where can I find out more on Megatexture?

[DEATH eVADER]

Like the thread header says, I've checked the id software site and could'nt find info on the technology. The only info I been able to get are the 3rd party articles, but I would like to know more

Battlefields are perfectly rendered using MegaTexture, a totally new rendering technology developed by id Software that crunches millions of polygons and a gigabyte-scale texture into a single, seamless and un-tiled landscape with unique detail down to the square inch

It sounds like this could of been done algorithmically or precedually, what do you think, especially the size of the texture created

or the un-obscured distant horizon.

Would this mean the end of Anisotropic Filtering?

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Nobody knows for sure... What you posted is about it.

Oh and in the Doom3 SDK there are references of it I believe...

So until JC tells us straight out, we can only guess...

 

[^Ben]

Sounds like a heightmap.

 

[Ames]

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=10673
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=319912

 

[Pesmerga]

So they take huge texture maps from satellite imagery, compile it into one huge texture and slice it into drawable parts?

Like Battlefield 2, I noticed that from far away, the texture seems to be very different than upclose. I'm assuming the up-close textures are "Detail textures" only visible within range, like an LoD effect. I don't see the advantages of MegaTextures, tho, unless they have some kind of inherent property like materials, lighting surfaces, or simply take less resources which would mean higher res textures on a large scale and the possibility of less artwork involved in creating the textures themselves, creating the textures from satellite imagery. Maybe Megatexturing isn't a more detailed way of doing things, but just a more effecient and less resource hogging process that doesn't lose visual quality.

 

[StardogChampion]

The way I'm hearing it is that it's the end of tiling textures for things like terrain.

You could paint a huge texture in photoshop like 1048576x1048576 (slight exaggeration) pixels, then apply it to your terrain instead of having to tile loads of 512x512 textures.

The only thing is that the texture filesize would be hugeeee.

 

[Pesmerga]

The way I'm hearing it is that it's the end of tiling textures for things like terrain.

You could paint a huge texture in photoshop like 1048576x1048576 (slight exaggeration) pixels, then apply it to your terrain instead of having to tile loads of 512x512 textures.

The only thing is that the texture filesize would be hugeeee.

If indeed the texture filesizes are that big (I heard 98gigs for a single map texture?) then that pretty much kills customizations. It's just not really effecient in the long run, maybe when the next hard drive leap in technology occurs and we'll all have 1024decabytes on a 10 Harddrive RAID config then it'll be useful.


Until then, it sounds really dumb.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Well we shouldn't jump to conclusions until QuakeCon...

 

[Gabrobot]

From what I've been able to figure out, it allows for very large textures (as people have already figured out) but also has to do with procedural textures. .kkrieger uses procedural textures, which means it can have a couple hindered megabytes of texture data in a 96k file (the actual textures are generated mathematically by the CPU during load times and stored in memory). Then also, I think they have materials for different surfaces (rock, sand, ect.) since they mention different sounds and physics (i.e. tire traction) depending on the surface...you can see in one part of the trailer, right before the nuke explodes, that the materials seem to be mirrored. Since they say the texturing is completely unique everywhere, I think the thing that's mirrored is the material mapping...so the actual texturing doesn't repeat, but the material pattern does (presumably because Splash Damage was working frantically to get the video done for E3 and didn't have time to work out all the material mapping).

Brian Harris says we have to wait until QuakeCon before we're given details about MegaTexturing though.

 

[Pesmerga]

From what I've been able to figure out, it allows for very large textures (as people have already figured out) but also has to do with procedural textures. .kkrieger uses procedural textures, which means it can have a couple hindered megabytes of texture data in a 96k file (the actual textures are generated mathematically by the CPU during load times and stored in memory). Then also, I think they have materials for different surfaces (rock, sand, ect.) since they mention different sounds and physics (i.e. tire traction) depending on the surface...you can see in one part of the trailer, right before the nuke explodes, that the materials seem to be mirrored. Since they say the texturing is completely unique everywhere, I think the thing that's mirrored is the material mapping...so the actual texturing doesn't repeat, but the material pattern does (presumably because Splash Damage was working frantically to get the video done for E3 and didn't have time to work out all the material mapping).

Brian Harris says we have to wait until QuakeCon before we're given details about MegaTexturing though.

That would make more sense then. Although, how much more of a resource hog is procedural texturing than simply finding the texture file and placing it on the face? It makes sense, but I thought megatexturing was memory cache friendly.

 

[Gabrobot]

That would make more sense then. Although, how much more of a resource hog is procedural texturing than simply finding the texture file and placing it on the face? It makes sense, but I thought megatexturing was memory cache friendly.

Well, mainly procedural texturing has the advantage of producing high res textures that never repeat, but they also take up lots of memory (especially when it's covering huge terrain meshes like in Quake Wars)...this is why you don't see it used much in games. However, I think MegaTexture tech also allows the texture to be stored on the harddrive and then streamed in real-time as it's needed (or perhaps even procedurally generated in real-time?)...this way it can also scale the texture resolution based on the players distance from parts of the texture which increases performance as well. It's probably what allows them to have detail down to the square inch but also have it stretch to the horizon...the resolution simply decreases the further it is from the player. I'm rather interested to see how smoothly this is done, and just how it can have the resolution be different on different parts of the same texture...

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Splash Damage was actually looking for people with experience making procedural textures a while back, so it's very likely that they're using procedural textures.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

so now you can now use a single HUGE detailed texture for an entire landscape and not be hindered by system memory limitations.

this is not possible with current hardware simply due to memory limitations. todays engines allow for detailed textures (typically 512x512 or 1024x1024), but they would have to be tiled and repeated over and over to cover large outdoor terrain.

how is this possible??? the vast majority of the texture is stored on your hard drive, not in system or video card memory. so while you are playing the game, the engine will continually access the hard drive to pull the relevant MegaTexture pieces.

great stuff...

I like this, especially down to the fact that only a handfull of smaller companies were still doing precedual work after the advent of the compact disc. Now top names are considering going back to precedual methods after being constrained by huge amounts of data for such a simple object (Is it possible to have a 4 disc games narrowed down to 1 disc through algorythmic processes for creating the graphics, lighting, AI, etc?)

It also allows the system to be freed to an extent so as to concentrate on other things, i.e. Physics (although this will have a dedicated processor by the end of the year).

At this years E3, there are several companies using precedual data for several games:
Spore= AI, graphics, Skeletal Bahaviour
Oblivion= Using algorythm to place trees in the places that you would normally find them in the real world
Quake Wars= The outdoor maps

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Yea, there are many more companies using/experimenting with procedural methods. I think the main reason is that it really makes everything feel more dynamic/alive and so if you play through the game again, you really feel like you are in a different world, and not just a static piece of map where everything is the same. It just helps make you believe everything much much more

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Yea, there are many more companies using/experimenting with procedural methods. I think the main reason is that it really makes everything feel more dynamic/alive and so if you play through the game again, you really feel like you are in a different world, and not just a static piece of map where everything is the same. It just helps make you believe everything much much more

Plus it frees up system memory and all other parts of the computer hardware. I would like to know what other companies are following suit, i.e. Valve, Epic, etc.

 

[blahblahblah]

Its not procedural texturing. If you look at a screenshot of quake wars, you can see blurry ground textures because there are no more mip maps to enhance detail. With procedural texturing, you don't have that problem because the mip map is continually calculated (based off of distance). (For instance on the kkreiger demo, walk toward the wall, the texture quality stays the same. Compare that to HL2 or Doom 3).

Procedural texturing is incredibly expensive gpu wise to do, if it wasn't we would have ATI/NVidia showing off their tech demo's in complete procedural textures. We don't because current graphics cards can't handle it yet.

 

[Gabrobot]

Its not procedural texturing. If you look at a screenshot of quake wars, you can see blurry ground textures because there are no more mip maps to enhance detail. With procedural texturing, you don't have that problem because the mip map is continually calculated (based off of distance). (For instance on the kkreiger demo, walk toward the wall, the texture quality stays the same. Compare that to HL2 or Doom 3).

Procedural texturing is incredibly expensive gpu wise to do, if it wasn't we would have ATI/NVidia showing off their tech demo's in complete procedural textures. We don't because current graphics cards can't handle it yet.

Well that's just it...I think what the MegaTexture tech does is when the level loads it procedurally generates a huge texture (a MegaTexture) for the whole terrain and then stores it on the hard drive. Then when the level has been loaded it streams parts of the texture (at different resolutions depending on the distance) into memory. This way you get some of the benefits of procedural texturing without the huge draw backs.

 

[FictiousWill]

I thought kkreiger textures were generated, then placed in memory just like any other bitmap texture. Hence the long loading times.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

http://www.g4tv.com/g4tv/features/51945/Enemy_Mine_Todd_Hollenshead_Speaks.html

From June 14th (Interview by G4 with Todd Hollenshead)

What about visually? [Talking about Enemy Territory Quake Wars]

From a visual standpoint, I don’t think there’s really anything that can touch it in its field. We started with the Doom 3 base of technology and created what we call "mega-texture technology," which allows us to have a unique texture that covers the entire surface of the planet. Most games use tiles, so you have repeated textures that are spread across on different tiles. This is different in that every single pixel is unique. The artist has free reign to draw every single pixel on the entire surface of the battlefield. So we can have nighttime missions where headlights have real-time interactions with the surfaces. Especially with the vehicles and vehicle physics that we use, it allows the vehicle to have different interactions with the surfaces. So driving on a paved highway, you will have better traction and speed than if you’re off on the dirt, where you’ll slide around and won’t be able to go as fast. You can even get bogged down in the mud.

This give you guys any clue?

Oh, and I don't think the artists are taking too much advantage of this yet, as the level was probably just for the E3 demo (you can see some blurriness)

 

[FictiousWill]

Yeah the general consensus is that artists are going to have a hard time generating all that unique texture detail with prcedural generation, at which point you've kindof defeated the need for a massive texture, as you can generate the bits you need during load time.

If you have a team of slave artists work for weeks creating this mega-texture, then you've got to put it on the clients computer, unless id hosts it and you download it in pieces, KeyHoleViewer-style.

 

[Gabrobot]

From my work with procedural textures in Lightwave, they're pretty easy to make and are incredibly useful for organic type stuff (like rocks). Now I highly doubt (even if it's technically possible) that the artists hand draw the whole MegaTexture. In fact, I'm sure they don't. In this picture posted on Beyond3D a while back, it's clear that the texture pattern is mirrored. Now, we know the texture itself doesn't actually repeat (can't be any tiling), so there's another reason for it. They mention they have different materials for different surfaces (road, rock, sand, ect.). These materials probably are somewhat like Lightwave's material presets for procedurally generated rock and stuff...then the material is applied to the terrain in a pattern specified by the artist. This is kind of how Quake III terrain texturing was done (an image was used to control what textures were applied where).

So if they use procedural textures, they can quickly and easily tweak the terrain texturing, and they don't have to worry about including enormous texture files...the MegaTextures can be deleted when they're done being used. Seems to add up...

 

[DEATH eVADER]

I thought kkreiger textures were generated, then placed in memory just like any other bitmap texture. Hence the long loading times.

Thank You for that :thumbs: I forgot what the name of that tech demo/game. Now I'll be able to download it