Procedural textures make the size of the textures in game 90% smaller!

This is something I heard before, but was absolutely amazed with the pics on this site.

Instead of a bitmap for the texture imagine using mathematical technique which is modern and much better than old Fourier transformation maths in kkrieger and other demo games that are just 64K in size (remeber them?). Google for kkrieger and you'll see what I am talking about. Texture is 90% smaller, better looking and can change in realtime! Imagine a wooden desk aging and getting dirty - it is easy with a procedural texture that LIVES! One game already uses this:

Here is the main site with a great gallery of pics:

http://www.profxengine.com/index.php?PAGE=HOME

Check the animations in gallery, check the links for maps and ProFx2 - absolutely amazing.

Here you can find an interview with some good info:

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/11/09/Procedural_Textures_Future_Gam/1.html

ProFX middleware engine works on xbox and probably will on sonyPS3. It also works on PC. It is compatible with unreal 3 engine. Shader 3 card is required, but on a shader 2 card will work using CPU power for calculations.

The advantage is clear. Now calculate how much space take FEAR, Oblivion and HL2 on your disc for example?

Cheers,

Ivan

 

Procedural generation is a very important future technique. I was blown away how .kkrieger was so **** small.

 

Yes. And for illustration what a procedural modeling and texturing can do you can check this:
http://www.scene.org/awards.php

See what can be put into 64kB or even 4kB!

Cheers,

Ivan

 

wow,

while the graphics in the movie che gavera was pretty poor, i'm amazed my the amount of stuff jammed into just 64kb



bad thing though is that it took forever to load and thats with a t7200...

 

Yes, it extremely CPU, memory and GPU dependant. But I am always impressed with the amount of graphics they put in a small package.

Ivan

 

Procedural stuff rocks. Me and some friends created a whole procedural texture framework for our senior year project in college; the best part is they can be generated at any desired resolution, all from the same tiny amount of code.
There's a lot more that can be done procedurally - terrain, even houses and cities...
Fractals are lovely too - the Mandelbrot set, for example: infinite beauty present in such a simple function.

 

If you want to have a look at the eye-candy possible using procedural coding, check out the website for Infinity: The Quest for Earth, a MMORPG currently under development. It's a space sim type game (think Elite, another wonder of procedural coding) which uses procedural coding to generate entire planets, allowing seamless transitions on flight from orbit to surface and back. Check out the videos in the media section to see what I mean...

 

Interesting...thanks for sharing the information!

 

no love for spore?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-262774490184348066&q=spore&hl=en

I know it's made by EA, but the game sounds really interesting

 

Spore looks great!

Ivan

 

Hmm, unless developers start to use this method, its pretty much worthless!!!