Today we're talking about a 2006 paper that leverages Spherical Harmonics to simplify object visibility and create real-time soft shadows in dynamic settings. By modeling objects as clusters of spheres, it easily handles deformable characters and maintains fluid GPU performance, utilizing spherical harmonic exponentiation for the visibility reconstruction.

Read full paper here:

https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~bosun/images/research/sig06/download/shexp.pdf

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

After all the holiday chaos, we’re finally back; and this time, we'll be talking about the presentation given by Jasmin Patry, Lead Render Engineer at Sucker Punch Productions, during SIGGRAPH 2021 regarding dynamic indirect lighting, atmospheric volumetric lighting, and tonemapping in the game Ghost of Tsushima.Whatch full presentation here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOee6lcEbWg

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

To close out the year, before the December festivities begin, we will discuss this paper—a collaboration between Adobe and NVIDIA—which presents a new method for the real-time rendering of glints found in complex materials such as car paint or brushed surfaces. The proposed technique is based on a modification of the microfacet model (such as GGX and Beckmann) and utilizes Russian roulette-based interpolation to improve visual smoothness between levels of detail.Read full paper:

https://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/boubek/papers/Glinty/Glinty.pdf

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

On this occasion, we will discuss this presentation given by Ari Silvennoinen, Fellow Software Engineer at Activision, during the Advances in Real-Time Rendering at SIGGRAPH 2021, which focuses on the large-scale global illumination system used in games like Call of Duty and Warzone, focusing on aspects such as an adaptive and warped irradiance volume approach to represent lighting in large maps, and a solution to the light leaking problem caused by the disparity between the volumetric resolution and the game's geometry.

Watch full presentation here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snXTGrjfOvQ

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

Today we will analyze this article written by Adrian Bentley, Director of Programming at Sucker Punch Productions, on the PlayStation blog, in which he describes the technological innovations implemented for the game Ghost of Yotei, such as improving the landscape, vegetation, weather (including snow and clouds) and the movement of its character, Atsu; in addition to the GPU compute systems and dynamic terrain deformation, as well as the use of ray tracing for global illumination, and optimizations in loading speed.

Read full article:

https://blog.playstation.com/2025/10/23/ghost-of-yotei-tech-deep-dive/

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

Today we will talk about this presentation given by Tomasz Stachowiak, half of the indie studio Pounce Light, during the Graphics Programming Conference 2025, where he explores the different techniques they used in the engine for their game Tiny Glade, to manage running it on hardware up to 10 years old, from solving problems like shadow acne, global illumination, and depth-of-field using an excessive amount of ray-marching, GPU-driven rendering, and a little bit of ray-tracing.

Watch full presentation here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jusWW2pPnA0

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

Today we will talk about this paper where the authors propose a method to simulate complex light interactions, focusing on the challenge of calculating global illumination using only spatial information from the scene. The main method is based on the development of a generalizable model using a transformer architecture, adapting the Point Transformer V3 network, and is capable of faithfully approximating effects such as soft shadows and color bleeding.

Read full paper here:

https://www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.18189

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

Today we are going to talk about the presentation given by Alex Evans of Media Molecule at SIGGRAPH 2015, where he goes into detail about the research and development of their render system for the game Dreams. They explored various volumetric techniques, including Gigavoxels-based architecture with arduous attempts to achieve transparency using OIT methods, and despite optimizations using froxels to propagate lighting, all prototypes were rejected for not reaching the target performance or the desired picturesque visual styleRead full presentation:

https://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2015/AlexEvans_SIGGRAPH-2015-sml.pdf

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

Today we will discuss this presentation given by Michel Drobot of Activision Publishing during the "Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games" course at SIGGRAPH 2025. The talk focuses on a new solution for Order-Independent Transparency (OIT) using techniques such as voxelization with rasterization and handling overflows with atomic operations to optimize performance on consoles like the PS5.

Leer presentación completa:

https://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2025/content/AVBOIT_SIG2025_MDROBOT-final.pdf

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_

On this occasion, we will discuss this material presented by Obsidian Entertainment's Lead Graphics Engineer, Matt Campbell, during Unreal Fest 2025 in Orlando. It is a detailed technical retrospective on the GPU optimization of the action role-playing video game Avowed. The presentation highlights the custom modifications they implemented, such as the use of ray tracing for local lights and strategies to reduce the overhead of Nanite and VSM, with the ultimate goal of achieving stable performance and ambitious visual targets in a semi-open world.

Watch full presentaion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKaAzhMHJZ0

Original Copyright Free Music written, performed, and produced by TrackTribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK9z2cR8nlM&list=PLFEJ2E5exsjrjRzhJdOYOmTlcYfK3Hz7_