Ati's truform question

[m16a2m203 0]

After looking at a few screen shots and playing with truform in action on player models for Unreal2 and UT2 I have found that on a relatively medium system with high-end vid card you can have a nice improvement in these models with very little in fps drop.

So I quess my question is whether or not BIS has considered using this tech in the past and would it improve the player models here as well? From what I have briefly read on the internet is only a slight addition of coding is required for a program to be able to use truform.

[toadeater 0]

What is it?

[USMC Sniper 0]

Truform was made by ATI, it increases the amount of polys to make things more smooth and lifelife.

Nice avatar, toadeater!

[Chronicles 0]

To illustrate what the trueform option make , i found these pics for you

More polygons are very nice to look , but it can have +/- big impact on performance ingame

[kegetys 2]

I do not know much about truform, but honestly the concept seems a bit stupid to me, if you want more polygons, smoother surfaces etc. then you are better off doing that to the original model, either my modeling it with more detail or use a custom made "software" algorithm which suits your model(s) the best and works without the need of special hardware. Using a "generic" algorithm on the video card sounds very limited and hard work to get it to actually be of use.

[m16a2m203 0]

But thats the supposed beauty of it K. Less work with a better result -

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Low barrier to entry for programmers

Programmers who make use of ATI's Truform technology can tell their software applications to use Truform on the entire screen image or just on specific models.

To implement Truform in a 3D application, Nalasco told MacCentral that it's as easy as writing a single line of code that activates support for the technology. Chances are, though, that software developers will want to customize Truform support in their applications, since there are entire libraries of objects that wouldn't really benefit from an increased polygon mesh -- any object that's comprised of straight surfaces, for example -- like walls, floors and ceilings in a game. Programmers can also define the level of detail they would like to apply using Truform. <span id='postcolor'>

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Better detail without a performance hit

Nalasco said that Truform-enhanced software applications will be able to provide much more detailed, complex models than we've seen previously, without significantly impacting the application's performance -- in fact, in many cases, without impacting performance at all.

"Truform all happens inside the chip. You can almost think of it as pre-processing,"<span id='postcolor'>

All I really would like to know if BIS has tried it out yet on any of their models and how the results came out. If favorable then I'm just pushing the idea of adding support for it either now or in future versions of OFP.

[kegetys 2]

Problem is, that there is no way for the video card to know which part of the rendered scene is really supposed to be a smooth surface, and what part is a "corner". If you just apply some truform algorithm everywhere you will get round corners and smooth surfaces where they do not belong. Thus, you need to define which parts of the model are round and which way, and this means going through all the models and applying truform where it would be needed. With the same trouble you could just remodel those parts, or use your own algorithm which would work without the need of truform support for everyone.

[bn880 5]

Actually I'm pretty sure they provide a way for both types of shapes, low poly, and sub-divided. I have been thinking over the last couple of days (oh no) about OFP2, and I think (dare I say this) what needs major improvement to make the game more amazing are the graphics (2nd is sound). Having OFP2 support any such "hardware" subdivision technology would be amazing... BIS is already working on pixel shading, this could be a good time to look into HW subdivision.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Programmers who make use of ATI's Truform technology can tell their software applications to use Truform on the entire screen image or just on specific models. <span id='postcolor'> There you go.

[Die Alive 0]

I don't own a ATI card with Truform technology. What's in it for me?

-=Die Alive=-

[bn880 5]

An option. If I don't own a 7.1 or 5.1 Creative card what's in it for me that the software supports it? What's in it for me when I don't own 3 monitors and an expensive video card but OFP supports it? Options and possibilities.

[toadeater 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (m16a2m203 @ Feb. 19 2003,14:28)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">All I really would like to know if BIS has tried it out yet on any of their models and how the results came out. If favorable then I'm just pushing the idea of adding support for it either now or in future versions of OFP.<span id='postcolor'>

Yeah, that might be nice to see. But if you want to find out right now, you can take an existing model and subdivide it in a 3D program to get an idea of how it would look with Truform. Could even import it back into OFP I suppose.

I also read something else about Truform today, seems that it is really a feature of DirectX, which could be implemented by any 3D card maker:

"TRUFORM is ATI's implementation of N-Patch technology that is included in Microsoft's DirectX 8 & OpenGL. ATI TRUFORM technology only requires one line of code to be added to a new or existing game as the work is done in the T&L (transform, light & clip) section of ATI's chip. It can be applied to every 3D game. It is hoped that the user will be given the ability to either turn off or on and be able to control the degree of tessellation and hence picture quality."

If that claim is true, BIS should try it out, doesn't seem like there's anything to lose.

[ALDEGA 0]

The whole trueform thing was brought up a long time ago. I believe Maruk said that he'd investigate it and see if it's really "just one line of code". It's been many months since then

[suma 8]

Unfortunatelly marketing papers are often exaggerating. It definitelly takes more than just one line of code to get TruForm working (if it was that simple ATI could easily expose a switch into a control panel which could enable user to force the card to use TruForm, just the way it is done with FSAA). Here is an excerpt from ATI Web site:

How much work does it take to start using TRUFORMâ„¢ in my game?

...

There are three basic steps to using TRUFORMâ„¢ in your game:

Art preparation

Vertex Buffer creation/layout

Rendering

You can check more at ATI Developer website if interested.

[m16a2m203 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Suma @ Feb. 20 2003,16:51)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Unfortunatelly marketing papers are often exaggerating...<span id='postcolor'>

Those bastards! Well just for kicks I put in a request over at the OFPEC for someone who owns 3d Studio, if possible, just to load up a soldier model and export it without "cleaning it up" just to see what would happen at the different levels. Hopefully they'll post some pics back here.

[toadeater 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (m16a2m203 @ Feb. 20 2003,19:18)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Suma @ Feb. 20 2003,16:51)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Unfortunatelly marketing papers are often exaggerating...<span id='postcolor'>

Those bastards!    Well just for kicks I put in a request over at the OFPEC for someone who owns 3d Studio, if possible, just to load up a soldier model and export it without "cleaning it up" just to see what would happen at the different levels. Hopefully they'll post some pics back here.<span id='postcolor'>

Ok, I hope somebody does it.