Comment by redox99

Comment by redox99 a day ago

9 replies

Gaussian splats don't offer the flexibility required for your typical videogame. Since it isn't true PBR its lighting is kind of hardcoded. Rigging doesn't work well with it. And editing would be very hard.

It's good for visualizing something by itself, but not for building a scene out of it.

jtolmar a day ago

People are working on recovering PBR properties, rigging, and editing. I think those are all solveable over time. I wouldn't start a big project with it today, but maybe in a couple years.

If you want a real cursed problem for Gaussian splats though: global illumination. People have decomposed splat models into separate global and PBR colors, but I have no clue how you'd figure out where that global illumination came from, let alone recompute it for a new lighting situation.

jayd16 a day ago

Yeah no animation is a pretty big blocker. The tech can handle video clips tho.

I wonder if it's possible to do some kind of blendshape style animation, where you blend between multiple recorded poses.

  • kridsdale1 15 hours ago

    Early 3D engines and of course all the 16 bit 2D games had “canned animation”. Half Life was an early example I can think of that used real IK rigging. Unreal 1 did not.

    • redox99 8 hours ago

      For half life it would be FK (forward kinematics). IK I assume was introduced in HL2 (but I don't know for a fact)

      • account42 7 hours ago

        Even HL2 is mostly just normal (FK) animations. IK is just used for limited cases, namely making sure feet touch the ground on sloped surfaces.

        • redox99 2 hours ago

          Yeah that applies to any modern game as well. IK is used for touchups and procedural stuff. Everything else is FK (obviously during authoring IK is used).

fidotron a day ago

It would next extension and extra parameters, but plenty of AAA assets have had their shaders produced by cameras with fancy lighting rigs for many years.