Research

I've spent the past month researching every known commercial and open rendering, game, physics, network, and sound library known to man (kudos to DevMaster.net). It is very clear to me that the PC and console games of next year will be making heavy use of:

• Shaders (Cg, HLSL, GLSL, or other)
  
  and
  
  
• HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting, PRT/SH (Precomputed Radiance Transfer / Spherical Harmonic) lighting, and/or Dynamic Ambient Occlusion techniques.

It's inevitable. That said, this is where I began my learning curve as far as rendering technologies is concerned. There's no point imho of picking up a circa 2000 DirectX or OpenGL book when I'd only be light years behind the bleeding edge. Instead I've decided to work backwards and study the most relevant techniques and topics of today, while filling in any fundamentals or foundation concepts as needed. Several resources have proven very useful to date, namely:

BOOKS:

• GPU Gems 2, Matt Pharr. 2005.
• Nvidia's Cg Tutorial: Definitive Guide To Programmable Real-Time Graphics, Fernando Kilgard. 2003.

WEBSITES:

• Shader Tech (http://www.shadertech.com).
• Nvidia's Developer Forum (http://developer.nvidia.com).
• Peter-Pike Sloan's collection of SIGGRAPH Papers -(http://research.microsoft.com/~ppsloan/).
  

There are many more resources online that have proven invaluable in my studies, as relevent I will post more later.

The image above is a sampling of some of the live code I currently have up and running on my Nvidia 6800 workstation at home. I am primarily focusing on PRT techniques and HDR mostly due to the fact that I require very soft shadows and a soft airy "feel". Note the use of depth of field, diffuse glow post processing (especially in bottom left image), and PRT based soft shadows (several include HDR global lighting as well). My primary focus for the near term is to leverage these algorithmic technologies in my own engine.

All of the source code to accomplish the real time rendering you see in fact, is freely available on the internet and/or available via a licensable gaming engine. Though I have not purchased the IP of any commercial engine as of yet, I've only evaluated those engines whose source is available as part of any licensing agreement. No black boxes for *me* - as my focus is on learning the technology right now.

Inspiration

I have always been inspired by Ferry Halim's creations at Orisinal.com. The mood, lighting, and music always invoke a sense of being in a dream land - a bright, calm and whimsical place. I've put together a collage that is to serve as a guide and a goal for the mood and feel for the game I wish to create. Included along with Ferry's work are digital paintings by Don Seegmiller, Mark Bannerman, and Mark Ryden.



Some adjectives, thoughts, and concepts that this "mood board" invokes are: whimsy, soft, glow, diffuse, pastel, dream-like, sunny, shadows, weather, atmosphere, fog, fantasy, outdoors.

It will certainly be a challenge to recreate this feel with OpenGL / Cg combo I plan to leverage.