into cascade zero will not um

Every object rendered into cascade, one will select a lot as if it's 25 minutes away from the camera

Let's fix the shadow lobby

An object is in this particular cascade, it will always use the same shadow lot

If transition from one state to another

This increases render course somewhat, but it's almost completely solve the problem of shadow popping. And it was definitely worth it

And i've got a small little movie. It it goes fast. So pay attention but I also have blooming. So

You don't have to catch it the first time around, but

So there you go

Ah

So here you can see that smooth transition between

Just get zero and one

Another thing we did for vegetation and some other assets is um

We separated out

Our shuttle costs from

So um while our visual measures are

To absorb

This is a north wind to begin with

Because she can really cracked down

A motor

It's not animated anymore. So it it is as cheap as you can possibly

Um

 

All right. We're we're closing to a

I enjoyed um

To summarize

All of you trying or utilizing if you take steps into

Vegetation and that is the list up and down. So the the stuff that i've mentioned, the the dead prime

The the homework up and down was a big one. Um

Keep your shadow cast separate from your physical measures. Uh use your placement system

Uh, one of the things that also helped us is that we could

Which made it so

Good at a really big one for me, a so

I promise you slide with uh the references that you so

And welcome everybody to with questions too

Still

To do so

Sure

Is it working? Yes. Um

Beautiful by the way, larger room it you are a gay, I know you know my name's thomas

I was working. Yes. I I did have a question. You didn't talk about the snow or the illusion of the weight of snow on vegetation

How was that achieved? Because I

Can be impressed as I was walking down the bushes with your other with the snow on Top by hitting it. So it's just kind of wondering did you go through any kind of physical simulation

The idea to treat

The snow started off as the snow system in the shade. Will we reach liters?

Sort of pulled out a little bit of white stuff on Top

But was expensive

Where we can literally spawn in areas of heavy snow. And then uh just uh speech gave us the tools to really

Because it is dedicated to the uh uh assets

We knew it was so happy. So we just sort of push it down and gravity, gravity do its work. Okay

Let's break thank you

I'm sorry too high

Uh, separating your shadow assets from your visual rendering assets. Do you have any problems making sure that those continue to line up? And how did you solve those

Um, well, as soon as you separate them out, you have the ability to you you start optimizing your shadow casting, watching

And after that, it is pretty much a just visible

Uh thing that you need to do, uh, you know

Everything we do with the population

Um, so uh you you you'd be surprised how much you can get away with. I mean

Are

It's about doing a triangle count as a

Then you know, within the tree was also five. It's just crashing down

Those triangles and and while you know keep checking your work again and it will end up working

Cheers

Sir

So, uh, a standard for the talk

And about which you play sports. And I was

Didn't really mention the tools for artists like a video out of this and

Oh, you you iterate on your placements

But uh okay, I I I I can talk a little bit about the placement. Uh uh uh placement system runs in our editor

And it's a node based system where uh we combine all sorts of world data

Uh, and what we end up with is a density map

And it's all it's all running on gpu. And you should mention that you you just multiplying

Natural protection agency

Subtracting another texture. And so you know

You you multiply the road on Top of that. So that will become black. So the the the the forest will still have a density of one

And we learn all this stuff. And on top of

All this other stuff

Um, we we look at things like slope uh, proximity to water flow lines, all these things that you can um

Uh did that you need to make it sort of work in a realistic fashion and

We are we can bend mutant

We have one honest and beautiful

This process. So that those living not road, not river and dinner

Can start painting in a forest or in an order now where an open field, they have the ability to to to pay that. Um

Bodies. One artist defines what they gonna get when the band

So uh I'm not sure if that answers the question is answered the question because i've seen also the classroom placement

Technical and it's much more complex. It's on using it requires like cpu from to be processed stuff. It's like

You you're getting really good results also

And and it's like it's almost Free time on your side and your kind of form on the other side. What do you think the

Is there something is missing in your technical? Is it only because it's a

Your take on this and keep you

I don't think room. I I thought you believed the solution will burn in games. Also on our forces were truth

Um, something's missing for you. And what you get

Yeah, i've i've got a wish list

A s it's based on any data that we have financial

Or on the outside of the forest

A regional do a rotation based on your own culture of

A of of the river or stuff like that. But that's wonderful because once said, and i'm requesting now that direction in a single of right now

I'm so

That's okay. Did you use some kind of capture

Some kind of capital to you to make your presentation like this country

Dinner

That's photogrammetry

Um

Excuse me with more for them tree, because it was so exciting and dinner that experiment go well and living pretty wild goose that

Do you see this like

Your slow and takeshi next door. Um

I was wondering on foot to you specifically have some more champagne on the sheet for both trunk and branches and

Even like the most significant pieces of more rigid base of the tree. How do you treat game play

For that, like the shooter branch

Um

Oh, no. Like I'm in an arrow like that. Am I going to collide with the branch for instance?

Do you have a mechanical? I do that would bench newark at the conclusion is a week

Additional trains is usually just a cylinder that represents its footprint

Yeah, because we need to go to the next round the trees. And we need

I see. So you're just gonna push away if it has a force field associated with. Thank you. All right, thanks

So I'm curious about the wind force field and how

Is that exactly? Generally great gusts of wind come from the

Whether they come from

And it's all mine

Um, when I talk about a force field that it's it's it's just

Sort of blends

Must be is like thirty three. So we will start with four, three, or four zero to ten, and murdered

For two zero four children for should twenty and forty eight thirty. And we blend between those

The other young children have properties

Math

Hi

But you drag on a i'm wondering about a

It's expensive graduate having grace, getting a medic down and kept watch over and bring in

And any other dishes invention. I think we we don't have any interaction available grass, but something we want to do. Um

And it's again on on on a mental wish list for me

Yeah

Over

But we work in contact. The grass was just using the snow into the ocean where where um

Because the DOC we introduce a a system where you could

And we will look into a beauty and the changes in for a lot of options. So

So

That's it

Jeff