Peter Lambert Multimedia Lab (MMLab) iMinds - UGent

1. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
Games @ School
3D game content compression & creation
Peter Lambert
Multimedia Lab
Ghent University - iMinds

2. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
Overview
• Context
• 3D game content compression and streaming
• 3D game content generation and authoring
• Conclusion
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3. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
Context
• Games need to “look good” AND be developed cost-effectively
- maybe especially true for educational games
- needs to compete with non-educational games
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4. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
TE
XTURE
?
Context – geometry & texture
TE
XTURE
?
WITHGRAPHINE
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5. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
Context – geometry & texture
• Textures are important
- strong impact on graphics quality
- typically 50% - 70% of total game data
- not only ‘color’: also normal maps, displacement maps, …
TE
XTURE
(RE
AL-TIMERE RING)
NDE
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6. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
Context
• “Looking better”  more (texture) data
- larger environments / levels
- more visual details
• Hitting limits
- memory on graphics cards
- storage on computer (disk)
- distribution of games (DVD or Blu-Ray)
- needs to be crafted by game designers & artists
• Example: Antilope Island
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7. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
Context – Example
• Antilope Island (Utah, USA)
Length: 24km
Width: 7,8km
digital
1 pixel = 25cm resolution
128 000 x 128 000 pixel textures
~ 61GB !!!
• How to deal with this amount of data?
- compression (like JPEG, ZIP, …)
- only loading small portions of the data set
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8. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
3D game content compression & streaming
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9. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
3D game content compression & streaming
• G@S architecture
GAME
Streaming
Runtime
GPU
Tiling Backend
(disk or network)
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10. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
3D game content compression & streaming
• Scalability of the system
• Performance
- Real-time on most modern computers
- 50% less download time
- 80% less waiting to start playing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg6FE-HVJ44
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11. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
3D game content generation & authoring
• Problem statement
- educators vs. game artists regarding game world creation
- lack in richness and interactivity will quickly bore players
and betray the exercises as filled-in templates
• Goal within G@S
- an authoring solution for 3D game content
- easy to use for non-expert users
- accelerates workflow even for expert users
 suggestion framework for supervised level generation
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12. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
3D game content generation & authoring
• Automatic object placement
- given an environment
- given a number of randomly placed objects
- generate or suggest a realistic layout
• Requirements
- should be fast
- should be unique (same input, (slightly) different result)
- should be integrated into a game editing environment
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13. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
3D game content generation & authoring
• G@S results
- Proof of Concept
- system / algorithm based on pseudo physics
- semantics and rules for object types
- integrated in Larian’s Glasses editing environment
- very fast (instant suggestions for common settings)
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14. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
3D game content generation & authoring
• G@S results – example
randomly placed
objects
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15. ELIS – Multimedia Lab
Conclusions
• Results of the game technology research in G@S
- bigger games with much more visual details
- easy and efficient workflow for game world generation
 more cost-efficient development of 3D educational games
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