[Official] Behind the scenes

[linolafett]

This will not make it into the patch for sure. I do not want to create false hopes, sorry.
The problem is, that Rebirth has a huge amount of materials/ textures. Reworking all of them would take me several weeks and i am sadly way to busy to do that

The new shaders and improvements in the renderengine will open some possibilities further down the road.

EDIT: the shaders do not really affect performance. We need a bit more Vram to store the additional texture there, but aside of that they should be as fast as the old ones. What makes the renderer slow is for us more the amount of objects in a scene (drawcalls more or less)

[ezra-r]

This will not make it into the patch for sure. I do not want to create false hopes, sorry.
The problem is, that Rebirth has a huge amount of materials/ textures. Reworking all of them would take me several weeks and i am sadly way to busy to do that

The new shaders and improvements in the renderengine will open some possibilities further down the road.

EDIT: the shaders do not really affect performance. We need a bit more Vram to store the additional texture there, but aside of that they should be as fast as the old ones. What makes the renderer slow is for us more the amount of objects in a scene (drawcalls more or less)

no sad faces!, just focus on your work and the next installment, we are always hungry for more, and we gladly see what you are doing when you share it!

[A5PECT]

EDIT: the shaders do not really affect performance. We need a bit more Vram to store the additional texture there, but aside of that they should be as fast as the old ones. What makes the renderer slow is for us more the amount of objects in a scene (drawcalls more or less)

There we go, those are the details that are nice to hear.

[BigBANGtheory]

looks nice, reminds me of some of the texture detail we saw in X Trilogy which I mean in a nice way not a dig at the past or present. I've said I thought the bump maps appeared missing to my eyes in XR but now I see them clearly with this new shader and texture updates. Good work

I was always a fan of the results of steep (or deep) parallax mapping in games like Stalker Clear Sky & Modern Warfare 2, I think that really bought the textures to life.

[ajax34i]

You probably don't care about other developers, but CCP / EVE Online upgraded their stuff to PBR at the beginning of this year, and it's allowed them to implement rust and dirt on ships (in addition to complex surfaces that have glass windows, exposed metal, and painted metal parts), as well as microtransaction ship paints that can be applied while flying.

Their biggest issue with PBR (from their devblogs), was that the local star(s) in each solar system proved to be insufficient light source(s) for actually illuminating the ships to a level that was fun for the players (they had PBR energy conservation issues). They couldn't make the stars blinding (like they are in reality), so they had to significantly brighten up the (skybox) planetary nebulas to serve as secondary light sources for the ships in space, so the PBR formulas would brighten up the ships to a level where the player could see them well, from most angles.

EVE points of interest (gameplay locations) can be in interplanetary space, or in orbit, but they never get into the low orbits that X3 and certainly X-R have, where the player ship / point of view is almost in the upper atmosphere of a planet. So I guess they couldn't use the planets as secondary light sources for the PBR energy conservation very well.

[spankahontis]

Ooh, pretties.

Does this mean in the next patch there will be "Legacy shader" and "Legacy legacy shader" options?

It's even more beautiful and all, but, it doesn't have negative impact on performance... Right?

I hate to admit it, but this came to mind when I first saw the pictures, too. I know it's a lot easier and exciting to show tangible, visual improvements to the game. But can we get any word on performance optimizations?

new beta 3.60b1 brings:
• Improved performance and responsiveness of UI.
• Several small performance and memory optimisations.

among other things

Can't even access Rebirth after 3.60 B1
Keep getting an error message from Steam/

[dfm5000]

I'm glad the developers are showing there work, being able to comment and ask questions is unbelievably helpful.

[Gligli]

Before/after is very impressive if you didn't tweak the light.
-the ugly light refection just wiped out
-the bumps over bumps jumps to your face (little pillars in the right)
-the back-lightning is very interesting

Is the model paint the same on each scene?

[linolafett]

The environment was not changed. I just replaced the shader and needed new textures to control the shader.

How i did take the pictures:
Have in the material library two entries "material_old" and "material_new".
The first material used the old shader with the old textures (diffuse, specular, normal), the second one uses the new shader with the new textures (diffuse, smoothness, metalness and normal).

I loaded a testmodule, flew to the asset. Disabled all UI elements. and took a picture, i then switched the backround, took another one...
After i have shot 4 pictures, i changed the material reference in the material library and reloaded the library in the game. So now the asset is using the other material and just reshoot the screnshots.

[Gligli]

Excellent, though only "Environment" and new materials did change...The environment effect on saturation still impressive,then. (as expected)

Though turning light reflection to smooth really affect positively (ugly reflection)

Are the "bumps" enhancement comes from the PBR cited above?

I can't remember well my render experiences, could you explain what metalness brings to you on materials rendering?

Thanks for the whole topic

[linolafett]

Smoothness= Is it the rough side of the aluminium foil or the smooth one?
http://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/200 ... g_1416.jpg
Metalness= Is the reflection of the light affected by the object colour?
Coloured plastics reflect the light how it was (white stays white), coloured metals also change the colour of the reflection.

[Gligli]

Powerful...
And for the bump-map and PBR?

[BigBANGtheory]

I'd be interested to see what effect this has on the cockpit textures, lets face it you are going to be looking at those most of the time.

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

I'd be interested to see what effect this has on the cockpit textures, lets face it you are going to be looking at those most of the time.

True that.

[Gligli]

(...)The problem is, that Rebirth has a huge amount of materials/ textures. Reworking all of them would take me several weeks and i am sadly way to busy to do that (...)

They could probably cohabit, though some could not change... if not forgot

[linolafett]

Powerful...
And for the bump-map and PBR?

I dont understand the question.
We do not use bump maps, we use normalmaps. Small difference btween those.

[Gligli]

Powerful...
And for the bump-map and PBR?

I dont understand the question.
We do not use bump maps, we use normalmaps. Small difference btween those.

ok, sorry. didn't knew
Though is the enhancements of the normal-maps rendering due to above cited PBR?

[linolafett]

Because the surface reflects light better now, the bumps can be seen better.
Nothing in regard to the normalmap rendering was changed in comparison to the old shaders (as far as i know).

[Gligli]

Ok. Impressive...
Thanks

[ezra-r]

If I may add my humble opininon

@linolafett

Why do you guys add these fences to all designs in Rebirth?

[ external image ]

IMHO I think they detract from most designs, taking from their slickness, and I notice probably all, if not all designs, stations, ships, etc have these ugly and undetailed fences.

Problem with them is they never look detailed and thus, at least to my eyes they end up looking really ugly and crappy.

PS: as always, I don't mean to diminish your work. I know nothing (like Jon Snow) and I believe you guys are doing an awesome work in that aspect.