#63 — March 27, 2022

From news: Unity introduced the Enemies photorealistic tech demo and the new Gigaya demo project, NVIDIA released the KickstartRT SDK, AMD posted videos and slides of their presentations from GDC 2022, an add-on was created for Godot that allows you to bind any scripting language.

Of interest: how Warface was made for Dandy, rendering caustics in real time, which we can learn from 1600 of the highest paid indie developers on Steam.

Updates/releases/news

Unity introduced a photorealistic tech demo Enemies

The team behind The Heretic introduced Enemiesan all-new cinematic teaser that shows massive improvements to photorealistic eyes, hair, skin and more, all rendered in real time and running in 4K resolution.

A month or two later released the Digital Human 2.0 package, which will contain all the updates and improvements that the team has made since the publication of the version for The Heretic. They will also release a package with a hair system on GitHub. Most of the improvements in Unity, either from the creation of Enemies or directly ported to the demo, are already in Unity 2021.2 or will be released in 2022.1 or 2022.2.

NVIDIA releases KickstartRT SDK

As an easier way to add ray tracing functionality to a game engine or game without major changes.

API cross-platform with open source (according to MIT license). Provides reflections, shadows, shading, and real-time ray-traced global illumination without requiring you to rework materials or shaders.

Unity showed Gigaya – a demo project that will teach how to create games using real examples

The demo game was created using the Unity ecosystem of tools. At GDC 2022 the team briefly about the upcoming Gigaya puzzle-platform game project. The demo itself is still in active development, but will be free to download when completed.

The production team discussed which rendering pipeline would be best for the project and ultimately decided to go with URP due to its cross-platform portability and popularity.

AMD has posted videos and slides of their presentations from GDC 2022

6 pretty interesting reports: about FSR 2.0, rendering in Deathloop, hybrid ray tracing in Far Cry 6 and others.

An add-on has been created for Godot that allows you to bind any scripting language

Python, Javascript, etc. on your taste. Myself pull request.

Imagination releases driver sources for PowerVR Series 1 Windows/Mac under MIT license

PowerVR Series 1 with PCX1/PCZ2/Midas3 cards were released in the late 90’s and were focused on DirectX 3.0 and PowerSGL at that time. PowerVR Series 1 accelerators had only 2-4 MB of SDR video memory, clocked at 60-66 MHz.

Maybe it will be interesting enthusiasts and for educational purposes.

Defold 1.3.1 beta available for download

Much improved game loopto improve support for high refresh rate screens and control logic when screen rates are unstable. This affects scripts (new feature fixed_update(self, dt)) and a physics engine that can run at a fixed step.

Added the first implementation of frustum culling to speed up rendering. In this version, it is only supported for 2D sprites, and to enable this feature, you need to modify the render script of your projects (if it is non-standard).

Unity Gaming Services Coming Out of Beta in June

In October 2021, Unity Gaming Services (UGS) was announced, a set of tools and services designed to make it easier for every developer to create, host, and manage their games.

The beta was just the first step. The Unity Gaming Services team has spent the last six months collecting feedback and improving the services. And now team announcedthat UGS will be officially released in June this year.

Those. Godot 3.4.4 release with regression fix

In 3.4.3, released last month, several regressions were discovered that could affect many users, so the team worked on updatewhich fixed these bugs and several other pre-existing issues.

UNIGINE Engine 2.15.1 released

Auto-generation of detail levels, support for decal materials in the visual editor, IG and Sandworm tool updates, a set of assets for generating 2.5D buildings and much more.

GameGuru MAX game engine released, sharpened for 3d

position themselves as engine, to work with which it is not necessary to be able to program. I’m not sure about full-fledged games, but at least for prototyping it may be suitable.

If you look at the list of tools, then there is quite a lot: terrain, AI, level editor, UI. Maybe a good way to get into game dev. You can buy in Steam. Oh yes…

Ubisoft introduced ZooBuilder

Future tool based on AI will be able to create riggies by analyzing basic data about animals and frames with them.

Freebies/Giveaways/Bundles/Courses

New Bundle Mega Sound Designer Loop Crate Vol 3 (Mixcraft 9)

Humble Bundle launched one more set, which includes DAW Mixcraft. This bundle includes Mixcraft as well as several VST instruments, loop and sound effects kits.

Interesting articles/videos

How did Warface for Dandy

In 2020, as part of the Warface promotion, the developers decided to send Dendy cartridges to various bloggers, who showed several pictures from the game universe as a teaser.

It wasn’t without pain.

Finding Gameplay Depth in Typing Games

The genre is so niche that there are few, if any, design resources available. That’s why the author articles started writing a study, the purpose of which is to give a good overview of such games.

About the success of Strange Horticulture on Steam with numbers

The game has 96% positive reviews on Steam. More numbers and reasons for success can be found in post read.

Gross for the whole time is almost 800k, the players really liked the art (very similar to Potion Craft).

How the concept art of game characters changes on the example of 7 games

Sketches of Kratos were done on a napkin, and Silas from League of Legends turned into a woman.

Creating an Elden Ring swamp in Maya and Unreal Engine 5

Anouk Donkers told project Cauldron Swamp Ruins and spoke about the creation of vegetation and the problems of creating the right atmosphere.

Understanding computer graphics algorithms. Part 4 – Animation “Salute”

You have probably seen fireworks in your life, when a fireball explodes in the night sky and fires slowly scatter from it in all directions.

The author tries to analyze what we see from the point of view of geometry, physics and programming.

Armored Saurus and real-time robot dinosaur battles

Studio EON, one of the newer studios turning to real-time technology for animation, has used Unreal Engine to combine high-quality CG with live footage, creating a range of innovative tools in the process. Epic Games Team met with Dae-Sik Jung to learn more.

What can we learn from the 1600 highest paid indie developers on Steam?

Only 10% of Steam developers have ever made more than $100k. IN article tells what they do that other developers don’t do. The review covers the type of publication, genre focus, the number of games developed and much more.

Creating a sci-fi lab in Maya, ZBrush and Unreal

Aviv Tal shared reviewed the Overrun project, gave some helpful tips on how to effectively plan development, and talked about the texturing process in Substance 3D Designer.

Rendering caustics in real time

The goal is not to get physically accurate results, but to achieve controlled, beautiful water caustic effects in real time. In the end articles links to shader sources.

Caterpillar on Unity in 5 minutes

Using the example from the article, you can create animations of different types of caterpillars, wheels.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands combines Borderlands-style shooting with D&D-inspired fantasy

Epic Games Team contacted with Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands creative director Matt Cox to learn more about what inspired the game, how it was made, and what players might encounter.

Graph showing how Godot’s abstraction layers work

One of the unique features of Godot is possibility use high-level nodes for fewer complex objects, or low-level servers for a large number of simple ones.

Miscellaneous

NVIDIA’s new NeRF AI turns 2D images into 3D scenes

A neuron that learns a high-resolution 3D scene in seconds and can then render images of that scene in a few milliseconds.

Due to sharpening for Nvidia cards and using multi-resolution hash grid encoding, they say that sometimes the speedup is 1000 times compared to traditional methods. All sources are Github.