“Rendering Wounds in Left 4 Dead 2”
omp sounds very interesting, sort of remember rob expounding on it’s virtues @ polycount as well?
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[QUOTE=gashworm;5889]“Rendering Wounds in Left 4 Dead 2”
http://alex.vlachos.com/graphics/Vlachos-GDC10-Left4Dead2Wounds.pdf[/QUOTE]
This looks fantastic… was Maya used just for prototyping??
was actual ellipsoid culling and wound geometry/texture viewable within
Maya as well?
:nod:
Yes, they were viewable in Maya. Due to the limitations of the HLSL plugin, however, the culling was applied post-skin instead of pre-skin. In consequence, the culled area didn’t deform with the mesh. We didn’t make any investment to solve that, because we could already more easily see the results in our model viewer. There, it was easy to quickly cycle through the hundreds of animations of the horde members to see how the wounds worked in motion. We also had the ability to activate them in-game through the console to review them en masse, seeing the same wound simultaneously on a variety of infected.
Here are my slides, which contain more information about the authoring of the wound sets, along with the variation system for the horde:
http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2010/GDC10_ShaderTechniquesL4D2.pdf
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great stuff Rob. 
[QUOTE=Bronwen;6194]Yes, they were viewable in Maya. Due to the limitations of the HLSL plugin, however, the culling was applied post-skin instead of pre-skin. In consequence, the culled area didn’t deform with the mesh. We didn’t make any investment to solve that, because we could already more easily see the results in our model viewer. There, it was easy to quickly cycle through the hundreds of animations of the horde members to see how the wounds worked in motion. We also had the ability to activate them in-game through the console to review them en masse, seeing the same wound simultaneously on a variety of infected.
Here are my slides, which contain more information about the authoring of the wound sets, along with the variation system for the horde:
http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2010/GDC10_ShaderTechniquesL4D2.pdf[/QUOTE]
Thanks for sharing Bronwen. : ) As a tech artist and a big Left 4 Dead fan (and all things Valve for that matter), I’m fascinated by the creative solutions needed to pull off these sorts of effects. By the way, the “Introducing New Tools to Artists without Getting Spitballed” article that you contributed to Game Developer Magazine was excellent. I think it speaks to what the job is really about for us on a personal level (i.e. helping others to excel at and to love their jobs even more). : )
[QUOTE=Bronwen;6194]Yes, they were viewable in Maya. Due to the limitations of the HLSL plugin, however, the culling was applied post-skin instead of pre-skin. In consequence, the culled area didn’t deform with the mesh. We didn’t make any investment to solve that, because we could already more easily see the results in our model viewer. There, it was easy to quickly cycle through the hundreds of animations of the horde members to see how the wounds worked in motion. We also had the ability to activate them in-game through the console to review them en masse, seeing the same wound simultaneously on a variety of infected.
Here are my slides, which contain more information about the authoring of the wound sets, along with the variation system for the horde:
http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2010/GDC10_ShaderTechniquesL4D2.pdf[/QUOTE]
This is awesome reading. It’s given me food for thought in the brute-force vs. elegant and cunning solution continuum.