Current Events > Hyper-realistic Star Wars CGI demo using new raytracing tech

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ue35ago3Y" data-time="

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/03/star-wars-demo-shows-off-just-how-great-real-time-raytracing-can-look/

This is super awesome looking. If you didn't tell me it was all CGI, I'd think it was live action.

If you don't know what raytracing is and want to know, this article gives a rough overview:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/microsoft-announces-the-next-step-in-gaming-graphics-directx-raytracing/

Very basically, instead of lighting in CG environments being largely"pre-baked", raytracing simulates, in a sense, the actual photons being emitted from light sources, bouncing around and interacting with the various objects and materials in the scene, until they eventually reach the "camera". It is obscenely resource intensive, as those articles detail, but it's getting closer and closer to allowing real-time raytracing on consumer hardware.
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Oh wow, that's really cool. It definitely looks realistic.
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Are we going to get to a point where entire movies can be made using actors who are long dead?

__aCEr__ posted...

Are we going to get to a point where entire movies can be made using actors who are long dead?

Not necessarily, as this won't solve the uncanny valley. Movies actually have been using raytracing for their effects for the past decade or so, and while Tarkin and young Leia looked impressive in Rogue One, there was still some of that uncanny valley there. Until we build a facial mesh system that takes a hyper high-resolution picture and depth scan of someone's face, and build the most complicated animation rig ever that's customized for each face so that it can perfectly recreate all the completely consciously unnoticeable but vital movements one's face makes - think the facial animation system from L.A. Noire but cranked up about a billion degrees in detail, we'll always be in that valley.
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Tag
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That ain't bad at all.

Although I was kinda hoping we'd see some cape swish when Phasma moved.
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No faces. They can't make believable faces yet.
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That's amazing.
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Hah, Unreal Engine's page uploaded some stuff on face capture today too - basically doing exactly what I said we need to do for more believable faces.

CG Scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkkWCmljMSA" data-time="

Behind the scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUMv8-btvsY" data-time="
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That CG scene still has a hint of uncanny valley to it despite the new tech.
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I bet an AI could be used to create pretty accurate facial animation
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Banjo2553 posted...

That CG scene still has a hint of uncanny valley to it despite the new tech.

Yep. It's still a hard bridge to gap, but they're getting closer. I personally think a lot of it on the cutting edge like that video is the inferred material the face is made of. It doesn't read as honest-to-god skin. Whether it's lack of extremely small pore detail, or the way light scatters and is absorbed by the skin (something that's interesting in its own right to read about how they try to simulate), or what, I'm not really sure. All I can say is that there's always just the barest undertone of "plasticky" in even the most advanced skin texture and light modeling that I've seen.
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bump
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Corrupt_Power posted...

Hah, Unreal Engine's page uploaded some stuff on face capture today too - basically doing exactly what I said we need to do for more believable faces.

CG Scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkkWCmljMSA" data-time="

Behind the scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUMv8-btvsY" data-time="

That was seriously impressive. I can barely tell it's CGI, unlike the very fake looking faces in Rogue One.

Corrupt_Power posted...

Very basically, instead of lighting in CG environments being largely"pre-baked", raytracing simulates, in a sense, the actual photons being emitted from light sources, bouncing around and interacting with the various objects and materials in the scene, until they eventually reach the "camera". It is obscenely resource intensive, as those articles detail, but it's getting closer and closer to allowing real-time raytracing on consumer hardware.

Typically what games will actually do is actually ray-casting, which is the other way around, i.e., you cast one ray per pixel from your camera, and you see where they end up. It's still very resource intensive since it's millions of rays per frame, but less so since you actually know which one will end up on the projection that you put on the screen.
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still looks fake tbh

maybe by 2050 CGI will be indistinguishable from real life
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Damn_Underscore posted...

still looks fake tbh

maybe by 2050 CGI will be indistinguishable from real life

The Stormtroopers don't look fake.

Damn_Underscore posted...

still looks fake tbh

maybe by 2050 CGI will be indistinguishable from real life

I wouldn't say that far ahead. Technology's been rapidly evolving since the 80s. I'd give it until 2025.
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This is definitely a step up, but we're nowhere close to getting something like that for gaming. The DXR standards that Microsoft is adding to D12 combine some elements of raytracing with classic rasterization, but it's nothing that can produce images like the video in the OP.

We probably are at least 20 years away from having those types of graphics rendered in real-time in gaming.
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"Hyper realistic" but the video is only 1080p...
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scar the 1 posted...

Corrupt_Power posted...

Very basically, instead of lighting in CG environments being largely"pre-baked", raytracing simulates, in a sense, the actual photons being emitted from light sources, bouncing around and interacting with the various objects and materials in the scene, until they eventually reach the "camera". It is obscenely resource intensive, as those articles detail, but it's getting closer and closer to allowing real-time raytracing on consumer hardware.

Typically what games will actually do is actually ray-casting, which is the other way around, i.e., you cast one ray per pixel from your camera, and you see where they end up. It's still very resource intensive since it's millions of rays per frame, but less so since you actually know which one will end up on the projection that you put on the screen.

Correct, but explaining it the other way tends to be easier I've found.
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The Admiral posted...

This is definitely a step up, but we're nowhere close to getting something like that for gaming. The DXR standards that Microsoft is adding to D12 combine some elements of raytracing with classic rasterization, but it's nothing that can produce images like the video in the OP.

We probably are at least 20 years away from having those types of graphics rendered in real-time in gaming.

The video in the OP could be produced in DX10 or DX11 just as well as in DX12, with or without DXR. Adding ray-tracing constructs to the pipeline is certainly nice, but this type of thing has been possible for a long time. The bottleneck is not the API, it's the hardware.
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Ammonitida posted...

Damn_Underscore posted...

still looks fake tbh

maybe by 2050 CGI will be indistinguishable from real life

The Stormtroopers don't look fake.

They look a lot better than modern video game graphics, but there are moments where you can tell they aren't real and if they were next to human actors it would be obvious
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I wonder if developers can use the facial animation tech for cheaper. Good facial animation still seems to be a thing only AAA devs can use.
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