Course Description

This course brings together leading industry experts and researchers in real-time rendering to distill down the top unsolved problems in real-time rendering. While it is impossible to cover all of the open problems in the field, we pick the problems most important this year, and expect to cover different topics each year the course is held. Each topic includes the researcher and industry practitioner perspective, and covers the state-of-the-art today for the topic, why current solutions don’t work in-practice, the desired ideal solution, and the problems that need to be solved to work toward that ideal.

Intended Audience

This course is targeted at game developers, computer graphics researchers, and other real-time graphics practitioners interested in understanding the limits of current rendering technology, and the types of innovation needed to advance the field.

Prerequisites

This is an intermediate/advanced course that assumes familiarity with modern real-time rendering algorithms and graphics APIs.

 

 

Syllabus

Open Problems in Real-Time Rendering

Tuesday, 11 August, 2:00 pm - 5:15 pm, Los Angeles Convention Center, Room 403AB

                                                                                                                            

2:00pm

Course Introduction

Aaron Lefohn (NVIDIA Researach), Natalya Tatarchuk (Bungie)

 

2:20 pm

The Rendering Pipeline - Challenges & Next Steps

Johan Andersson (Electronic Arts / Frostbite)

 

3:00 pm

Anti-Aliasing: Are We There Yet?

Marco Salvi (NVIDIA Research)

 

3:40 pm

Tackling the Level-of-Detail Problem Through New Shading Languages and Tools

Kayvon Fatahalian (CMU)

 

4:05 pm

Panel: Production Cost in Games: What Technology is Needed?

Moderator: Kayvon Fatahalian (CMU)

Panelists: Johan Andersson (Electronic Arts / Frostbite), Alex Evans (MediaMolecule), Peter-Pike Sloan (Activision), Natalya Tatarchuk (Bungie)

 

5:10 pm

Closing Remarks

Aaron Lefohn (NVIDIA Research), Natalya Tatarchuk (Bungie)

 

Course Organizers

Aaron Lefohn is Director of Real-Time Rendering Research at NVIDIA, has led real-time rendering and graphics programming model research teams for over six years, and has productized many research ideas into GPU hardware and GPU APIs. Prior to joining NVIDIA, Aaron led a real-time rendering and graphics programming model research team at Intel. He joined Intel in 2007 via Intel's acquisition of the graphics startup, Neoptica. Before Neoptica, Aaron worked in rendering R&D at Pixar Animation Studios, creating interactive rendering tools for film artists. Aaron received his Ph.D. in computer science from UC Davis and his M.S. in computer science from University of Utah.

 

Natalya Tatarchuk is an Engineering Architect currently working on state-of-the art cross-platform next-gen rendering engine and game graphics for Bungie’s latest title Destiny and its future releases. Previously she was a graphics software architect and a project lead in the Game Computing Application Group at AMD Graphics Products Group (Office of the CTO) where she pushed parallel computing boundaries investigating innovative real-time graphics techniques. Additionally, she had been the lead of ATI’s demo team creating the innovative interactive renderings and the lead for the tools group at ATI Research. She has published papers and articles in various computer graphics conferences and technical book series, and has presented her work at graphics and game developer conferences worldwide.

 

 

The Rendering Pipeline - Challenges & Next Steps

 

Abstract:

This talk will go through and give an overview of what some of the major challenges are with the advanced real-time rendering pipelines in modern game engines and discuss what potential next steps and potential solutions & ideas to improve on it, both from a software development and hardware perspective to help future developments. Key themes covered include scalability, reducing complexity and trying to take steps towards a more unified rendering pipeline.

 

Presenters:

Johan Andersson (Electronic Arts / Frostbite)

Bios:

Johan Andersson is a Technical Fellow at Electronic Arts in the Frostbite engine team. For the past fifteen years he has been working with rendering, performance and core engine systems for games in the Battlefield series and with the Frostbite game engine - which is used extensively all across Electronic Arts. Johan is a member of multiple industry & hardware advisory boards and has frequently presented at GDC, SIGGRAPH and graphics hardware conferences on topics such as rendering, performance, game engine design and future software/hardware architectures.

 

Materials:
Updated August 21st, 2015

PPT (18 MB)

 

 

 

 

Anti-Aliasing: Are We There Yet?

 

Abstract:

Robust and high-performance anti-aliasing is still an elusive problem in real-time rendering, now made even more challenging by VR and AR applications. In this talk we will review the issues and progress to date, highlighting some limitations of current anti-aliasing methods.  Finally, we will propose future directions for more robust solutions.

 

Presenter:

Marco Salvi (NVIDIA)

 

Bios:

Marco Salvi is a Sr. Research Scientist at NVIDIA focusing on new graphics algorithms and architectures. Previously he was leading a group of researchers in the Advanced Rendering Team at Intel investigating low power graphics algorithms and new SW/HW features that are now becoming part of modern 3D APIs. In a previous life he was responsible for architecting advanced graphics engines, performing low-level optimizations and developing new rendering techniques for games on PS2/PS3/XBOX/XBOX360 and PC. Marco has published and presented his work in game developer and graphics conferences, ranging from order-independent transparency and anti-aliasing to image reconstruction and shader caches. Marco has M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Bologna, Italy (2001).

 

Materials:
Updated August 21st, 2015

PPT ( 13 MB)

 

Tackling the Level-of-Detail Problem through New Shading Languages and Tools

Abstract:

Managing level-of-detail has always been a fundamentally challenging aspect of graphics system design. Not only is it difficult to determine the amount of geometric, appearance, or animation detail needed to adequately represent a model under various conditions, managing and optimizing for multiple levels of detail, and smoothly transitioning between them, generates significant complexity for both engine developers and artists.  This talk will provide an overview of the level-of-detail problem in modern real-time graphics, and then highlight one example of tackling the complexity of shader LOD using new shading language abstractions and compilation techniques.

 

Presenters:

Kayvon Fatahalian (Carnegie Mellon University)

Bios:

Kayvon Fatahalian is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on the design of systems and algorithms for real-time rendering and high-performance visual computing.

 

Materials:
Updated August 24th, 2015

PDF (27 MB)

 

 

Panel: Production Cost in Games: What Technology is Needed?

Moderator:

Kayvon Fatahalian (Carnegie Mellon University)

Panelists:

Johan Andersson (Electronic Arts / Frostbite), Alex Evans (MediaMolecule), Peter-Pike Sloan (Activision), Natalya Tatarchuk (Bungie)

 

Bio:

Kayvon Fatahalian is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on the design of systems and algorithms for real-time rendering and

high-performance visual computing.

 

Johan Andersson is a Technical Fellow at Electronic Arts in the Frostbite engine team. For the past fifteen years he has been working with rendering, performance and core engine systems for games in the Battlefield series and with the Frostbite game engine - which is used extensively all across Electronic Arts. Johan is a member of multiple industry & hardware advisory boards and has frequently presented at GDC, SIGGRAPH and graphics hardware conferences on topics such as rendering, performance, game engine design and future software/hardware architectures.

 

Alex Evans is a co-founder and Technical Director at MediaMolecule, creators of LittleBigPlanet, Tearaway, and most recently, Dreams. His interests are in ways to achieve the studio’s unique artistic goals through unconventional real-time-rendering techniques & tools – especially when they are put in the hands of millions of creative users. This journey began at a young age in the Demoscene (as ‘statix’ and ‘bluespoon’), and evolved at Bullfrog Productions (Dungeon Keeper et al), Lionhead Studios (Black & White et al), and Media Molecule. He’s also worked with Warp Records, London Sinfonietta and Flat-E, creating real-time computer graphics to be performed alongside live musicians. A veteran of the Advances in Real-time Rendering course, expect a mash-up of techniques and an exploration of the less well travelled parts of realtime graphics.

 

Peter-Pike Sloan is a Technical Fellow at Activision, heading up a small graphics research group in Washington state. Prior to that he has worked at NVIDIA, Disney and Microsoft. His research has been used extensively in the games industry and he has published papers in animation, skinning, simulation and interactive rendering. His papers are available online at: http://www.ppsloan.org/publications

 

Natalya Tatarchuk is an Engineering Architect currently working on state-of-the art cross-platform next-gen rendering engine and game graphics for the upcoming Bungie game Destiny. Previously she was a graphics software architect and a project lead in the Game Computing Application Group at AMD Graphics Products Group (Office of the CTO) where she pushed parallel computing boundaries investigating innovative real-time graphics techniques. Additionally, she had been the lead of ATI’s demo team creating the innovative interactive renderings and the lead for the tools group at ATI Research. She has published papers and articles in various computer graphics conferences and technical book series, and has presented her work at graphics and game developer conferences worldwide.

 

 

 

 

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