United3dArtists Archive

The future of 3D, the demise of polygons!

Unlimited Detail's method is very different to any 3D method that has been invented so far. The three current systems used in 3D graphics are ray tracing polygons and point clouds/voxels, they all have strengths and weaknesses. Polygons run fast but have poor geometry, ray-tracing and voxels have perfect geometry but run very slowly.



Unlimited Detail is a fourth system, which is more like a search algorithm than a 3D engine. It is best explained like this: if you had a word document and you went to the search tool and typed in a word like 'money' the search tool quickly searches for every place that word appeared in the document. Google and Bing are also search engines that go looking for things very quickly. Unlimited Detail is basically a point cloud search algorithm. We can build enormous worlds with huge numbers of points, then compress them down to be very small. The Unlimited Detail engine works out which direction the camera is facing and then searches the data to find only the points it needs to put on the screen it doesn’t touch any unneeded points, all it wants is 1024*768 (if that is our resolution) points, one for each pixel of the screen. It has a few tricky things to work out, like: what objects are closest to the camera, what objects cover each other, how big should an object be as it gets further back. But all of this is done by a new sort of method that we call "mass connected processing". Mass connected processing is where we have a way of processing masses of data at the same time and then applying the small changes to each part at the end.

The result is a perfect pure bug free 3D engine that gives Unlimited Geometry running super fast, and it's all done in software.

I'd love to know what you guys think! Would you learn how to use this system? Would you ditch polygon modelling altogether? Wuold you still model with polygons? Do you think larger companies like ATI or Nvidia will implement this system? Would gaming industries use this? What about cinema, television, commercials?

I would use this hands down, for SURE!

Enjoy!

http://www.euclideon.com/
http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/home.html

got my workflow and will only update what applications i already got to the new versions....
hopping from one application to the other doesnt make the quality of your work better...
you have to relearn the material systems every time and all the materials you have premade are lost and
you have to remake everything from scratch.. dont like that !
got two render engines i use Vue inf and Thea thats it for a long time...
Peter

Yeah.. You are right there, it would be a pain in the arse to convert everything. Learn new lighting, texturing, etc.

That's quite a hard thing having to always upgrade software and skills and techonology progressess..... pain in the arse.

Tho for this software I'm hopeful! As far as I know, their conversion software they were using looked good and easy. The modelling and texturing appeared identicle to what we are used to (say in Maya) and the "atom" rendering ws like an external renderer.

Very interesting subject you bring to the table and quite fascinating.
I have to agree with Rayman as I know Poser in and out and I am just starting to get deep into Maya so to take the time now and learn again would be like starting all over.
At the same time it is something to keep in the back of our minds as we all know that this is the sign of what is around the corner.
My style is more so cartoony and not realistic, I have never been into even watching the realistic 3D cartoons.
I will say this if you have not seen TinTin then I would highly suggest you watch it as it is one of the most incredibly done 3D animations I have seen.

Software are not perfect. Here's how I imagine the "universal 3d software": a software that can read ALL existing formats and able to treat them the same way as the software that created the object imported. For example: I import a scene (vue, maya, sculptris, what you want ...) and objects of different software in their NATIVE format. By clicking on an object I have the possibility to edit it with all the possibilities of the original software. This is valid for modeling, animation and rendering objects as if each was made ​with its original software. The "universal 3d software" have no feature but get what you need by reading the source code of other applications, of course everything is done in real time. The price of "universal 3d software" is determined by the location of the source code of each applications that sell the rights. Just make a list of software you want to use, for an individual quote. Available on Windows 10 when the concurrency will understand that working together is the future. "universal 3d software" has the intelligence to respond to your unique needs and get to know you to be more effective. Obviously this is a dream ...

Dude that is some seriously cool technology!
I'm interested in giving it a shot. Now how do you model with that... I scanned through the video; not much time to watch it yet.

That technology is named "sparse voxel octree" and moreover that video is now fairly considered an "hoax". See more here:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/08/sparse ... -very.html

Australians are renown for exaggeration!!! (I'm half NZér and know a few, also programmers tend to do that! )

If I was reading and studying correctly, this company and the Australian government have.. been a bit within realism. Also they have based their algorithms to search for only the required voxels per pixel, according to an older video of theirs. So a screen res of 1280x900 would only pull that many voxels from a data library/index and display them. Like google and it's search algorithms. Using other algorithms, it may have the ability to transport polygon based models from a mother software and store the information somewhere, meanwhile using other algorithms to have correct perspective, color, shade, etc.
Also, if you notice the world, it's all repeated and copied a million times, like in minecraft. So the algorithm would only pull a certain number of geometry data from a library and display it at stored locations in smaller files or coordinate/indexes. I doubt they have millions of models on that island thus requiring a database of that many voxels. They possibly have a few hundred models on the island coppied thousands of times using indexing like in search engines, and with their algorithms, according to the viewport they display only what is needed, thus the illusion of "unlimited" voxels.

It's a simple trick, example CSS code where you have as many instances of pretty HTML that display according to your 1 CSS document, no nead to rewrite each pretty HTML peice of code, just refer it to the CSS and it will look pretty.

So the claim of a hoax is based on a linear thought.. =P With clever algorithms, you can pull a huge amount of info from libraries and coordinates of instances to create vast worlds with "limitless" voxels. Then using their "search engine" based algorithm they mentioned, and by only displaying 1 voxel per pixle, which, through other algorithms, could be an average color of stored neighboring voxel colors, thus creating vast worlds.

Logically it's possible.

And if others are working on it already elsewhere, I'm sure it's realistic.

http://atomontage.com/?id=gallery#nov27_2009

It is realistic as long as its realm is the quantum computing. When such "atomic" technology will be treated like real atoms and molecule because QBIT CPU/GPU, it will be much more powerful than now. For now, maybe some spray "atoms" tools from Pixologic and such?

That technology is named "sparse voxel octree" and moreover that video is now fairly considered an "hoax". See more here:

I don't really see how the dribbling of a few guys on the internet on a blog necessarily makes this tech a hoax, even if one of them happens to be a big shot.

It also hasn't been established exactly how they're doing this. Voxel octrees have been around since dot, and have lots of problems (unless you like cg Lego, as many do). They claim they're using point cloud data to generate the graphics. Don't really get it, but I know point clouds from 3delight, and often wondered why they weren't considered for use in real-time graphics (they have a few advantages over polygons, especially for shading). I'm not really a tech head, though, so I'm sure there are good reasons for this.

Miracle tech like this appears from time to time, the last big one I saw was real-time raytracing at intel. Didn't go anywhere, but clearly wasn't a scam. It also doesn't really interest me too much as it's games tech, but I think giving the company the benefit of the doubt at this stage would be fair. They got their grant, so I guess they must have impressed someone with it.

My issue with the demos I've seen so far is that they look very surreal and plasticy, however they claim this is because they're not artists. The company developing this apparently isn't too far from where I live, perhaps I might drop them a line and try and suss things out a bit more.....

I'm half NZér.......

My condolences. I'm sure the other half makes up for it.....


-----

I saw this vid on ModDB a couple of months ago, back then I was quite impressed. Though it is a lot more than just a few people who are convinced this is a hoax. Animation they say is impossible, voxels can not rotate around and axis, that is true and not true, it is possible to properly animate voxels (I refer you to this video). My main reasons for not thinking it is a hoax are hope and that why would someone go through as much trouble to make a vid like this just for a hoax? What's there to gain. I'm still not totally convinced myself, I say, let them give us a working sample that runs on every computer new and old and I'll believe them then.

Not all hope is lost though, I remember when researching this further after seeing this vid I came across another website with a guy who had come very far as well using voxels for realtime graphics and animation. Unfortunately I'm afraid I might have lost the link to that site.

I also remember coming across this: Voxelstein3D. A pretty fun game with a complete voxel map.

Can you imagine making detailed models in zbrush and using them right away in a game, without worries of polygon count?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO5tFZC8 ... re=related"

Animation they say is impossible, voxels can not rotate around and axis, that is true and not true, it is possible to properly animate voxels.....

I think, again, that the assumption that this is voxels, with all of the old hangups, is the problem here. I don't think they even mention voxels anywhere as far as I can see, and the "naked" shots look very similar to point clouds I've seen elsewhere, which is what they are saying the scenes are constructed with.

Anyway, I doubt it will get too far for the reason that about a zillion dollars has already been invested in hardware and artistic pipelines based around polygons by the big boppers of the game and pc hardware industries, and I doubt that they will accept a new technology that puts many of them out of business........

------

Benji wrote:Anyway, I doubt it will get too far for the reason that about a zillion dollars has already been invested in hardware and artistic pipelines based around polygons by the big boppers of the game and pc hardware industries, and I doubt that they will accept a new technology that puts many of them out of business........

Well maybe that's why they are working in secret rather than openly flaunting their technology about... who knows...

i think we already discused this video, didnt we? i think i saw this technology here on this forum.

Ah yes, you're right bitkar, I posted this a while back: vi ... f=4&t=2808 Funny, I had the feeling of deja-vu as well.

I saw something years ago about the making of one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The FX guys talked about point clouds. I don't remember clearly what they said but I think they were using them. They also noted how they were working with the (a?) major 3D software companies to invent new stuff. They sought, invested in, and embraced new technology hoping to increase, or maintain, their ability to earn money while still having the tried and true old stuff for the bulk of the work and in case the experiments didn't work out.

The video, I think, is real in that they probably did use their method/software to make it. I think it is fake in the area of marketing where they have exaggerated and given a false impression of the abilities. The rebuttal calculating the number of "atoms" in the volume of the island is also contrived or poorly thought out although its basic point that they exaggerated is good.

Obviously, even given the ability to make an extremely detailed and giant world, we wouldn't. No one is going to model a zillion unique rocks with a zillion "atoms" each. We would still use instancing. This point clouds and voxels will find a niche, or become the new big thing, or fade away according to how well it is developed to meet the demands of users.

When I see hype about the latest new thing (promotional hype, the new thing may be great or not) I think of a cartoon I saw. Two soldiers, beaten and injured, stand near a damaged complicated device or weapon. One reports to an officer, (paraphrased) "We were adjusting the neucleonic discombobulating macro acclimator when the suckers hit us with clubs."

good one Finis
I got the impression that what Euclideon is actually working on is, that the pixels on the screen are what is being manipulated; the software reads the geometry and instead of simply rendering the geometry, the internal .... oh I don't know what I'm talking abt as the 'mathematics' of it all is way out of my league. I'm an artist, not a programmer/developer. But I do think this actually is a new way of doing it than the normal 'render the geometry as fast as you can'. It seems they are concentrating on the pixels on our screen rather than the geometry. Which is probably why we're all skeptical/baffled. Time will tell.
I just love the idea of the puter/software doing all the calculations, and I don't worry abt the geometry AT ALL. I can 'just do my thing' and not worry abt the rest.

MikomDude wrote:Ah yes, you're right bitkar, I posted this a while back: vi ... f=4&t=2808 Funny, I had the feeling of deja-vu as well.

LOL oops. =)

point clouds and voxel technology has been regulary used for many yrs. Infinite detail is nonsense as all data takes space. Its not a problem to display only some data and have it inteligently sorted according to level of detail. New details will load up when camera is getting closer, but whole such scene would have many many gigs of data.
Btw voxels are used even in DX9. You certainly must know farcry. There was quite huge implementation of voxels. All the forrests and jungle. There was some article about Farcry and cryengine somewhere.

I was a big fan of Far Cry when it came out... sad to see Ubisoft taking over the game.... they could never get the multiplayer to work once they headed for consoles.....

I really liked Far Cry 2, had some very neat physics, it also had a built in lag for vehicles that never seemed to go away no matter how low I put the system config. I never played FC1 though.