Game Design Procedural Procworld OpenCL, first iteration - Revision history

Shealladh at 08:22, 29 November 2015

2015-11-29T08:22:08Z

Shealladh at 08:21, 29 November 2015

2015-11-29T08:21:45Z

Shealladh at 08:21, 29 November 2015

2015-11-29T08:21:17Z

Shealladh at 08:19, 29 November 2015

2015-11-29T08:19:48Z

Shealladh at 08:18, 29 November 2015

2015-11-29T08:18:33Z

Shealladh at 08:17, 29 November 2015

2015-11-29T08:17:47Z

Shealladh at 08:17, 29 November 2015

2015-11-29T08:17:26Z

Shealladh: Created page with "==Grammar Time== Yes, grammars. The last update had a hint of this, but here you can see them in more detail. As you probabl..."

2015-11-29T08:12:54Z

Created page with "==Grammar Time== Yes, grammars. The last update had a hint of this, but here you can see them in more detail. As you probabl..."

New page

==[[Game_Design_Procedural_Procworld_Grammar Time|Grammar Time]]==

Yes, grammars. The last update had a hint of this, but here you can see them in more detail. As you probably know, we are building a repertoire of architectural grammars.

<center>
{|
|+ style="caption-side:top; color:#e76700;"|'''The following video shows a few of them'''
| [[File:VoxelFarm - Procedural Architecture Elements.png|500px|center|link=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=scacfkd_Tao]]
|}
</center>

This set is geared towards medieval, fantasy settings, but I suspect most of these grammars would hold for a different theme.

This system becomes very interesting once you consider ending building blocks could be replaced by elements that tie closely to your project's vision. At any time you could replace the arches, columns, ornaments, even bricks, by custom components you may have sculpted earlier. What the grammar gives you is the order and structure of these prefabs, but the final look and feel can be pretty much up to you.

As you can see for the moment we are focusing on smaller grammars. You can think of these as smart brushes that will allow to lay walls, floors, bridges, even towers in the locations you choose.

While grammars are able to express entire buildings (even cities), I believe we need to start small and allow you to place these smaller elements following your imagination. Also there is little point in generating an entire castle if the building elements are not interesting enough. So we are making sure we have a solid repertoire of grammars before we take on larger things. Even something as simple as a basic stair tool can save you a lot of time.

[[File:stairs.png|320px|center|link= ]]

As usual let me know what you think. I'm in particular interested in how many of these do you think we would need for a particular theme, how generic or specific they should be, what kind of parameters would you like to have as inputs.

==Ideas==
* Architectural Grammars.

=='''<span style="color:#e76700">Breakdown of Architectural Grammars</span>'''==
List here how a grammar works, into a workflow to create the idea.
* [[Link|Link Name]]
** [[Link|Link Name]]
* [[Link|Link Name]]
** [[Link|Link Name]]

=Notes=
* [http://procworld.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/grammar-time.html Procedural World Blog]
*

[[Category:Research]] [[Category:Game Design]] [[Category:Articles]] [[Category:Procedural]] [[Category:Procedural World Blog]]

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 I already had an implementation of Dual Contouring for the CPU which would be a good start for a port to OpenCL. A straight port was out of the question, almost in every case OpenCL will require you to re-think your problem from a new angle. Still, having the traditional CPU implementation gave me a good idea of the issues I needed to address.
-This first iteration was only to test the waters. I wanted to see if a naive approach would produce acceptable results. The bare minimum I could do was:
+This first iteration was only to test the waters. I wanted to see if a naive approach would produce acceptable results.
 # For each point in the voxel grid, evaluate the 3D field function

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 This first iteration was only to test the waters. I wanted to see if a naive approach would produce acceptable results. The bare minimum I could do was:
-'''#''' For each point in the voxel grid, evaluate the 3D field function
+# For each point in the voxel grid, evaluate the 3D field function
-'''#''' For each edge in the grid, see if the edge crossed the surface and compute the intersection point
+# For each edge in the grid, see if the edge crossed the surface and compute the intersection point
-'''#''' For each voxel in the grid, see if its edges had an intersection and compute the inner point for the voxel
+# For each voxel in the grid, see if its edges had an intersection and compute the inner point for the voxel
 [[File:stages.png|center|link= ]]

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 This first iteration was only to test the waters. I wanted to see if a naive approach would produce acceptable results. The bare minimum I could do was:
-# For each point in the voxel grid, evaluate the 3D field function
+'''#''' For each point in the voxel grid, evaluate the 3D field function
-# For each edge in the grid, see if the edge crossed the surface and compute the intersection point
+'''#''' For each edge in the grid, see if the edge crossed the surface and compute the intersection point
-# For each voxel in the grid, see if its edges had an intersection and compute the inner point for the voxel
+'''#''' For each voxel in the grid, see if its edges had an intersection and compute the inner point for the voxel
 [[File:stages.png|center|link= ]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:18, 29 November 2015
Line 37:		Line 37:

	==Ideas==		==Ideas==
−	* ~~Architectural Grammars.~~	+	* (Voxels) Point, edge, and inner point

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 This first iteration was only to test the waters. I wanted to see if a naive approach would produce acceptable results. The bare minimum I could do was:
-   # For each point in the voxel grid, evaluate the 3D field function
+# For each point in the voxel grid, evaluate the 3D field function
-   # For each edge in the grid, see if the edge crossed the surface and compute the intersection point
+# For each edge in the grid, see if the edge crossed the surface and compute the intersection point
-   # For each voxel in the grid, see if its edges had an intersection and compute the inner point for the voxel
+# For each voxel in the grid, see if its edges had an intersection and compute the inner point for the voxel
 [[File:stages.png|center|link= ]]

@@ Line 40: / Line 40: @@
-=='''<span style="color:#e76700">Breakdown of Architectural Grammars</span>'''==
+=='''<span style="color:#e76700">Breakdown of Voxels</span>'''==
-List here how a grammar works, into a workflow to create the idea.
+List here how a voxel works, into a workflow to create the idea.
 * [[Link|Link Name]]
 ** [[Link|Link Name]]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-==[[Game_Design_Procedural_Procworld_Grammar Time|Grammar Time]]==
+OpenCL is a general purpose computing framework. It is designed for parallel computing so it runs very well in modern GPUs, which are parallel by nature. The whole idea is to have a single "job" executed by a large number of threads at the same time.
-Yes, grammars. The last update had a hint of this, but here you can see them in more detail. As you probably know, we are building a repertoire of architectural grammars.
+Voxels are a natural fit for OpenCL. Many voxel algrorithms run locally, meaning that the algorithm only needs to look at one or a few voxels at a time. There are no dependencies between a voxel and other voxels far away.
-<center>
+I already had an implementation of Dual Contouring for the CPU which would be a good start for a port to OpenCL. A straight port was out of the question, almost in every case OpenCL will require you to re-think your problem from a new angle. Still, having the traditional CPU implementation gave me a good idea of the issues I needed to address.
-{|
-|+ style="caption-side:top; color:#e76700;"|'''The following video shows a few of them'''
-| [[File:VoxelFarm - Procedural Architecture Elements.png|500px|center|link=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=scacfkd_Tao]]
-|}
-</center>
-This set is geared towards medieval, fantasy settings, but I suspect most of these grammars would hold for a different theme.
+This first iteration was only to test the waters. I wanted to see if a naive approach would produce acceptable results. The bare minimum I could do was:
-This system becomes very interesting once you consider ending building blocks could be replaced by elements that tie closely to your project's vision. At any time you could replace the arches, columns, ornaments, even bricks, by custom components you may have sculpted earlier. What the grammar gives you is the order and structure of these prefabs, but the final look and feel can be pretty much up to you.
+   # For each point in the voxel grid, evaluate the 3D field function
-As you can see for the moment we are focusing on smaller grammars. You can think of these as smart brushes that will allow to lay walls, floors, bridges, even towers in the locations you choose.
+[[File:stages.png|center|link= ]]
-While grammars are able to express entire buildings (even cities), I believe we need to start small and allow you to place these smaller elements following your imagination. Also there is little point in generating an entire castle if the building elements are not interesting enough. So we are making sure we have a solid repertoire of grammars before we take on larger things. Even something as simple as a basic stair tool can save you a lot of time.
+I could then create the resulting mesh in the CPU. I would need to iterate through all the edges again, if an edge was crossed, I would output a quadrilateral containing the inner points for the four neighboring voxels.
-[[File:stairs.png|320px|center|link= ]]
+From the start I saw this would require to run three different "jobs" or "kernels" as they are called in OpenCL-speak. One to evaluate the points in the grid, another for intersecting edges, and one last for computing inner points.
-As usual let me know what you think. I'm in particular interested in how many of these do you think we would need for a particular theme, how generic or specific they should be, what kind of parameters would you like to have as inputs.
+A kernel is like a traditional C function that takes multiple parameters. Some parameters are inputs, some are outputs. In most cases, arrays are used to move data in and out.
@@ Line 36: / Line 49: @@
 =Notes=
-* [http://procworld.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/grammar-time.html Procedural World Blog]
+* [http://procworld.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/opencl-first-iteration.html Procedural World Blog]
+*
-[[Category:Research]] [[Category:Game Design]] [[Category:Articles]]  [[Category:Procedural]]  [[Category:Procedural World Blog]]
+[[Category:Research]] [[Category:Game Design]] [[Category:Articles]]  [[Category:Procedural]]  [[Category:Procedural World Blog]] [[Category:OpenCL]] [[Category:Voxel]]