ExileCon 2023 - Rendering Path of Exile 2

A talk from Alexander Sannikov, a programmer at Grinding Gear Games. Recorded at ExileCon 2023.
You can find Alexander's KZbin channel here: / @alexander_sannikov
The Shadertoy Alexander mentions during the talk can be found here: www.shadertoy....
Alexander's article on Radiance Cascades can be found here: drive.google.c...

[@olmaned3795]

a game can't have a better marketing campaign than just puting the pople that worked on it in the spotlight and have them talk about what they do. the only condition is they have to be as passionate about their jobs as the guys from GGG. like check out this guy, he likes his job so much he wants to share what he does with everyone and doesn't understand why people working on other games don't share their ideas as well 5:41 bless his heart

[@dddaaa6965]

Yes it can, lole giving every player $100 or even better $1000 or even better 10000 or even better 100000 or even better 10000000 or even better 100000000 or EVNE bettrm10000000000 or even better b100000000000000

[@GooseMugs]

This approach has caused a lot of bad press too. Notoriously "you guys don't have phones?" was said by a project lead at Blizzard and caused massive backlash. You can't just put anyone on a stage and have them captivate people and really sell your product. I still love the transparency and passion that is evident from presentations like this.

[@cdcerr]

I imagine most of the people at the bleeding edge of computer graphics feel the same way as he does in regard to the sharing of information. They all come from heavy research backgrounds with PhDs in something related to computer graphics, they are used to the necessary sharing of information in the context of scientific research. These guarded proprietary solutions to general graphics problems have to be frustrating for them.

[@Superscope64]

​@@GooseMugs Difference here is one is talking about graphical techniques for a free to play game that people actually like verses one trying to 'sell' a extremely shitty mobile cash grab.

[@olmaned3795]

@@GooseMugs that "do you guys not have phones" guy doesn't meet the passion citeria.

[@darkenblade986]

people do not understand just how VALUABLE this information is. This guy is giving it for free is amazing. Like he said at the start other game companies try to keep this info a secret. Thank you so much!

[@darkbibni]

I don't get it. it's not true, we got a hundreds of Game dev talks everywhere sharing about game design / game architecture / rendering / network / physics / AI and such as GDC or SIGGRAPH in a more generic field. There is a lot of talk from all sort of companies from AAA to indie companies. But it takes time, cause you need to focus on the project first. And you have to prepare a big presentation after the game is released else you broke the Non-Disclosure Agreement.

[@danielz.8447]

Right ?! Damn, actually got goosebumps listening

[@FreeFlow__]

Ok smart aleck

[@droojohnson]

@@darkbibni he’s providing a lovely overview of performant solutions to common problems in realtime graphics, you don’t often get these techniques packaged together in a sampler that provides you with all the terminology you need to *actually* dig deeper if you want to.

[@Nerohgg]

0:56 Flowing Materials 3:22 Subsurface Raymarching 6:42 Subsurface Shadows 8:08 Contact Parallax 10:00 Decals/Motion Vectors 15:38 Bent Normals Shadows 17:51 CPU/GPU Particles 20:18 Breaking Waves 24:48 Fields 26:51 Global Illumination 31:01 Hierarchical Radiance Cascades (GI cont.) 39:41 Q&A Was really cool to watch the GI and Cascade sections and I don't even do gamedev! Love the passion.

[@Kyoth3]

Thanks, good sir.

[@doraemon4516]

thanks

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

Since the talk I have a published a paper on Radiance Cascades. Unfortunately YT does not allow posting links in comments or even mentioning your own videos by name, so.. I guess I can only tell you that there's an announcement on my channel with a link to it?

[@olivierdulac]

If you are the presenter, thank you for this mazing talk. I still have troubles understanding how increasing the amount of light sources (thousands of fireballs) doesn't end up being O(n*n) or maybe O(n logn) but you end up ... O(1) ?? I will need to rewatch it and try to grok it. What number os that constant-limit based on? pixels on the screen? cubes of space?

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

@@olivierdulac basically it calculates lighting from every pixel of the screen on every other pixel of the screen. Fireballs obviously still have rasterization cost, but the cost of calculating indirect lighting of the scene is fixed, because the total number of pixels does not change.

[@Recessionist]

Hey @Alexander_Sannikov - I'm not super experienced with graphics programming, but I do have a couple questions : Since this is screen-space, do you work on pixel buffers that are larger than the screen resolution in order to include light sources just outside of the frustum that contribute to the lighting on screen ? Also, how do you deal with light sources that are occluded from view by geometry ? E.g. a lantern under a porch.

[@joshuahensley9395]

That man is happier about lighting rendering then I am anything.

[@LukeGeaney]

TwoMinutePapers is also very happy about light rendering... maybe it's an awesome job?? What a time to be alive.

[@Pokepunk]

this guy helps me get more frames on my shitty PC. bless you my friend

[@bakalakadaka7000]

Dang! Barely 8 minutes in and already i feel like I am taking a course in CG. Super interesting and this is probably my favourite of the series of Exilecon vids, the same as the previous one. Edit: Man, it's mesmerising I finished the whole thing without realising. Amazing stuff, Mr Sannikov!

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

Thanks!

[@honordevs]

As someone learning how to program shaders for my own development, these talks are absolutely gold. Extremely interesting and I love the perspective that GGG introduces in the space.

[@wasabitoothpaste5452]

This guy should get so much more credit than people give him 😲

[@Pre-Expatriate]

Agreed. I think most people just kind of take this kind of presentation as something to skip over but you can tell he absolutely loves and knows what he is doing and it's wonderful to see.

[@aladorn]

This is the gigachad talk...LOOOVE it

[@janninesanchez1091]

This guy is amazing

[@rubisco5997]

This was my favorite talk during all of exilecon! And i'll watch it again!

[@TheRedBrain]

This was cool! I'm not a graphics guy, but just the idea of this thing getting exponentially cheaper the better it gets is just mind blowing :D Absolutely fascinating

[@therbeeo5364]

Thanks Alexander, amazing talk! Sharing all this hidden knowledge about graphics design is really admirable.

[@AnoterosHershy]

You can tell he really enjoys his work. Makes his presentation very digestible. Nice work!

[@onerimeuse]

I've watched this several times, and Alexanders joy talking about what he's been able to accomplish is endlessly intoxicating.

[@VerticalCorrect]

With all these segments coming out from ExileCon i feel like i'm taking a whole education in Path of Exile. And I love it ... Amazing work from everyone involved!

[@Gurangaa]

Саня, ты лучший!

[@sagielevy]

What an amazing talk and what an amazing guy! GI at constant speed.. this is something else

[@fleity]

Ohh wow, just discovered this video. this talk is pure gold. So many extremely useful approaches to apply. Some caught me by surprise as they somewhat flip the default way on its head but hey if it works. As a technical artist I can relate to not playing games like a normal human though :P It's a bit sad so few people are in the audience but I hope this gets more recognition online.

[@balkzoldick6160]

Great great work and one of the best marketing advert... great work Alexander Sannikov

[@aspidinton]

This was amazing!

[@mattyryon]

TAA is a terrible blurry mess, thank goodness it won't force it on us

[@theswamps6589]

10:48 yeah for some reason that is one of the things that bothers me the most in games, nice to see all these explained so passionately This man def knows what hes doing and its sweet how passionate he is about sharing the information. 13:05 in digital music production theres a similar tech when chopping audio samples, here its called "crossfading", basically a transition between two audio clips that makes it seem smooth by fading in the latter sample and fading out the former audio sample

[@FReeck216]

Great presentation! Spasibo!

[@raviolin]

i'm not even a game developer and i don't even play Path of Exile, but i enjoyed this presentation anyway. so informative!

[@bravefastrabbit770]

Fuckyes, it's The Guy!

[@xing1992]

very nice video. It was presented in very clear, understandable and entertaining way :)

[@XeqteMusic]

I was really exicited watching this. as a 3D and graphic artist myself I can say that this guy and all other artists that works behind it deserves more credit. but one thing that I know of and I know that PoE doesn't need that type of effect, but I think the hardest thing to achieve (and not to fake it) would be caustics effect - effect of light rays passing through refracted and distorted surface then bouncing on other surface. it's kinda easy to fake it with prebaked or overlayed fake textures but to achieve real effect is so hard to calculate in computer graphics and it's heavy + time consuming! once more, awesome presentation, more people should watch it so they can appreciate more people behind the scene!

[@infinitenex8165]

This was super insightful and Alexander looks like a really cool and passionate guy. Makes me appreciate the game even more.

[@f0kes32]

That was incredible!

[@buggydust]

very fascinating talk!

[@lxw6657]

all 9 people in the crowd are in on some great shit

[@rmasoni]

This is absolutely fascinating!

[@abitfrosty]

Math is mesmerizing. Thanks for inspiration.

[@vano2vano]

Amazing. Thanks you!

[@paradical]

in times of game companies falling to greed and mediocracy it's just comforting to know that there are people like Alexander out there spreading the passion for their craft. Just inspiring...

[@MrWxar]

Man at this rate this guy in 10 years will be legendary in his field, if he isn't already. The guy just think at night how he can do better on something they already were first to do the previous year. And just wanna F__ing improve it anyway. Just amazed. I might have understood only half of the presentation, but I did listen to all of it that's for sure. GG

[@pharaoh2426]

Universities: Come pay us exorbitant fees to learn how to be a game designer. This guy: Hold my granite flask.

[@ferinzz]

Dude just looked at raytracing and said 'hold my beer'

[@arekwork]

This guy is fuckign awesome ! Mind-blowing work !!

[@ardni1]

Incredible work

[@caosking7869]

it is so sad how there were so few people i wish i was there

[@Seisure33]

meanwhile d4 devs: lets load the contents of the chest of all players each time you access it...all dev teams from blizz should look at this seminar (cuz it is basically a seminar at this point)

[@cspalmitu]

And that's is how you build a master piece

[@leederlee]

i have no idea what he talks about - but this guy seems like the one guy you can´t just pay a lot of money and get him. hes like 1 in a million and GGG seems to have a few of those guys working on POE2. that will be the best arpg period. definetly!

[@wilsown1464]

amazing!

[@squrrilslayer]

Brain = 🤯 What a time to be alive!

[@hail_2_u321]

Hold on to ur paper

[@MechShark]

This was amazing. I recently got into Godot - custom game engines are another beast. Simulating a world is at the pinnacle of complexity, let alone while also being performance-minded.

[@ThaShogun]

This is what the gaming scene has needed, people that are just passionate about their craft. Somewhere gaming has came from how much money it can make not the craft behind the game.

[@paxtream100]

its crazy how such a game can be FREE

[@spbalance]

That "audience" doesn't deserve this presentation or his time.

[@Sqlurt]

Absolute gigachad

[@BeardGuardian]

between this and last years rendering talk I think Exilecon is publishing more interesting and useful rendering talks than GDC.

[@Grizzleface]

this was amazing. so glad they let this guy rip

[@Chaotic-Star-3-6-9]

the global illumination part was cool

[@mtrs-u9o]

Game of the decade!

[@l-dog]

idk wtf I'm watching but I cant stop watching. This company is badass.

[@evertonbarbon2538]

Thanks GGG, you are the best gaming company in the world

[@Benettor20]

nice

[@alanleonardopiovesan]

The GOD Alexander Sannikov

[@stephenkamenar]

that all looks very nice, but can it run on a computer without a 4090?

[@christerjakobsen8107]

It already does in Path of Exile 1, they've been using Global Illumination in that game for a while now.

[@OfficialMaddeck]

Hope they fix the SFX impacting on performance.

[@slayer418]

So is the new GI technique already used in PoE1?

[@slizgi86]

This is amazing talk, just not sure if it is for ExileCon, this should be on GDC or some other Game Dev convention, not on convention for players/gamers... It is amazing just missing the 99% of target audience.

[@maskofapathy1]

This is awesome! I can't wait to disable all of it and play on lowest graphics settings.

[@zokocx]

While this dude is working on PoE2 graphics game looks and optimization is in good hands.

[@Superscope64]

45:04 Sure... you can 'talk' about techniques to others, but implementing them is a completely different story!

[@freeq1981]

gi를 디테일하게 계산할수록 연산하는데 들어가는 비용이 점점 더 낮아진다고??! ..... 이건 그래픽에서 노벨상감인데...게임개발이 문제가 아니라.. 컴퓨터 그래픽의 패러다임이 바뀔 정도인데..

[@nebucadneza1914]

Yeah

[@andeeznation]

Is there more than 5 people in the audience? Also Exilecon was ages ago now so why are these clips so late?

[@bogdanlazy1997]

it was early morning in NZ when this panel starts, so most of audience sleeping in hotels

[@ecMonify]

define "ages ago" :P

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

Everybody was attending Jonathan's presentation that just happened to be at the same time where he showcased PoE 2's gameplay.

[@kizzagaming6523]

But path of exile 1 still hasn't finished rendering!

[@artieschmidt3039]

what an absolute chad "yeah, we revolutionized global illumination no big deal"

[@foxdavion6865]

What people think when they look at PoE2: Amazing 3D graphics! Global Illumination! Ray Tracing! What PoE2 *Actually* is: Combination of Clever and Cutting Edge 2D Graphics over simple 3D geometry, Hieratical Light Probe Cascade that can also do Specular GI (Reflections). (lol ray tracing, lol RTX, lol needing a $2000 Graphics Card, your $900 Radeon from 2021 is perfectly fine, you just need a decent CPU and fast RAM because it's an ARPG).

[@LastEmpireOfMusic]

its sad how there is not enough minds at these events who can deal with that content.

[@bottlewisp]

pretty neat

[@kamilandrzej6420]

Polska czeka na spolszczenie!;)

[@arcado5783]

0:57

[@Qonvex]

Alexander the Great !! :)

[@Neuroheads]

When he says expensive is he commenting on computing cost or dollars?

[@briceg986]

Computer only

[@efaced]

He means in computational power. Something that's computationally expensive, takes a very strong CPU/GPU to process in time. Global illumination is something that's expensive. And it seems he kind of figured out how to make it exponentionally less expensive which is simply mind blowing.

[@TKnightTea]

Guy literally using every possible tool to optimize the resource cost of the engine and just improving the overall quality of every aspect.

[@tomiramone]

Gi exploit in reality, fuck yeah

[@DarkLineSnes]

all i know is that i'll have to play on very low to be able to play it.

[@Alfheidhr]

Will the 2nd game be a job like the 1st one, where you have to sink hundreds upon hundreds of hours to get a viable build, or will it simply be made for everyone?

[@lequebecois4203]

this will destroy D4 !! long live POE

[@alleyv6624]

This man scares me, he has a sinister look XD

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

Wha~ why?

[@Experternas]

link me to his own channel/soc account where he post stuff?

[@АртемРаєвський-к9г]

kzbin.info/door/ly0QRJAaJ2UGSGycOQoOdA

[@SamIhsan06]

kzbin.info/door/ly0QRJAaJ2UGSGycOQoOdA

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

It's here.

[@ZoryArky]

didnt started watching yet, but i really hope they won't say "We rely so much on shadows that we are going to make impossible to turn off shadows, both on poe1 and poe2"...

[@ZoryArky]

Welp, that was, by far, the best panel in the series lel

[@veqv]

Lmao, did you just rediscover FFT?

[@666evo666]

Very cool until mtx covers it all up and it becomes like PoE1, some where over the rainbow in a wonderful rabbit hole acid trip...with one skill being indistinguishable from the next.

[@jeremyjohnson7676]

Blizzard left our solar system....

[@gaussniwre866]

You don't hear about this GI technique because nVidia and AMD don't like it...

[@aviatedviewssound4798]

Haha nvidia doesn't like it, since it's a compute method which amd is better at.

[@tutasdesya1227]

Maybe add RTX ?)

[@giuseppevgiordano]

there is literraly only one thing I want from PoE 2, the sound design in poe is so bad that the second advice to people with low end hardware(after lowering the settings) is to mute the game to gain fps. for the love of god, I played this game muted for 2 thousand hours before getting a decent pc and a lot of your community does so today, get your shit together and hire someone to fix this bug if you have no idea how to do it

[@seregar9391]

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@yabani2012]

Guess we have to stop saying its a chinese game on global 😅

[@jiawenlu9613]

Plz add dlss and fsr

[@RomanEngine]

GOD PLEASE NO

[@vladimirsemkovich3021]

Account locked (banned) after support pack purchased from "wrong" region Hi my account was locked/banned by GGG after I bought 2 supporter packs and paid it from a different region. Im in Australia and there is no "Australian" region in shop, so I used another region and payment was accepted by GGG multiple times a month ago. In POE shop there is no "special region prices" for pack/items, all prices are adjusted based on a currency conversion rate, so no gain or lose for me or them, thus no "fraud". However I was banned without any ability to find another solution or money back. It is the same situation as you paid with your international credit card in another country, but the seller will tell you that you paid with the wrong "region" card so he takes the money and bans you from entering the shop and takes your goods. I can easily can create a fresh Epic account and play poe again but I dont want to do it as I dont understand WHY the company behave like that without any REAL reason, as there is no gain for me and no loss for the company on the conversion rate) , only to punish the active player for their support. Not a good way to keep the player base which is not that big in mid-season especially.

[@playthemgames2380]

I've seen this one months ago already...

[@bravefastrabbit770]

Poor you😥

[@thewishingpig]

Yeah these talks are from Exilecon, it says that in the title

[@mgkpraesi]

I dont realy care. Just include the Economy INSIDE the freaking Game this time around!