GDC Write Up

Post date: Mar 26, 2016 3:40:28 AM

As with my first GDC, I choose to be a conference associate this year. I had a lot of good critiques while I was there and I thought I'd share some of the general notes from them (these are all notes about lighting): 

• • Don't go full black or white

  • lead both the player and the viewer with the light. 

  • Hierarchy of importance based on brightness. The brighter something is, the more important it is. So if you're going to have a "do this which causes this then makes this happen," have the brightest thing be the first step of the process and so on. 

  • Foreground, mid ground, and background lighting. 

  • Doesn't have to be 100% realistic lighting. Sometimes its good to push it to make the scene really pop. People won't notice if its not 100% realistic if it looks good. 

I was able to get to a lot of talks and take notes so here are the most prevalent ones (also this is pretty much me taking direct notes from the presentations so sorry if it is all super obvious to us all): 

PBR - What is it? Physically based rendering is building materials to behave like they do in the real world. We need to know how light interacts with surfaces. Key concepts: spec and diffuse reflection, micro facet theory, f0 reflection. Spec reflection - the direct light reflection from a surface. Diffuse reflection - basically the color reflected. Micro facet theory - every surface has some type of bump to it and it affects the refraction and absorption. Every object has fresnel. Base color (albedo): devoid of lighting info. No dark values below 30 sRGB and no bright values above 240 sRGB. Metal reflection values: 70-100% specular. Some metals can be corroded. Painted or coated metal which is dielectric (dust or what not). White is metallic and black isn't (duh). Dielectric is put in the metallic map. Spec node in ue4 is to fix the dialectic issues. So like water or gemstones you'd have to up the spec. Roughness - micro surface. This is the best map. The story texture. Finger prints scratches. Smooth-black rough-white. 

Modular level design fallout 4 - Footprint of the mod kit. The gird. How they snap together. Be careful about tiling. Stay inside the footprint. Stick with pivot. Stick to transitions (all doors are the same size). Layered inserts with base kits. Custom girds to make more variety. Pivot and flange (helps with organic flow). Come up with the different environments (or kits) that are needed. Possible to consolidate the kits. Kits as solutions to problems. Kit are cornerstones. Gray box early. As long as proportions and naming conventions are set early on. 5 pass system. Concept, layout (core kit is useable), gameplay, content complete, & polish. Kit priorities: hero, utilitarian core, & variants. Avoid hero pierces. Utilitarian core is the most important cause the player will see it the most. Allow maximum time for visual iteration. Kit variation: mostly done with material swaps. Glue kit - like pipes. Process: coastline. The first thing figured out to figure out the scale. Next was skyline. The streets were next. Neighborhoods. Ownership. Each neighborhood was assigned a different person. Last was iteration. 

Texturing uncharted in substance - Pbr starting for u4. Large scope. Start in zbrush, moves to substance, then blend in engine. Not go super crazy with mesh but like normals are crazy. Baked maps in substance. Compiling the library fixed a ton of issues. So switching from one .srs file to a .sbsar. Work with 7-10 studios. 3000 assets from vendors. 2000 are background/props. 1 Vendor - original force. All materials are procedural. A lot of patterns used. 8k is possible but it's hidden. Udim support - not care the amount of info you're painting. So paint those crazy fine details and have fun. Q&A - Used (substance) on practically every type of material including landscape. Standard resolution in U4 is 1024 and after they would bump them down if needed. Use world machine. Foliage wasn't largely created in substance.