GT5s lighting engine

[dancardesigner]

Many people on this forum seem to be of the assumption Polyphony Digital don't outsource any assets, that including the lighting engine. Well here is proof they do. Also i remember hearing in a video interview that Kazunori plans to improve the lighting system for GT5. I really hope they sort those jagged shadows out and the overall HDR.
Anyways one is hoping that since the development of the lighting engine is ongoing, do you think we will see a better updated lighting engine in GT5, or perhaps a completly new engine?

I feel this deserves a thread of its own as it will clear up any misconception that a lot of people seem to have.


Illuminate Labs’ products, known as Turtle and Beast, are offline rendering and baking solutions. In other words, they render a model or a scene and then store the complex lighting information in classic color/ambient/ light/normal maps. They can also calculate the spherical harmonics values required with dynamic precomputed radiance transfer (PRT).

The Illuminate Labs products are much appreciated in the field, with companies such as Polyphony Digital (makers of Gran Turismo), Bioware (Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars KotOR, Mass Effect), Square Enix (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts), to name a few, all customers and users of Turtle and Beast. Even offline CGI houses like Weta and Engine Room Visual Effects use these tools. In the case of offline rendering, baking permits the overall reduction of rendering time of a scene by not calculating occlusion and radiance transfers on a surface for every frame.

Click on the link and check the clients
http://www.illuminatelabs.com/

http://www.illuminatelabs.com/gallery/gran-tursimo

 

[Leonidae]

And your point is..?

 

[dancardesigner]

And your point is..?

Well i'm bringing it to light, and also there was a question there if you didn't notice.

 

[Leonidae]

There's nothing to bring into the light since PD never denied using out-house resources. Stop over-dramatizing irrelevant stuff.

 

[dancardesigner]

There's nothing to bring into the light since PD never denied using out-house resources. Stop over-dramatizing irrelevant stuff.

What is your problem, im just making a post about something most on here didn't know. What's wrong with that. I never claimed PD said anything of a sort. It's new info as far as most are concerned, plus as i already stated there is a question in there. Damn at least this thread isn't only about trees.
Also someone in another thread said Kaz did deny using outside sources.

 

[damez]

There's nothing to bring into the light since PD never denied using out-house resources. Stop over-dramatizing irrelevant stuff.

Ouch... burn. The information is slightly irrelevant and I guess he could have just posted it back in that thread, instead of making a thread specifically for it. But yeah.

 

[dancardesigner]

Ouch... burn. The information is slightly irrelevant and I guess he could have just posted it back in that thread, instead of making a thread specifically for it. But yeah.

Then i would get blamed for getting another thread locked for going off topic lol.

 

[frank-jaeger]

This is not outsourcing !

They use the technologie but they have to make it work properly and code it !

Turn10 did outsourced Forza 3 's cars modelisation to RABCAT !

 

[G.T.Ace]

Well theres a difference in using a third party engine to get your lighting done (you need to optimize it for your game anyway) and "outsourcing", or not?

But, i didnt knew theyre using this engine, which is interesting (just look at the other games listed, theres nothing comparable and the lighting in GT5/P is amazing).

 

[dancardesigner]

Well theres a difference in using a third party engine to get your lighting done (you need to optimize it for your game anyway) and "outsourcing", or not?

But, i didnt knew theyre using this engine, which is interesting (just look at the other games listed, theres nothing comparable and the lighting in GT5/P is amazing).

Thankyou for not shooting me down right away

Edit: Well the site does quote to be the best in the industry, so they must be good.

 

[G.T.Ace]

I want to know which tech they use, so this is interesting (for me).
A mod has to decide if its worth the new thread.

Thanks for the info.

 

[dancardesigner]

I want to know which tech they use, so this is interesting (for me).
A mod has to decide if its worth the new thread.

Thanks for the info.

Well seriously, this thread can't be more pointless than trees, and that's still going

 

[dbarrade]

Wow the screenshots on that site look really nice. Thanks I found it interesting. Maybe could help with day night and global lighting?

 

[Angerdx]

If i remember correctly, things like this is reffered to as middleware in the industry, and most companys use various forms of such tools depending on what they need.

So they are not really outsourcing but buying tools/tech to do what we get on screen.

Common practice really.

 

[dancardesigner]

It's interesting to note that the lighting engine comes from the same company that provided the lighting engine for Killzone 2, looking at how much that game improved, can't wait for GT5 now. Night races

If i remember correctly, things like this is reffered to as middleware in the industry, and most companys use various forms of such tools depending on what they need.

So they are not really outsourcing but buying tools/tech to do what we get on screen.

Common practice really.

Yes but this is an engine itself, not a tool for developing an engine. I mean other engines like the physics engine in GT5p are in house. Made from scratch. This however is not.

 

[MonkeySkater]

This is not outsourcing !

Frank speaks the truth.

Outsourcing is when you get a third party developer to create assets/code on your behalf. This, however, Is when you use third party code/software/engine to save time on writing your own from scratch. This is the same for most games (PhysX,Turtle,Newtonian engines,etc). Why waste time writing one from scratch, then chase bugs, then optimize, chase some more bugs, then polish and probably chase a few more gremlins when you can just pick up an already proven engine, add it to your own, customize, optimize and polish. Job done!

 

[dancardesigner]

Frank speaks the truth.

Outsourcing is when you get a third party developer to create assets/code on your behalf. This, however, Is when you use third party code/software/engine to save time on writing your own from scratch. This is the same for most games (PhysX,Turtle,Newtonian engines,etc). Why waste time writing one from scratch, then chase bugs, then optimize, chase some more bugs, then polish and probably chase a few more gremlins when you can just pick up an already proven engine, add it to your own, customize, optimize and polish. Job done!

Fair do's. Missunderstanding of the term on my part. Still i think it's an interesting bit of info, especially knowing it's the same engine as in Killzone 2.

 

[Angerdx]

Seems you missed me saying buying tools/TECH, why reinvent the wheel when you can buy someones existing one and adjust make it better for your needs, the final game engine is PDs work, they just aquired tech they know works to incorporate into their own.

Edit: Hmm wonder if they use some other intresting stuff?

 

[Zer0]

Seems you missed me saying buying tools/TECH, why reinvent the wheel when you can buy someones existing one and adjust make it better for your needs, the final game engine is PDs work, they just aquired tech they know works to incorporate into their own.

Edit: Hmm wonder if they use some other intresting stuff?

Exact is not a final renderer, it's used for enhance some aspects of the final graphics, for itself is incapable of render a single KZ2 or GT5P frame.

 

[dancardesigner]

Exact is not a final renderer, it's used for enhace some aspects of the final graphics, for itself is incapable of render a single KZ2 or GT5P frame.

All i was basically trying to say is PD source there lighting engine from elsewhere, hence why i got confused with the term outsourced. Im not saying the lighting engine is the be all and end all of gran turismo. I just thought it would be interesting for people to know, as a lot here think that GT build everything from scratch.

 

[JamboGT]

People are getting bored aren't they lol

 

[dancardesigner]

People are getting bored aren't they lol

Indeed, hence why they keep re-itterating each other

 

[vulcanproject]

Well seriously, this thread can't be more pointless than trees, and that's still going

when i open the disc box for the first time i better smell fresh pine mixed with exhaust gas or the games realism will be completely ruined for me

 

[dancardesigner]

when i open the disc box for the first time i better smell fresh pine mixed with exhaust gas or the games realism will be completely ruined for me

You probably will, christmas tree?

 

[vulcanproject]

You probably will, christmas tree?

Exactly 👍

 

[dancardesigner]

This thread really is going nowhere lol, has no one got anything to say on the topic, other than yet another explanation for the term outsourced?

 

[Bogie 19th]

I never knew that. Good to know that they outsourced. Can never have too much information.

 

[dancardesigner]

I never knew that. Good to know that they outsourced. Can never have too much information.

Don't trip up on the word like me, otherwise we will get another 10'000 explanations. Apparently sourcing tech from outside is not the same as outsourcing lol

 

[newnikita]

when i open the disc box for the first time i better smell fresh pine mixed with exhaust gas or the games realism will be completely ruined for me

I'm pretty sure you remember Gran Turismo 2, GT Mode CD, with the system "scratch and sniff" with that tyre smell

I want that again!

 

[Jedi2016]

I think you're also confused about what this program does for PD. It's not part of their actual lighting engine... the models come into the engine with illumination already applied. That's not lighting, that's just texturing. The phrase "lighting engine" is used to describe what's actually illuminated in real time by the game engine itself. Namely the cars and track.

While this third-party program does have an impact on the overall look of the game, it has nothing at all to do with it's lighting engine.

In regards to the whole "outsourcing" thing.. I don't see anyone saying that 2K games "outsourced" Bioshock to Epic Games just because they use the Unreal Engine. Companies use third-party assets all the time. In fact, aside from the few companies that build their entire game engines in-house, I'd wager you'd have hard time finding a developer that doesn't use at least one or two third-party solutions.