VFX developers explain what a VFX graphics programmer does, including fire hazard and the damage maps for salvage, and the particle editor. They discuss recreating dome shields, draw-call limits, and vector and signed distance fields in atmospheric entry and engine rooms.
They just felt like fairly relatively simple things to be able to recreate in a shortish space of time and to be able to receive direction from the people watching.
We support the VFX team in features, tools, anything that we want to achieve, the nice visuals that VFX artists want to implement. There is quite a bit of bug fixing in there, but also feature developments. The features range from fire hazard to, currently we're also working on damage maps, which is a big project for the salvage feature. But there are quite a lot of features in the pipeline that are being planned out as well. And then in terms of tools, it's like the particle editor that Mike will be showing. We have quite an extensive particle system. And if there's anything new in there that artists want to achieve, then we kind of talk to them and try and implement their requests, I guess.
There's not much. Characters in Star Citizen, there's kind of less character-specific VFX work, but there's still effects requirements for characters, blood and EVA thruster effects and things like that. So no, not much really. Pretty much everything has VFX in it at some point.
I do, because we recreated them in a game that I made at a former company.
We could try it, but the thing with that is it's more like, I think of it like sort of Fresnel. I think a mesh-based approach to that would probably work. We can maybe try it later on if we get time, because I do have an actual sphere mesh as a kind of backup that I was going to use.
Typically for me, it's more like you sort of emphasize the pixels and that kind of thing. So I'm just going to go straight to a square texture.
That's a question for designers who make gameplay decisions and then send them over to VFX people and say, now you need to make this. The answer is, we don't know. Not the folks here on this show.
If a designer decides they need it for their game, then we'll be ready to make one for them. No problem.
Yes. It's a little bit out of my knowledge sphere, but in essence, they kind of do.
It's a little bit out of mine as well.
That's where we go to the graphics stuff, and hopefully Gen12 and after that Vulkan can free us up from these draw call limits we've currently got.
That's on the props team.
Oh, I see what he means, because when you say emitter, in engine terms, that's the emitter. The physical thing, that'll be a little bit out of my bounds. That's another team.
Yes, the atmospheric entry effects are a very nice example. It's kind of an interesting... Oh, that's not the vector fields, actually. It's SDF.
Signed distance fields.
Yeah, signed distance field. I think in one of the engine rooms, which one was it? Was it the Reclaimer?
We've got it in a few. Actually, the vector field I'm using in this is one of the engine room vector fields.
Yeah, and so it's basically the particles will follow the shape of the room. So the vector field has been created from the geometry in the room. And so anything that's in the room will kind of give a little bit of a sense of wind inside the room so that it doesn't just drop on everything. It will kind of flow away a little bit, which is a good use for this.