Missed the content for March? Don’t worry. The summary is now availbale on my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jendrikillner

GPU Path Tracing in Unity – Part 3 part 3 of tutorial series in building a path tracer in Unity

shows how to trace a ray against a triangle and extends this by integration of Unity mesh interactions from the scene

NVIDIA Announces Nsight Graphics 2019.2! new Nsight graphics release adds improved DXR support, D3D12 fence visualization and Vulkan support for the range profiler

Autodesk - A Surface Standard whitepaper presenting the Autodesk uber surface shader based on the Arnold shading model

based on ten components that are layered and mixed hierarchical to form the final surface appearance

defines a “preview” model that simplifies the shading model for real-time use

shows the effect of the individual components and exposed parameters

partial Open Shading Language implementation is provided

Advanced Map Shading presents how to render maps using WebGL

shows how to convert color maps to elevation

generate normal maps from a height map

apply soft shadows, ambient lighting and combine with color map information

collection of links to presentations from GDC 2019

Resources for Learning Graphics Programming collection of resources aimed at helping beginners get started with graphics programming

Variable Rate Shading: a scalpel in a world of sledgehammers overview of Variable Rate Shading which is starting to become part of the D3D12 API

will have a two-tier hardware support level

tier 1: per draw shading rate changes

tier 2: can vary shading rate within a draw, with a screenspace image or per-primitive

New in D3D12 – DirectX Raytracing (DXR) now supports library subobjects next Windows update will add support for library subobjects

these allow configuring raytracing pipeline state from HLSL, removing the need for boilerplate C++ code

[video] Khronos - 2019 GDC youtube playlist with all Khronos talks from GDC 2019

A hybrid rendering pipeline for realtime rendering: (When) is raytracing worth it? the author presents his thoughts on the current state of raytracing in games

where it can bring an advantage, weaknesses and the need for hybrid solutions

how it might influence art direction

stable filtering — part 2 explores a stable filter further

presents a new test that can be used to validate the filter quality better

performs experiments to find a filter that is stable and introduces less blurring than the filter discussed in part 1

Arm Releases Vulkan Best Practices for Mobile Developers ARM released a best practice guide for Vulkan

consists of runnable samples that show best-practices and shows common performance pitfalls

on-screen information visualizes the performance impact of different methods

Reverse engineering the rendering of The Witcher 3, part 12 - stupid sky tricks look at the disassembly for parts of the skydome, sun, and stars shader from The Witcher

Using AMD FreeSync 2 HDR: Color Spaces covers overview of color theory, color spaces, and encoding

presents what problems FreeSync 2 solves and what guidelines it requires hardware manufacturers to follow

Tips and Tricks: Ray Tracing Best Practices list of best practices for ray tracing

how to manage the acceleration structure construction and building efficiently

how to manage pipeline objects, shaders, and resources

denoisers and memory budget

PIX 1903.26 – Occupancy for Turing GPUs and Variable Rate Shading occupancy graph is now supported on Turing GPUs too

Variable Rate Shading is supported

Flipping the Vulkan viewport a small article explaining the difference in the viewport coordinate system when using Vulkan compared to OpenGL

shows how to flip the viewport to match OpenGL convention

A Multi-Faceted Exploration (Part 4) presents how to precalculate an energy preserving microfacet BRDF with a diffuse-like lobe

An unbiased look at real-time raytracing presents the authors’ views on “do”’s “do not”’s for the future use of raytracing in games

how RTX gives new opportunities and also challenges

performance vs. quality tradeoffs will still be required, and raytracing will not make this simpler

Unreal Engine GDC 2019 tech talks now available online unreal tech talks from GDC 2019 are available

Thanks to Warren Moore for support of this series.

You would like to see your name here too? Become a Patreon of this series.