Large Open-World Kid Kite Demo

[hallatore]

Would love to see some tutorials based one some of the features in the kite demo.

I use the trees from the asset packages and I cannot get the same quality/lighting when I zoom out.

[Netrve]

@hallatore;267890

Would love to see some tutorials based one some of the features in the kite demo.

I use the trees from the asset packages and I cannot get the same quality/lighting when I zoom out.

Have you tried locking the LOD settings at 0? I think the Kite Demo didn’t use LODs, but I’m not sure, it might be it or it’s something else.

[Sitrec]

@Ray ;267301

We’ll be talking about 4.8 shortly - hoping to start the preview builds in a few weeks. We’re also cleaning up the Kite content for release - again hoping for 4.8 but not finalized on that yet. It’s massive content!

Fantastic! I need them foliage distribution tools!

[Gandosh]

i’m eager to know how they did cloud and its shadows.

[Filly_The_Owl]

Still loading… since yesterday evening. 8gb Ram i7… wow such no.

[Sam_Deiter]

@Dakraid;267926

Have you tried locking the LOD settings at 0? I think the Kite Demo didn’t use LODs, but I’m not sure, it might be it or it’s something else.

The kite demo makes heavy use of LOD’s.

[Netrve]

@;268990

The kite demo makes heavy use of LOD’s.

Yeah, I realized that after watching the streams from GDC again. Sorry if I confused anyone ^^

[anonymous_user_923c79df]

I dont know if it has already been mentioned, but anyone knows the specs of the pc from the kite demo video? I just know that they use a gtx titan x

[anonymous_user_f2b8b290]

The crazy 1hr load on first run is because we accidentally didn’t prebuild the DDC - so things like textures are being compressed from scratch and there’s one giant static mesh that takes a huge amount of time by itself. Normal loading time for the whole level is like 5 minutes on a fast PC>

>I dont know if it has already been mentioned, but anyone knows the specs of the pc from the kite demo video?

I can’t remember the full specs, important part was TitanX. Framerate is pretty good on 980GTX as well, but there were more hitches so it doesn’t run as smooth.

>Would love to see some tutorials based one some of the features in the kite demo.
>I use the trees from the asset packages and I cannot get the same quality/lighting when I zoom out.

There was a huge amount of complex work that went into getting good looking trees that hold up as you transition between LODs (move closer and further). I am bugging the tech artist () who did most of the work on making happen to do a tutorial or doc =)

We made a ton of improvements to our foliage system to handle so many instances - there are something like 2 million unique trees, and these are automatically clustered together with a tree data structure to minimize draw calls but still get effective frustum culling. These improvements are automatic for any foliage painted with the foliage tool in 4.8.

The short summary is dither-fade between triangle mesh LODs for the first few LODs ( works well with Temporal AA which turns the dither into semi-translucency) then a billboard for the final LOD. The billboard attributes came from material properties that rendered out at different camera angles. He atlased the material attributes from each camera angle, and the pixel shader of the billboard picks the correct rectangle into the atlas based on current viewer camera angle.

Distance field lighting features like Ray Traced shadows and DFAO still use the original shape even when the triangle mesh is simplified, so causes incorrect self shadowing. The solution was to use the newly created Pixel Depth Offset material input for the billboards to better approximate the original shape. Pixel depth offset just allows pushing individual pixels into the screen (away from camera) for very little cost. The depth to hookup came from depth maps that rendered out using the billboard rendering method.

See DFAO shadows page for screenshots showing trees with/without Pixel Depth Offset
.unrealengine/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/DistanceFieldAmbientOcclusion/index.html

[anonymous_user_923c79df]

@;276392

I can’t remember the full specs, important part was TitanX. Framerate is pretty good on 980GTX as well, but there were more hitches so it doesn’t run as smooth.

Ok, thx for the answer. I assume that it was the best hardware on the market

[Galeon]

We made a ton of improvements to our foliage system to handle so many instances - there are something like 2 million unique trees, and these are automatically clustered together with a tree data structure to minimize draw calls but still get effective frustum culling. These improvements are automatic for any foliage painted with the foliage tool in 4.8.

I like that already

[DamirH]

@;276392

I am bugging the tech artist () who did most of the work on making happen to do a tutorial or doc =)

Yes please please please! Please keep us up to date on !

[Huggybare]

@;247100

You’re right! That was the sizzle reel. One second and I’ll look one up.

EDIT: Everything I can find internally calls it “Kite_Segment_Music”, so I’m going to have to ask the team that made it on Monday what its name really is. Sorry about that!

What did the team say on Monday, two months ago?

[anonymous_user_2a09f2b7]

@Alcatraz;240409

What is taking so much time to render? Is it the massive amount of foliage or the DFGI? I think the kite demo looks good, but it’s nothing “special”. It’s not really “the future of graphics”. It’s what the Cryengine could do all the time, and it seems with much better fps… You probably can compare the kite demo with Crysis 1… Of course the demo looks a bit better since the textures are higher resolution and the foliage has more polys, but as a rough comparison crysis 1 works.

For example kite demo has a really low grass render distance…

So really, what’s the bottleneck at the moment? You said you improved the performance with much foliage a lot, so probably isn’t the problem. But I also can’t imagine that one-bounce Distance Field GI is taking so much performance.

I think it’s due to broad and wise use of bilboards instead of geometry in the foliage and vegetation. But I could be wrong about instantiated geometries. And the boy flying a kite looks more beautiful for me than the sickly and wild vegetation in crysis.

[anonymous_user_759e5c3a]

@Huggybare;290337

What did the team say on Monday, two months ago?

"We ended up buying the rights to original music, but then re-recorded it with live musicians + added the Cello and String parts. was done by Noah Landis in the USA.

I’m pretty sure we own the recording of new version, but I’m not sure about distribution rights."

Then they said things in legalese for a while until my head hurt. I have found an email chain about it that puttered out, so I’ll revive it and see what I can find. Hopefully it’s not tied up in paperwork

[Huggybare]

lol Yeah, legalese isn’t as much fun as the kite demo, for sure.

[ThomScheBe]

@veggo;246903

… what’s the song name of demo?

The base piano part sounds like ‘inspired’ by : Rosenthal, Woes
?v=ccrP2SCThuo
and/or maybe : Go Solo
?v=VePaI3jX4Sk

[anonymous_user_759e5c3a]

The song can be located now:

The name seems to be just “Positive Piano Harmony”, so it may be hard to look up.

More details about the composer: ://www.jonathanwrightmusic/

Enjoy

[Hevedy]

@;316380

The song can be located now:

The name seems to be just “Positive Piano Harmony”, so it may be hard to look up.

More details about the composer: ://www.jonathanwrightmusic/

Enjoy

OMG Why to put that in a game you need pay more than all the others 600$ xD need to pay more than for a TV or a Film…

[hippowombat]

Where do we download the actual open world demo, not just the assets? Not that the assets aren’t fantastic, because they are, but I thought we’d be able to get the whole level to load as a project and view?