Advanced CG technology for Games
Hyewon Seo CGAL-CNU ChungNam National University
Outline
•Games, serious games
• Game engines
• Character animation
• Future perspectives
1 Computer games
• “Computer games have done more for the propagation of computers than any other softwares”
- Nolan Bushnell, Founder of Atari
Game?
• The word has many specific meanings – Sport, childish play, mathematical models of optimization or decision making,…
• Simulate, relatively cheaply and safely, situations which could in reality be much more expensive or dangerous
2 Serious games
• Applications of game-based interface or interaction technology that extend beyond entertainment market
• Application area: education, training, healthcare, security, advertising, military, managements, policy, and much more!!
• Any computerized game whose chief mission is not to entertain
Serious games
• Many game companies and game makers see serious games as a very interesting opportunity. There are many reasons for that:
– Game companies have readymade technical solutions which can be used in serious games (3D engines etc.)
– Serious games offer companies a possibility to widen their range.
3 Why Serious Games – Game technology •Graphics
•Platforms
• Toolkits and SDK (AI, physics, network…)
• Gaming interface
Why Serious Games - The ideas • Intense competition has led to vast amount of di fferent ideas – Situations: Participate in (all) wars, build cities, prohibit fire s, conquer world/space, make career, simulate homes …. – Roles: Field Marshall, knight, slave, fire fighter, soldier, hunt er, police man, pilot, athlete, judge, doctor, mayor, CEO, hac ker, alien exterminator, god(!)…
• Models for all sorts of things
• Studied, conceptualized and implemented these things in a simulated format.
4 Why Serious Games - Spread factor • We want to simulate things – Not just for entertainment
• Games and gaming can introduce Modelling & Si mulation – education, politics, industries…
• Motivating Serious Games are easily sold and dis tributed
Why Serious Games – The activity of gaming
• A good gaming can provide: – Entertainment – Intense and passionate engagement – Structure – Motivation – Flow – Learning – Self confidence – Adrenaline – Creativity – Social groups – Emotions
5 Current status – It’s happening!
• Games for serious uses spreading – Established and ongoing Projects (~40 per year) – Media attention – Organizations – Workshop, Conferences and Gatherings •“Game Intersections”–Swedish workshop 2001 •“Education Arcade”–MIT&U.Wisc •“Serious Games Summit” • NATO workshop: “Exploiting Commercial games for milita ry use”, Stockholm 2005 •“Edutainment”, Hangzhou, 2006 •“Games for Health Day”, LosAngeles 2006
The military domain
• Lots of $$$$$$ • Eager to test many things • An interesting talk will be given this afternoon
6 Education
• Educational animation • Sugaring the content • Game-based interface to engage learners
Decision theater
• Learning and decision space – Arizona State University – http://dt.asu.edu
7 Issues
• Validity – Models simplifications/abstractions of real world phenomena – Simulation multiply uncertainties – All simulations are subjective – Validation of Modeling & Simulation is a very complex problem • Large variance of realism – Acceptable realism is strongly dependent on the purpose. – No absolute value of realism.
Game engines & Character animation
• “.. is the core software component of a video game. It typically handles graphical rendering and other necessary technology, but might also handle additional tasks such as game AI and collision detection between game objects, among other things. The most common element that a game engine provides is graphics rendering facilities (2D or 3D)…” - from Wikipedia
(3D) Graphics engine
• “…Engines that only provide real-time 3D rendering are sometimes called 3D engines or graphics engines. A few examples are: 3DSTATE, Power Render, Genesis3D, Irrlicht, Ogre, Panda3D, and Antiryad Gx. Many 3D engines are designed for other purposes, often in addition to games. These are then coupled with physics engines.” - from Wikipedia
9 Game engine
• A set of APIS that supports basic functionalities for building and running game applications: – Real-time rendering graphics & sound – Processing input from the device – Real-world simulation • Collision detection, physics – Character support • Appearance, movement, behavior, decision making – Multiple players, networking
• Separated from game application development
Game engines
•Quake3D • Unreal • Lithtech • Genesis3D • Every engine has pros and • Jupiter3D cons •OGRE •3D Game Studio •Dream3D
10 Quake
•By id Software • First person shooter game • 3D realtime rendering – BSP, Gouraud shading, static lightmap – S/W rendering (Quake) -> H/W rendering (Quake II) • Derivative engines – DarkPlaces, Tenebrae, Telejano, Twilight Engine,… • Games – Doom, Quake series, Half-Life,…
Unreal
•By Epic Games • First person shooter game • Powerful Light effect, more realistic shadow • Software renderer – Supports many APIs (Direct3D, OpenGL, ..) • Multiple platform (PC, PS2, X-Box,..) • Tools and interface • Games – Unreal, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament series, Unreal Championship
11 Lithtech Jupiter
• By MonoLith (later Touchdown entertainment) • First person shooter game • Visibility management – BSP, PVS • Character animation – Skeletal animation, facial animation • Crossplatform (PS2, X-Box) • Games – Sniper, No One Lives Forever, FEAR,…
Dream3D
•By ETRI • Various genre • Character animation, physics • Multiple platform (PC, PS/2, WinCE PPC) • MMORPG server • Editors for indoor and outdoor
12 Real-time rendering engine
• LoD geometry systems
• Culling
• Light map
• Vertex/pixel shader
• Image-based rendering
Animation engine
• Character animation – PC (Player character), NPC(Non-Player character), Monsters, etc.
• Other various objects
• Motion control – body and face
•Physics
13 Character animation
• Characters carry the weight of the story or scenario!!
• Skeletal animation • Skin mesh animation • Physically-based (hair, cloth) animation
• The pioneer and mentors are here today!!
Character modeling
• Has been considered as off-the-engine task
• Time and effort consuming
• Will be integrated in the engine soon
• Research trends: automated avatar modeling, shape (+ movement) capture
14 Skeletal animation
•Keyframing
• inverse kinematics
• Motion capture
•Research trends: motion capture + user control, motion retargeting
Skinning
• Skeletal Subspace Deformation: calculate a vertex position by a weighted sum of joint transformations • Research trends: improving the quality, automating the task
15 Facial animation
• Surface deformation-> Expression -> Emotion
• Text-to-speech, lips movement synchronization
Physics engine
• Racing games • Sophisticated character motion control • Character-object interaction – Realistic collision handling
• Characters’ cloth, hair, etc. • Objects, nature
• Chris Hecker’s, Mathengine • PPU (Physics Processing Unit)
16 AI engine
• Mostly applies to control of NPC
• Earlier, most of them were hard coded – if-then-else statement
• The CPU usage rate by AI engine is increasing (~over 30%)
Future perspectives
• Game content creation • Innovative interaction technology • Immersive gaming, serious games
• Fierce competition in the game engine market • Separation of game engine development and game application development
17 Thank you !!
Questions & Answers
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