When Optimisations Work, But for the Wrong Reasons

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  • čas přidán 28. 01. 2024
  • Level of detail and imposters are effective optimizations that work for reasons you may not fully understand. Let's explore why, from a hardware perspective, these work.
    Gamedev Courses: simondev.teachable.com/
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    In this video, we explore the underlying reasons why optimizations like level of detail work. This involves understanding at a deep level, what the GPU expects in terms of data, what the hardware is optimized for, and how the pipeline and physical hardware units are setup.
    References:
    developer.nvidia.com/content/...
    gpuopen.com/wp-content/upload...
    www.amd.com/system/files/docu...
    shaderbits.com/blog/octahedra...
    www.humus.name/index.php?page...
    www.g-truc.net/post-0662.html
    developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/...
    developer.arm.com/documentati...
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    • God Of War Ragnarök - ...
    • Light No Fire Announce...
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Komentáře • 827

  • @simondev758
    @simondev758  Před 3 měsíci +176

    Patrons can now vote for the next video! Thank you for your support. Also, some additional links from the video:
    ❤Patreon: www.patreon.com/simondevyt
    😍Courses: simondev.io
    WolfFire Games Article: blog.wolfire.com/2010/10/Imposters

    • @shannenmr
      @shannenmr Před 3 měsíci +6

      Another good video that talks about this is "Rasterization, Overshading, and the GBuffer" under the "An In-Depth look at Real-Time Rendering" Series on the Unreal Learning Centre.

    • @uncletrashero
      @uncletrashero Před 3 měsíci +2

      of course none of it matters now because we got Nanite :O

    • @lazygenie5616
      @lazygenie5616 Před 3 měsíci +4

      Ok so not to be an ass but you used footage from Wolffire games website and it would be cool if you could link them in your description. They are a fantastic developer and deserve more recognition

    • @simondev758
      @simondev758  Před 3 měsíci +14

      @@lazygenie5616 Oops, I clearly wanted to credit everybody since I added their links in the video itself, and tried to include them all in the description.
      I've edited the pinned comment to include anything missing.

    • @jjeeqq
      @jjeeqq Před 3 měsíci

      Should it be better if we had hexagonial displays instead of square pixels?

  • @FrozenDozer
    @FrozenDozer Před 3 měsíci +2780

    This is the stuff about gamedev that almost nobody talks about, and if they do, it's way too indepth. I love channels like this. You're doing a lot for making people understand how complex and smart Game Engines and Render Tech actually are.

    • @aeoliun
      @aeoliun Před 3 měsíci +94

      Hey guys welcome to my game tutorial. We're going to make a complete game from scratch.
      2 episodes. Last video was rendering a jpg to the screen. Last upload 3 years ago.
      Every time.

    • @Krischi6
      @Krischi6 Před 3 měsíci

      indeed. I am on the discord for the O3DE (Open 3D Engine) and they talk about stuff like this, but more so on the software level of course.
      You can really observe how they shift things around in order to squeeze the best out of the engine performance. I am really admiring such people for their in depth work.
      I guess those are the people who are rarely seen as he heroes they are, fiddling with this kind of stuff.
      Like police or teachers.
      Those people are so important but yet, the topic is so difficult for users that I can't imagine digging into it. Not with my life time span at least. Give me immortal life and I am totally up to learn it.
      How ever I feel you mate. I don't understand any of it, but I'm so so thankful that there are people fkn with this kind of things.
      Have a good one

    • @smokinglife8980
      @smokinglife8980 Před 3 měsíci

      ​@@aeoliunyou should not need a tutorial to make a game from scratch I'm not the best or most knowledgeable coder but I am making my own game engine using c++ and I mainly use c# but I'm getting it done

    • @whannabi
      @whannabi Před 3 měsíci +37

      ​@@aeoliunhonestly I kinda get them. Very few people will watch it in comparison to a much faster tutorial on an already built game engine. Imagine the dedication and free time required to make such a long thing... If doing it alone seems awfully long, imagine having to record AND edit that video (potentially)

    • @youtubelisk
      @youtubelisk Před 3 měsíci +2

      What do you do with this knowledge?

  • @tux1468
    @tux1468 Před 3 měsíci +882

    thank you so much for saying "impostor" at least a dozen times while not making a single among us reference, im proud of you

    • @agushernandezquiroga9064
      @agushernandezquiroga9064 Před 3 měsíci +213

      I didn't even think of among us when watching the video, my brain must be healing.

    • @ps-dh8ef
      @ps-dh8ef Před 3 měsíci +62

      @@agushernandezquiroga9064 agreed. I think i am healing too

    • @prometheus9732
      @prometheus9732 Před 3 měsíci +34

      I haven’t thought about among us for 1 years.

    • @FabulousJejmaze
      @FabulousJejmaze Před 3 měsíci +34

      GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD 📮🔪

    • @cyberneticsquid
      @cyberneticsquid Před 2 měsíci +2

      oh hi tux

  • @almachizit3207
    @almachizit3207 Před 3 měsíci +361

    This also really helps explain how 4k gaming is possible on these GPUs. In terms of GPU usage efficiency, smaller pixels is effectively the same as having larger triangles. So while 4k screens have 4x as many pixels, you're also throwing away far less work that the GPU is doing, which helps regain some of the performance loss

    • @vanqy.
      @vanqy. Před 2 měsíci +13

      im wondering if eventually stuff like nanite gets integrated on a software level for gpu drivers and the architecture architects just go yolo and increase 2x2 quads to 3x3 nines or 4x4 sixteens. or a mosaic pattern of pixel groups that mimics and has statistically highest coverage with most common triangles, so that less culling is in place.

    • @vyor8837
      @vyor8837 Před 2 měsíci +12

      ​@@vanqy. You can't put that type of thing on the driver level, maybe the API level.

    • @MustacheMerlin
      @MustacheMerlin Před měsícem +6

      Conversely it also explains why using technology like DLSS to render at ever smaller and smaller resolutions doesn't improve the performance nearly as much as you'd expect. Like, you'd think rendering at 480p should be orders of magnitude faster than rendering at 4k, since there's orders of magnitude less pixels, but it's only a little faster.

    • @bricaaron3978
      @bricaaron3978 Před 5 dny

      @@MustacheMerlin *"Like, you'd think rendering at 480p should be orders of magnitude faster than rendering at 4k, since there's orders of magnitude less pixels, but it's only a little faster."*
      Errr.... Rendering at 640 x 480 IS a buttload faster than rendering at 3840 x 2160. Just as one would expect.
      DLSS involves a whole lot of processing, just like AA or anything else. And so --- just as one would expect --- it doesn't deliver the same performance as actually rendering at a given nominal resolution.

  • @kittenmittenkitten
    @kittenmittenkitten Před 3 měsíci +963

    I like that Epic's approach to finding out that subpixel polygons kill render times isn't to tell artists to avoid intricate geometric detail and to make more LoDs, it's to double down and make a system that lets the artist go absolutely wild with detail and not need to even think about LoDs.

    • @djmips
      @djmips Před 3 měsíci +215

      This was incredibly challenging and I think it was the end result of a decade of research.

    • @mrpojsomnoj3313
      @mrpojsomnoj3313 Před 3 měsíci +52

      @@djmips Decade to find bottle neck. Some month to fix one.

    • @DreadKyller
      @DreadKyller Před 3 měsíci +365

      There is one downside to it however, mostly from inexperienced devs working with Nanite, people are using Nanite as excuse to have extremely high detailed models in the game, even for things the player will never be close enough to notice. While Nanite alleviates many issues with the performance of such assets, it leads to far, far larger game sizes as many people just throw high detail photogrammetry scans into the game. Just because Nanite can handle automatic LOD doesn't mean no effort should go into optimizing the base mesh still, just that you don't need to author LODs manually, the base model still shouldn't be far more detailed than it needs to be, we already have 300GB games now, we don't need 500GB games because people throw in hundreds of 5-10GB models.

    • @SimonBuchanNz
      @SimonBuchanNz Před 3 měsíci +82

      ​@@DreadKyllerNanite also prebakes and quantizes meshes, so there's really no excuse as it's basically moving a slider.

    • @woobilicious.
      @woobilicious. Před 3 měsíci +13

      @@DreadKyller GTA V is over 10 years old, and 100GB in size, games should be 1TB in size by now...too bad Storage tech hasn't kept up.

  • @matts.1352
    @matts.1352 Před 3 měsíci +442

    One LOD technique I like a lot especially in the mobile world where nanite-like LOD engines currently aren't feasible is Progressively Ordered Primitives/POP buffers. The core idea is to cluster vertices through quantization at different levels of precision and sort them such that lower-precision vertices are first in the vertex list and higher-precision ones are last. The end-result is you can change the LOD of a model just by changing the quantization level and how many vertices you choose to draw without storing any more data than original mesh used.
    The benefit is four-fold:
    - Artists only need to make one model with any arbitrary attributes
    - Cracks/seams can be handled perfectly
    - Can have dynamically adjustable LOD levels without popping from mesh swaps
    - Can stream in the extra vertices as they're needed or upload the whole vertex buffer once and instance multiple LOD levels in one draw call. The latter is useful as draw calls are still disproportionately expensive on mobile.
    Since you're sorting the vertex list anyway (which can be done in O(n) time) and vertex order within quantization clusters doesn't matter much, you can also sort them on a secondary level to maximize vertex fetch efficiency which is important for mobile because of binning (more-so than overdraw since tile-based deferred renderers often have near-perfect hidden surface removal). The neat thing is you can scale the quantization level according to how large quantized grid would make triangles appear on screen to help maximize quad occupancy while maintaining enough detail for it to look good.
    It does have some drawbacks, notably that it doesn't play well with vertex skinning and lower LOD levels tend to have a bit more triangles than hand-made LODs, but it's great in a mobile environment or for procedural mesh LODs.
    As a side note, optimizing for mobile tile-based deferred-rendering is a lot of fun and it feels so much more rewarding to make a mobile engine run fast. Most mobile developers just port PC games or graphics techniques to mobile as-is and call it a day while limiting gameplay to negate poor performance; however, with careful optimization you can achieve between Xbox 360 and Xbox One levels of performance on most modern (>5 year old) mobile hardware. I'm definitely biased though as I've found my niche in mobile optimization.

    • @SimonBuchanNz
      @SimonBuchanNz Před 3 měsíci +21

      That sounds amazingly cool! Can you say what you've worked on?
      (Sorry for going of on a tangent here, I'm just musing 😅)
      I've always found the capability of these mobile chips to be bizarrely good, so seeing stuff like full Resident Evil running on an iphone wasn't *that* shocking, but I've found it weird and a bit disappointing that despite this the market doesn't seem to care about it at all.
      The Steam Deck and Switch's popularity implies there are absolutely potential buyers, but why aren't they biting? It's far cheaper to get a game controller attachment than these devices after all, so it shouldn't be input. Is it just *relative* to the Candy Crushes of the world that they don't show up? Poor app store presentation? Investors not willing to back it?

    • @4.0.4
      @4.0.4 Před 3 měsíci +8

      Awesome, I didn't know that. As someone who hopes to someday make a mobile game that isn't hot garbage this gives me hope.

    • @crimson-foxtwitch2581
      @crimson-foxtwitch2581 Před 3 měsíci +31

      ⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@SimonBuchanNzThis is due to a couple of factors.
      1: The mobile market has been dominated by F2P monetization models since the mid-2010s. Paying even $5 for a fully-fledged game was a thing of the past a very long time ago, especially when you consider regions that the mobile market is at its most popular in: the whale-hunting model is especially effective.
      2: The Switch is a 7-year-old console powered by a 12-year-old chipset. High-end smartphones exceeded the Switch’s hardware capabilities years ago, especially Apple hardware.
      3: The iOS port of RE8 is exclusive to the highest-end versions of Apple’s highest-end smartphone, limiting potential audience significantly.
      4: Resident Evil 8 is built upon a game engine *designed* for modern scalability on top of being a game originally built for last-generation home consoles as-is, as opposed to now where the hardware difference between the average smartphone and a current-generation console is somewhere in the ballpark of 3000%.
      5. Newer console hardware and game engines has allowed developers to spend less and less time needing to optimize their assets, but it’s still faster and easier to build your game from-the-ground-up around the hardware you’re targeting anyway, especially if expensive graphical effects are integral to gameplay systems and your game’s art direction.

    • @comanderlucky656
      @comanderlucky656 Před 3 měsíci +28

      I like your funny words magic technology man

    • @thewhitefalcon8539
      @thewhitefalcon8539 Před 3 měsíci

      I don't see how that would work. You could order the vertex buffer, sure, but you'd still need entirely separate index data for each optimization level.

  • @techno_tuna
    @techno_tuna Před 3 měsíci +413

    I am an absolute novice at game dev whos been toying around in Unity and now Godot for about two years, and I have to say each one of your videos feels like I should be paying you for this kind of info. The fact that this is your FREE content is insane, and I'm excited to see what your paid content looks like. You have a knack for beginning small, simple, and approachable, and then expanding to the point that I'm pausing and writing things down and yet still not feeling overwhelmed. I've read through documentation and white papers before for plenty of other coding subjects, but nothing has ever made me WANT to like your videos do.

    • @Krischi6
      @Krischi6 Před 3 měsíci +11

      I am aswell, probably even more novice.
      I am so happy you're using Godot. Open source is a really good thing imo. Do you know the project from a finnish dev called: Road to Vostok?
      He started his project in Unity, and then ported it to Godot. And I really think the port does look good, regardless of the let's say less lighthing etc.
      Go guys! :D

    • @mikkelens
      @mikkelens Před 3 měsíci +2

      If you want to get into paid resources worth their price(?) then I hear books on graphics programming are good.

    • @xWrongButtonx
      @xWrongButtonx Před 3 měsíci +2

      @Techno tuna, but you are paying it, by watching it dude.

    • @maythesciencebewithyou
      @maythesciencebewithyou Před 3 měsíci +2

      Nothing is stopping you from donating

    • @KiraSlith
      @KiraSlith Před 3 měsíci +1

      He DOES have a Teachable if you want to buy full courses.

  • @needleful
    @needleful Před 3 měsíci +282

    14:30 the "maximum area" triangulation improving performance so much is news to me! I usually create slices since it looks "nicer", but I should probably think more about the final result.

    • @blarghblargh
      @blarghblargh Před 3 měsíci +47

      optimize when you know your targets and know you're going to need it. you can't "optimize" everything. it's wasteful.
      if you can do "worst case" example scene and figure out how well it runs on the hardware you're targeting, then you might be able to get some inkling early of how to balance things out and spend your texture/triangle budgets.
      For the art itself, most people suggest trying to get even, quad-only topology. They don't tend to worry about triangulation performance. Stuff like UV density and how textures stretch when animated tend to dominate.
      For example, I wouldn't even bother trying to act on stuff like that "maximum area" example vs triangle fans, etc. That was more a tech demonstration to exacerbate a problem, rather than sound art advice. That all said, it can be good to avoid long, thin stuff when possible and to prefer workarounds, especially at lower LODs. For example maybe it's best at low LOD to have a flat quad with an alpha cutout texture instead of a lot of polygons that form boards on a bridge.
      And when making LODs, it can be good to zoom an object out to its max distance it will appear at that LOD, look in wireframe, and see how big polygons are compared to pixels they cover. That can give you some good ideas of how to spread out detail, and where to reduce detail.
      Or, if you're using UE5, enable nanite. Then you don't have to care :D

    • @thecat8411
      @thecat8411 Před 3 měsíci +24

      The maximum area is probably also the worst looking. Many rendering techniques look way better when the density of triangles is uniform along a model surface. And this is more important than small optimization.

    • @crimson-foxtwitch2581
      @crimson-foxtwitch2581 Před 3 měsíci +17

      @@blarghblarghActually, for the “maximum area” triangulation I found a method in Blender that makes these triangulations super easy to construct.
      Step 0: Bind Checker Deselect to a key of your choice(here I’ll use Mouse5)
      Step 1: Select the circle loop
      Step 2: Alternate Mouse5 and F until you’ve run out of smaller triangulations/hit an edge
      Step 3: Select all the overlapping faces and hit Delete, then “Only Faces”
      Step 4: Select the edge loop, it’ll automatically select every edge in there
      Congratulations, you now have an optimally-triangulated circle.

    • @blarghblargh
      @blarghblargh Před 3 měsíci

      @@crimson-foxtwitch2581 nice one! thanks for the tip

    • @needleful
      @needleful Před 3 měsíci

      @@thecat8411 I usually do the triangle fan out of habit, even on flat geometry or the bottoms of things. There are certainly cases where it'll look worse, but also cases where I did more work (usually extruding a default circular face and merging it to a point) for less than zero gain. Blender's default circle triangulation looks nearly the same as this "max area" algorithm.

  • @perplexedon9834
    @perplexedon9834 Před 3 měsíci +93

    Ill confess, even up until about 10 minites in I has assumed, naively, that I did actually understand why billboards were so kuch better for performance, with thoughts along the line of "reading a precalculated viewing angle from a file/ram is MUCH cheaper than doing the matrix multiplication to calculate the physics perspective appearance of even a very low poly 3D mode".
    When you went through how the physically arcitexture of the GPU differently handles triangles with a size close to the pixel size, it was so mind-blowing. I haven't realised I was so starkly wrong about something in a while, such a great feeling!

    • @thewhitefalcon8539
      @thewhitefalcon8539 Před 3 měsíci +12

      That may have been the case a very long time ago. In 2016 my laptop still ran vertex shaders on the CPU. Intel GMA architecture - absolute garbage. Thankfully Intel stopped using that architecture and put real GPUs on their chips.

    • @naxzed_it
      @naxzed_it Před měsícem

      ​@@thewhitefalcon8539They stopped using that way before 2016

  • @freelunch1458
    @freelunch1458 Před 3 měsíci +6

    “I’ve always been interested in optimizations” man I wish this was a requirement to work for any big game company 😭

  • @11nephilim
    @11nephilim Před 3 měsíci +55

    Really enjoyed this! As an artist you get told what things to avoid - e.g. long thin triangles and extremely small triangles, but it's rare to get a good explainer on *why*.

  • @Baltic_Dude
    @Baltic_Dude Před 3 měsíci +21

    Now send this to Mortal Kombat

  • @Eckster
    @Eckster Před 3 měsíci +90

    Wow, this really explains why Nanite was such a breakthrough, of course it doesn't dig into the difficulty of implementation, but it does show how it eliminates the excessive tiny triangle issue.

    • @lanchanoinguyen2914
      @lanchanoinguyen2914 Před 3 měsíci +3

      Raytracing will replace rasterization sometime and then nanite will have become obsolete.

    • @blarghblargh
      @blarghblargh Před 3 měsíci +39

      @@lanchanoinguyen2914 we don't have a clear picture when that transition will happen, so a solution that solves problems now is still valuable, and understanding the limitations of those solutions is also valuable.
      it's like saying "eventually we'll have cheap consumer space travel, so who cares about light rail?". maybe not as extreme, since full scene tracing with no rasterization MIGHT be plausible within the next 10 years. but I kinda doubt it. not only does the hardware that supports such a thing have to come out, but everyone has to have bought it and phased out older hardware, too. unless you're saying current high end gaming hardware is already capable of doing zero rasterization and getting all the same level of effects. I am not sure I've heard anything that says that's true.

    • @valshaped
      @valshaped Před 3 měsíci +39

      I doubt rasterization is going away any time soon, considering every GPU available today has a rasterization pipeline, and future GPUs have to keep a rasterization pipeline to maintain compatibility with
      - any web browser
      - any game on Steam (or GOG, or the Epic Games Store, etc.)
      - any commercial software
      Realtime raytracing is a neat addition to modern graphics cards, for sure, but it's not a silver bullet by any means.

    • @saniel2748
      @saniel2748 Před 3 měsíci +38


      1) We're extremely far from that happening
      2) It's not like raytracing is immune to triangle counts

    • @TheFunDimension
      @TheFunDimension Před 3 měsíci +1

      @@lanchanoinguyen2914how come? What does one thing do with the other?

  • @krystofjakubek9376
    @krystofjakubek9376 Před 3 měsíci +88

    This is a very nice video! I have heard avoiding micro triangles is a big thing but now I finally know why

    • @func8211
      @func8211 Před 3 měsíci +3

      Nice profile pic

  • @rileymoore7025
    @rileymoore7025 Před 3 měsíci +9

    One iconic example of billboards is the infamous 1000 Heartless fight in Kingdom Hearts 2. Back then, it would've been impossible to have 1000 entities individually moving and acting all at the same time. Square Enix's work around to this was to have only have a handful of active enemies actually nearby. Meanwhile, the rest of the Heartless would be represented by these 'billboards'. While in combat, it's hard to notice this detail at first, but it's extremely obvious on repeat playthroughs. This work around is also present when there's a swarm of Rapid Thrusters, except it's a lot less noticeable since the enemies are flying above you and often spawn offscreen rather than right in front of the player.

  • @jokered1133
    @jokered1133 Před 3 měsíci +14

    I don’t think I’ve seen anything that talk about this stuff in this much detail, much respect for your career choice, I am truly amazed at the information dump and how accessible you’ve made it, thank you.

  • @pizzamonkey7801
    @pizzamonkey7801 Před 3 měsíci +16

    this channel is insanely underrated. The amount of knowledge you offer with each video is absolutely great. Pleas keep this up.

  • @Decodeish1
    @Decodeish1 Před 2 měsíci +1

    Thank you a ton for the captions, really made it much easier to follow! Great video :)

  • @DevDunkStudio
    @DevDunkStudio Před 3 měsíci +4

    This is an amazing video.
    Really good information in a short and clear video. And this is information that is not found too often on CZcams.
    Much appreciated!

  • @PaulSpades
    @PaulSpades Před 3 měsíci +42

    Amazing. Not only does this explain why intuition fails, but you also back up the technical reasoning with real industry solutions.
    Watching your videos, I somehow always come out with more information than I was expecting. Well done!

  • @Kolyasisan
    @Kolyasisan Před 3 měsíci +10

    The moment I saw the 2x2 grid in the thumbnail and you mentioned LODs I knew exactly that this is gonna be about workflow scheduling for fragment shaders. Great video as always

  • @NeoToXo
    @NeoToXo Před měsícem +2

    I just found this through a reddit comment and I didn't knew how much I needed to know this. Thank so much for explaining. This is so valuable and I definetely will buy ad start with your game math course. Awesome stuff

  • @hoffer_moment
    @hoffer_moment Před 3 měsíci +2

    been hoping for content like this for many years, great job

  • @thyroid99
    @thyroid99 Před 3 měsíci +21

    From one 20+ year dev to another, your content is solid. And thanks for mentioning ATI!

  • @mysparetime1541
    @mysparetime1541 Před 3 měsíci +1

    You have by far the best game optimization content I’ve come across, can really tell that you know what you’re talking about and not just repeating words said by someone else. Really love the way you explain things with just the right amount of information for you to be able to understand these things fundamentally and really grasp the mechanics 🙏🙏

  • @Zenairo
    @Zenairo Před 3 měsíci +1

    You're amazing, glad to have found this channel. Thank you for this easy to understand and useful information!

  • @herlantmajor5883
    @herlantmajor5883 Před 3 měsíci +1

    Amazing video as always man! I have heard about this on the surface in my career, never found something that covers this subject with so much ease before, thanks

  • @sabrina0013
    @sabrina0013 Před 3 měsíci +4

    This is fascinating, and very helpful. Thank you!

  • @CyberWolf755
    @CyberWolf755 Před 3 měsíci +15

    Amazing video. Really like when I stumble on such high quality content.
    Would really like a part 2 covering Nanite and maybe alternatives other people developed

  • @FlipOfficial
    @FlipOfficial Před 3 měsíci +2

    This is a joy to watch! Glad I found this video 🙏🏼

  • @zawa5243
    @zawa5243 Před 3 měsíci +9

    Thank you Bob from Bobs burgers for explaining graphics optimization

  • @kushagranigam3924
    @kushagranigam3924 Před 3 měsíci +2

    This video is an absolute gem, Really thank you Simon for putting this up and making this so straightforward. Really got some deep insights about how GPU's work.

  • @benridesbikes6975
    @benridesbikes6975 Před měsícem +2

    You are an excellent teacher, the language and presentation was so easy to process even though I am only tangentially related to the topic, thanks for making this!

  • @ColinPaddock
    @ColinPaddock Před 3 měsíci +3

    Back in the ‘90s, Marathon used “imposters” for all of the moving characters. They were all sprites. Animated sprites with versions from 8 separate angles.

  • @millerbyte5579
    @millerbyte5579 Před 3 měsíci +4

    This is fantastic, thank you Simon! Just bought both of your courses, looking forward to diving in.

  • @comatose3788
    @comatose3788 Před 2 měsíci +1

    Very well done. Even covered some stuff that never gets covered, like how billboards are used along with LOD and occlusion culling. They never talk about billboards. First time I made a model doing all this, I was floored at how well it worked. This stuff changed everything back in the day. You also said one of my favorite words, lol ... Automagically.

  • @frendoman
    @frendoman Před měsícem +4

    "Mommy, Daddy, where do pixels come from?"
    SimonDev: "Sit down son"

  • @AyushBakshi
    @AyushBakshi Před 3 měsíci +8

    Creators like you kept me motivated and today I'm a 3D and tech artist in my team. I'm not hardcore into graphics programming (yet) but I'm learning! One baby step at a time.

  • @ch3dsmaxuser
    @ch3dsmaxuser Před 3 měsíci +2

    Dude, this video is awesome! You have such a straightforward way to express your knowledge that I, not a graphics programmer, get it. Kudos!

  • @p529.
    @p529. Před 3 měsíci +3

    Crazy informative video! Big props

  • @user-fo5qv4ll6i
    @user-fo5qv4ll6i Před 3 měsíci

    Wonderful technical deep dive. Great job 👏

  • @Purpial
    @Purpial Před 3 měsíci +3

    This is so incredibly in-depth, I learned so much from this video

  • @bhupesh_singh
    @bhupesh_singh Před 3 měsíci +8

    my adblocker works completely fine, but for your videos I always pause my adblockers so that I watch the ads and support your wonderful content ✨✨

    • @simondev758
      @simondev758  Před 3 měsíci +3

      Hah thanks so much! Very appreciated :)

  • @MatBat__
    @MatBat__ Před 3 měsíci +2

    Dude, amazing content. How interesting!
    Thx for sharing your knowledge, cheers!

  • @EmersonPeters
    @EmersonPeters Před měsícem +2

    Thank you so so so much for this, this is extremely helpful!

  • @TXanders
    @TXanders Před 3 měsíci +7

    Finally! I no longer have to explain this every other day. Another brilliant coverage, well executed.

    • @Inferryu
      @Inferryu Před 3 měsíci +1

      I mean, you'll still have to link to it every other day :D

  • @PrismaticaDev
    @PrismaticaDev Před 3 měsíci +4

    Great video :) This will be my go-to when people ask about mesh-related optimization!

  • @SZvenM
    @SZvenM Před 5 dny

    Great video! Very nicely explained, and truly an unexpectedly fascinating topic. It never even crossed my mind to ask whether there was more to why LODs work. Super interesting stuff.

  • @MargudnRoboter
    @MargudnRoboter Před 3 měsíci +1

    Thank you for this Video. This is such an eye opening thing! I would have never assumed that the rasterizer expects triangles that are atleast 4x4 pixels. I have always assumed, that is was a simple less stuff render

  • @ilya238
    @ilya238 Před 3 měsíci +3

    Thanks, this was actually really interesting and helpful!

  • @Shabazza84
    @Shabazza84 Před 3 měsíci +2

    Absolutely love the way you explain things.

  • @MantridJones
    @MantridJones Před 23 dny +3

    03:34 You just made my day for putting in Kai from the best TV Show ever made!

  • @Nebb_
    @Nebb_ Před 3 měsíci +1

    Very interesting video, I’ve always wondered why more/smaller verticies were taxing on preformace and I’m glad that you made a video explaining it in a easy to understand manner

  • @zeez7777
    @zeez7777 Před 3 měsíci +1

    Awesome video man. Really well presented

  • @petesidtech4adventures415
    @petesidtech4adventures415 Před 3 měsíci

    That's a fantastic explanation, thank you!

  • @ivanalantiev2397
    @ivanalantiev2397 Před 3 měsíci +9

    What a great video, I kinda always wanted to understand the performance optimization techniques better, but just didn't really had time to do the digging. Thank you for your effort!

  • @miklov
    @miklov Před 3 měsíci +1

    Great stuff, thank you! I really should watch more of your videos ^^

  • @mikzart
    @mikzart Před 3 měsíci +5

    So interesting. Thanks for your work, I really appreciate it!

    • @mikzart
      @mikzart Před 3 měsíci +1

      I will watch it several times with taking notes and watch other resources to create understanding

  • @ahmedp8009
    @ahmedp8009 Před 3 měsíci +1

    Brilliant explanation!
    Thank you

  • @dbweb.creative
    @dbweb.creative Před 3 měsíci

    Man, thank you for your channel!

  • @xlerb2286
    @xlerb2286 Před 3 měsíci +3

    Very informative. I'm not a game developer but I enjoy understanding some of the complexities. I didn't realize that small triangles were an issue. Not being familiar with how gpu's work at that level of detail I'd figured a triangle is a triangle.

  • @xzinik2961
    @xzinik2961 Před 3 měsíci

    wow this feels like a masterclass, subscribed

  • @dbatdev
    @dbatdev Před 3 měsíci

    Thank you. Very well communicated. Much appreciated.

  • @UsaraDark
    @UsaraDark Před 3 měsíci +3

    These are the kinds of videos that inspire me to one day dive into the graphics side of computers. I've always wanted to touch shaders and 3D modeling, but it has always felt beyond my understanding. This helps.

  • @melkileo
    @melkileo Před 3 měsíci +1

    Loved the video ! thanks for the content :)

  • @AcrioAlarius
    @AcrioAlarius Před 3 měsíci

    Awesome content, very informative ❤

  • @SIMSONNECK
    @SIMSONNECK Před 3 měsíci

    Amazing video. Very well explained. It's funny, that even though I already knew why rendering tiny triangles is a problem, I never made the connection that thats the reason why lod works so well

  • @meezemusic
    @meezemusic Před 3 měsíci +9

    Simon! You are a saint! You even reference everything you mention. S tier content 👌

  • @sheridancarter78
    @sheridancarter78 Před 3 měsíci +2

    this is a really good video and also i really like your voice. thank you for making this 😊

  • @firun2635
    @firun2635 Před 2 měsíci +1

    The Crew Motorfest uses imposters (or, as I got to know them many years ago, sprites) for trees when you're using the map and zoom out. It's a nice throwback to when I started PC gaming.

  • @coder0xff
    @coder0xff Před 3 měsíci

    That software rasterizer part is fascinating. I would watch a video on that.

  • @DKannji
    @DKannji Před 3 měsíci +2

    In intro to 3D modelling we were told very sternly, "keep the triangle count to a minimum, and remove as many unnecessary triangles as possible.
    So this is nothing new to my ears... but it is fun to listen to anyways.

  • @D3ltus
    @D3ltus Před 3 měsíci +1

    Thanks for the video, very easy to understand and very interesting

  • @nebuchadnezzer2436
    @nebuchadnezzer2436 Před 3 měsíci +2

    You just explained what is, really, a constant, complex technical process, in a way pretty much anyone can follow and understand, and that's more than can be said for a lot of teachers/professors...
    I knew, for instance, a good amount of what was covered here, just accumulated knowledge over the years of gaming and satisfying my curiosity, and guessed cranking up sheer volume of triangles would tank FPS pretty quickly... But now, I actually understand *why*...
    Thanks for the insight 😍

  • @vazquezsebastian9764
    @vazquezsebastian9764 Před 3 měsíci +2

    Great video, very technical but clear witch is really great ! If you like it, keep up the good work

  • @animeknowledge5048
    @animeknowledge5048 Před 3 měsíci +1

    Amazing teacher definitely gonna buy your courses

  • @siristhedragon
    @siristhedragon Před 3 měsíci +15

    This flipped a switch in my head; this all makes WAY more sense now!
    Thank you!

    • @crackedemerald4930
      @crackedemerald4930 Před 3 měsíci +2

      Good luck on your ventures, non-binary black horned dragon dev! Take it ez! 😎 👍

    • @publicalias8172
      @publicalias8172 Před 3 měsíci

      delete this @@crackedemerald4930

  • @vanillagorillaog
    @vanillagorillaog Před 2 měsíci +1

    WELL PUT TOGETHER VIDEO 👍

  • @TheNumberOfTheBeast666
    @TheNumberOfTheBeast666 Před 3 měsíci +4

    Rare Lexx reference! Don't think some of us didn't spot that.

    • @simondev758
      @simondev758  Před 3 měsíci +2

      May his divine shadow fall upon you.

    • @lhb82
      @lhb82 Před 3 měsíci

      No mentioning of Lexx will go unnoticed ;D

  • @3DWithLairdWT
    @3DWithLairdWT Před 3 měsíci +1

    I very much appreciate the time you take to do these breakdowns!
    There's always more to learn in the world of graphics programming - and it's a blessing to call it my career ^__^

  • @ValentinCoding
    @ValentinCoding Před 3 měsíci

    That's awesome content as always

  • @IAm18PercentCarbon
    @IAm18PercentCarbon Před 3 měsíci +3

    This sounds like H. Jon Benjamin is teaching me computer graphics, and it's amazing.
    Great explanation of 2x2 quads, friend! I'd never really understood how to optimize for them before and I'm already excited to apply some of these tips.

    • @gogbone
      @gogbone Před 3 měsíci

      i was thinking the same thing lmfao

  • @curiouspers
    @curiouspers Před 3 měsíci

    this is awesome! thank you!

  • @batty251
    @batty251 Před 3 měsíci +1

    This has helped me understand better into a current implementation that I wish to achieve in a new game I am making in how to make sure it can sustain a stable load and keep processes down and achieve a higher fps.

    • @thewhitefalcon8539
      @thewhitefalcon8539 Před 3 měsíci +1

      the best thing you can ever do for performance is just render less, and that means there's less art work and less programming work too. The pixelated, triangulated game art style isn't considered as ugly these days. Squares didn't stop Minecraft.

  • @miguelnobre9788
    @miguelnobre9788 Před 3 měsíci +5

    because of you i found Lexx, been trying to find it for the past 15-20 years :D thank you, subscription deserved from all the info (and the extra one)!!!

    • @simondev758
      @simondev758  Před 3 měsíci +2

      May his divine shadow fall upon you.

    • @lhb82
      @lhb82 Před 3 měsíci

      @@simondev758 More people need to know about Lexx!

  • @cem_kaya
    @cem_kaya Před 3 měsíci +1

    Thanks for mentioning life of a triangle.

  • @jumpingman6612
    @jumpingman6612 Před 2 měsíci

    Great video, thank you!

  • @SloppyPuppy
    @SloppyPuppy Před 3 měsíci +2

    Just love the John Carmack quote on the article 😂

  • @lotar1228
    @lotar1228 Před 3 měsíci +2

    Well you are really helping me develop my own game engine. Thanks a lot.

  • @sorialexandre
    @sorialexandre Před 3 měsíci +2

    It blows my mind... one more day that I realize I know nothing. Thank you very much!! Perfect explanation and quality like always.

  • @amazingfootball1143
    @amazingfootball1143 Před 3 měsíci +2

    Thanks for the pretty helpful video)

  • @MrOnlineCoder
    @MrOnlineCoder Před měsícem

    Amazing informative video in my OpenGL and Vulkan journey. Thank you!

  • @sporefergieboy10
    @sporefergieboy10 Před 3 měsíci +1

    I’m so sad to hear about your esophagus cancer 😢. You’re my favorite youtuber I hope you get better soon!

  • @MissPiggyM976
    @MissPiggyM976 Před 3 měsíci

    Very useful infos, many thanks!

  • @lemonjumpsofficial
    @lemonjumpsofficial Před 3 měsíci +1

    so far the best ones I've seen were done using a shader, 2 depth maps and 2images.
    it's a custom thing players do for vrchat, and it's so good, that it looks like the actual object just with couple of glitches.
    the genius of it is that it can encode essentially a 3d video. so it's used for stage performances for low power headsets such as oculus rift.

  • @Fafhrd42
    @Fafhrd42 Před 2 měsíci

    Eskil Steenberg also wrote a really great blog about the effects of things like topology and overdraw on rendering performance, but I haven't been able to find it for a few years now.

  • @sealsharp
    @sealsharp Před 3 měsíci +1

    Great video!

  • @Backup1982
    @Backup1982 Před 3 měsíci +25

    Thanks for this deep dive. You should use frame time instead of FPS on your plots though. As FPS is a reciprocal and thus makes reading the plot much harder.

    • @simondev758
      @simondev758  Před 3 měsíci +39

      Yeah, I had to choose 1 of 2 ways. I try to err on the side of caution, and go with what I *think* more people will understand intuitively.
      Go with fps, that's broad, less technical people will understand this but at the annoyance of technical people. The technical people should still, in theory, understand just fine though.
      Go with frametime, you end up potentially confusing less technical people, but it's a more straightforward metric for technical people.
      Either way, you're wrong for a % of people, unless you spend extra video time explaining your choice.

    • @Robloxtopfive
      @Robloxtopfive Před 3 měsíci +2

      @@simondev758 Funny that you mention Humus in the video, I read the FPS vs. framerate post only today. It annoys him so much in scientific settings but for the average person 60 FPS is more intuitive than 16.666 MS frame time. I'm trying to benchmark my GLSL shader library, in your experience Simon, any other pitfalls when benchmarking fragment shaders or presenting results in an academic setting? Love the videos by the way, you got me to recreate a OSRS demo in Three.js.

    • @simondev758
      @simondev758  Před 3 měsíci +1

      No amazing advice off the top of my head, only to think about what audience you're presenting to.

    • @Robloxtopfive
      @Robloxtopfive Před 3 měsíci

      @@simondev758 Thanks, that’s a fair point, I may actually watch tutorial videos on shaders to see how they’re explained. I’m presenting to those with a broad knowledge of CS but not necessarily anything graphics related.

  • @Suzuki_Hiakura
    @Suzuki_Hiakura Před 2 měsíci

    I had a scene I was prepping to add into a vr game, and was unhappy with the default low ploy trees; it took a lot of time, but I finally found a solid imposter setup that detailed branches (from a few feet away anyways, if you gave it physical distance) which overlaps the image. I don't intend to have the branches move, so I figure I can just set them all to static if I can figure out the normal maps (it is horribly buggy at times even with regular alpha maps or the like), though there is this one technique I hope to use where you only have 1 draw call for same objects (as they have rotation differences, I figure it should still work as they are the same size).

  • @weizenyang
    @weizenyang Před 3 měsíci

    Bro crazy mr.doob is your patron sponsor. Great job!