GDC 2011 – Approximating Translucency for a Fast, Cheap and Convincing Subsurface Scattering Look

This year, I’ll be presenting at GDC (Game Developers Conference), along other great speakers from EA (especially DICE).

The talk is about a very cheap and fast approximation of translucency that will allow developers to add convincing subsurface scattering to their scenes with minimal impact on performance. The technique is excellent in a wide variety of scenes, using anything from minimal to massive numbers of lights. Here’s a quick summary of my talk, which you can also find on the GDC website.

[Title]

Approximating translucency for a Fast, Cheap, and convincing Subsurface Scattering Look

[Description]

In real-time computer graphics, the interaction of light and matter is often reduced to local reflection described by Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BRDFs). While this mathematical model is valid for describing surface reflectance of opaque objects, many objects in nature are partly translucent: light travels within the surface. To simulate translucent properties of objects in real-time, such as subsurface scattering (in human skin and other surfaces), developers rely on complex and expensive techniques. Conversely, this talk presents a fast and scalable approximation of translucency for a convincing subsurface scattering look which can be implemented on current and next generation video gaming systems.

[Takeaway]

Developers attending this session will be able to improve their game’s visuals by adding real-time translucency to their scenes with minimal impact on the run-time, as demonstrated using EA DICE’s Frostbite engine. Moreover, this effect, once limited to offline rendering, will undeniably help developers in creating a more complete and immersive gaming experience.

[Intended Audience]

Reaching stakeholders from several disciplines of video game development, this talk is intended for all individuals that share common goals in terms of real-time graphics and that strive towards improving the visual quality of tomorrow’s games: rendering programmers, technical artists, art directors and technical art directors.

Visit this website for more info on other great talks to be presented.

See you at GDC!