Killzone 2 Tech Director Talks Rendering Technics

Michiel sheds some light on the rendering technics behind Killzone 2 and explains why they decided to take that development approach. He also gives his candid views on the Internet "Hype Train".

"'Deferred rendering' seems to be the buzzword of the moment. What is it, and how does it differ from normal rendering techniques?

Well, a deferred rendering engine separates lighting from drawing geometry. In a traditional forward renderer, you run a pixel shader to sample the material properties (the texture, reflection, et cetera), add the influences from all of the lights, and write out the complete pixel. In a deferred renderer you write out the surface properties (texture, specular intensity, et cetera) first, and then perform lighting on the pixels in screen-space.

The former technique is useful if you have just a few or very static lights, whereas the latter technique comes in handy if you have lots of (small-ish) lights. Okay, so that's an oversimplification, but it is largely correct.

Killzone 2 also features a forward renderer, by the way, to render certain special effects. This includes all transparent materials, but also more complex shaders, like skin and water. "

[Genki]

and it's nice to hear something different about this game for a change.

[Solid_Skip]

JUST give me the game its nice to hear updates but iam ready for the game.

[beavis4play]

i'd settle for the demo right now.

[nobizlikesnowbiz]

You've got quite a bit more waiting before this game...

[Tryst]

So what quarter of 2008 is this game due to release?

[nobizlikesnowbiz]

4th? Pretty sure at least.

[YoMeViet]

Gamestop has it listed as a 03/04/08, they're pretty good with dates since they have better info than anyone else about release dates. They were also the first ones to change the release date of MGS4 when it was pushed back to 08.

[AIZEN SOZUKE]

im just waiting for new level footage, and new weathering, and new vehicle gameplay to show off the new graphics

[info]

I would point you all to the actual slides they refer to at the end of the article (just follow the link to the PDF of their presentation).

The whole thing is technical but it breaks down how the engine work.
Near the end of the pdf you can see how the SPU have been allocated to specific tasks (only 4 are used out of 7) and more interestingly what is too be added from what we have already seen! (page 52 and 53 of the Pdf)

I can`t believe they are going to add Ambient occlusion in the mix.
Its already computer intensive sampling computation for a Pre rendered image. That is something that will definitely improve the visual.
You will notice in the trailer (rela time) how when they are grouped talking about the mission, there are no contact shadows on the floor. The character seem to float a little, ambient occlusion will make this look much more real.

Check out the list

[DJ]

The number of rendered layers per frame is insane, in addition to the forward rendering done on things that Deferred has trouble with (transparency). They even had a diagram of how they organize all the different functions on the SPEs.

[karlostomy]

But I cannot wait for this game.
This will sell PS3 systems.

[AIZEN SOZUKE]

killzone is a game to show that sony wasnt lying about ps3 being able to do movie level graphics in playable and realtime form, told ya

[Solid_Skip]

would they be able to sell there engine to other comp's like the unreal engine? it would be nice if they could. it would be great to help out other games or other companys that dont know how to make the ps3 work for them