實時光線追蹤是未來的發展趨勢 | 使用SUBSTANCE製作NVDIA PROJECT SOL中的材質
Pierre Bosset on October 3 2018 | Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Stories, Tutorials
NVIDIA的《Project Sol》在YouTube上的點擊量過百萬，受到了3D社區的高度讚譽，這表明實時光線追蹤技術所取得的成就以及NVIDIA RTX的強大實力。我們與NVIDIA（https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/）從事Project Sol項目才華橫溢的美術師們交流，他們向我們展示這次演示的內容以及在製作過程中如何使用Substance, 其中有一個完整的視頻向我們分步展示如何使用Substance Painter為資源創建材質。
簡介
Gavriil： 大家好，我是Gavriil Klimov（https://www.artstation.com/hexeract）。一名硬質表面設計師兼美術總監。我從事這個行業已經10年了，曾經製作過電影和電影藝術相關的產品設計。
Jacob:：大家好，我是Jacob Norris（https://www.artstation.com/purepolygons）。一名環境美術師，從事遊戲和3D圖形近10年了。有人通過我在PurePolygons（https://www.google.com/url？q=https://www.purepolygons.com/&sa=D&ust=1538390727150000&usg=AFQjCNEJEPGMRc62i-B22L18QV6uSB3rhg）的作品認識了我，在PurePolygons創建了教程和3D資源，用於銷售與遊戲社區共享。
Gavriil：2014年的一段時間以及2015年的大部分時間我都在NVIDIA做兼職工作。最終2015年我成為該公司的全職員工。不久前我就被任命組建一支美術團隊，負責創建NVIDIA的原創內容。《Project Sol》就是我們早期作品之一，希望未來會有更多的作品：）
Jacob：就背景而言，我為許多AAA開發者工作過，製作了一些非常有趣但也很成功的遊戲項目，在與一些非常有才華的同事合作中也獲得很多經驗和知識。我還設法在自由職業，個人項目和指導機會可能的情況下做了額外的工作。2016年我在NVIDIA開始做兼職，於2016年底我終於成為這裡一名全職工作人員。從那以後我一直在NVIDAI工作，我對於組建的這個強大的團隊非常滿意，對於未來我們將要合作開發的項目也感到很高興。
我們在《Project Sol》中分擔的角色
Gavriil：我是一名藝術總監，並在《Project Sol》中擔任這個角色。項目初期的時候，我構思了最初的概念設計，確定項目的整體外觀和感受。我不僅為伺服臂繪製草圖，還繪製了室內空間3D草圖。然後，團隊的其他成員開始設計其他內容。最終我們設計完成整個內部空間，然後開始整合。
我始終希望保證我們是作為一個整體團隊在工作。努力達到總體設計的統一和清晰。在整個設計過程中我都堅持這個理念，在其他流程中例如製作紋理，VFX視覺特效和燈光也是如此。一切都銜接好；如果在這個過程中有什麼變化，就需要修改最初的核心內容，保證更新的內容體現我們的最新理念。我密切跟蹤整個項目過程所有方面的進展狀況，我們的團隊做的很棒，特別是在截止日期很近的情況下。團隊每個人都做到最優。
Jacob：我們仍舊只是NVIDAI從事這個項目的一個小型藝術家團隊，所以在製作Sol的時候我需要充當不同的角色。我與Gavriil協同合作，轉換並完善高多邊形建模，在最後的項目製作階段根據環境將Gregor Kopka（https://www.artstation.com/scrutch） 和 Ilya Shelementsev（https://www.artstation.com/devmod）的高多邊形建模作品轉換為遊戲中的資源。從項目初期，我就開始制定工作流程創建Substance Painter中的資源使用的智能材質和著色器。
我在項目中也負責照明，後處理設置，層級內資源放置的工作。我們對觀眾反饋的策略非常開放。如果有人評論環境貼圖或者與其他團隊成員分享，這也是很不錯的。我認為最好的方式就是作為一名美術師要不斷完善自己。有時我自己或Gavriil也會給Fred Hopper（https://www.artstation.com/freddyhoops）一些反饋，幫助確定環境貼圖內VFX視覺特效的外觀，如果你之前沒有看過Fred的作品，一定會認為效果非常不錯。我相信你一定看過，只是不知道那是他的作品。David Lesperance
（https://www.artstation.com/metalman123456123）是在項目進行到一半的時候加入的。他幫助將場景帶入最後階段，使用Substance Painter與我共同為資源製作紋理，在UE4中還做了許多其他的工作，例如修改完善作品，建模，以及視頻中最後的藝術工作。我在項目中只是做了一些鏡頭工作，大多數工作是由天才動畫師Brian Robison完成的，他在《Project Sol》中功不可沒。最後我完成了「每個鏡頭」的照明通道，使視覺物體儘可能地閃光，真正地展示RTX。
來自社區的讚譽
Gavriil：展示的圖表有了很大的改進，我認為，也希望這個作品能受到大家喜愛。從根本上說，現在所有光線追蹤的內容都應是脫機渲染。《Project Sol》是實時運行並且全程由光線追蹤。光照，反射，AO環境光遮蔽，GI全局光照，都是光線追蹤。
圖靈機代表著一段時間來圖表科技最大的變化，也許其影響相當於當時GeForce 3架構回歸。我們的開發人員在產品中終於使用這種科技我非常高興。其前景非常光明。
Jacob:實時光線追蹤代表了未來的發展方向。從在3D領域工作開始我就一直夢想著這一切。它為創建現實主義作品提供了優勢，在Raster Rendering光柵渲染中不需要通過辨別真假這樣繁瑣的程序，這將是我們的一大救星。我還能想像在遊戲中使用這項技術-例如將鏡子「配件」扔在地上，這樣可以看到角落周圍的敵人，以及敵人從上面落下時的陰影銳度差異，敵人距離地面越近，柔和的陰影就越清晰，這就表示離你的距離有多遠。如果人們能創造性地使用這項技術，那麼這項技術在遊戲中會有很大的用處。
正因為如此，我想人們觀看任何事物都在使用這項技術，而且不斷地學習這項技術會很高興。當然，我認為演示真的都很不錯；我想人們一定非常欣賞我們投入的大量時間，我們盡全力展示這項技術的方式。希望未來我們有機會創作更多類似的作品，繼續分享使用RTX助力我們完成任務給我們帶來的重大優勢和現實主義。
演示展示了哪些內容？
Gavriil：首先演示的目的就是展示實時光線追蹤技術。前面提到，一切事物都使用光線追蹤。光照，AO環境光遮蔽，等等。所以我們的重點是展示一些美的事物，同時展示目前光柵化技術的局限性。我們的電影作品中有許多鏡頭，如果沒有光線追蹤技術是無法實現的，因此，其他的鏡頭也更加美觀，更精確。
很不錯的例子就是將物體離開鏡頭反射到鏡頭內的物體上。在整個電影製作的過程中都會出現這樣的問題。例如，幾乎在每個鏡頭中都能看到主要角色反射到鏡頭外的黃色機器人胳膊上，在移動的時候總是變換位置。而Cubemaps立方體貼圖卻無法實現這一點。
另一個典型的例子，就是彈射吊艙打開的時候，從相反的角度，我們看到，它正注視這角色的頭盔。我們看到艙門打開，頭盔上的反射影在移動，如果沒有光線追蹤技術，就無法實現這樣的效果。使用RTX，屏幕內的反射也更加精確。還有個好例子，就是焊接角色胳膊的雷射槍。它是不規則曲線表面移動的反射，只有使用RTX才能實現。美術師使用光線追蹤會更友好。不需要時間建立假光源，球體反射捕捉，立方體貼圖，等等。正如我們期待，照明會正常運轉，如同在現實生活中到處亂跳。
總之，《Project Rol》項目展示了實時光線追蹤，圖表的最高目的。這都要歸功於NVIDA圖靈機的架構和 NVIDIA RTX平臺。整個作品實時進行，同時使用單一的NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti 進行光線追蹤。
概念
使用Substance
Jacob：我們整個項目都使用Substance。運行環境需要使用Substance Designer 和Substance Painter平鋪紋理和自定義繪製紋理的混合。Substance Designer 有助於創建許多基礎材質，金屬，橡膠，格柵，排水管，油漆等等。然後將這些最初的基礎材質放入到引擎中，用作鏡頭中資源簡單的平鋪材質，同時遠離鏡頭資源和物體都有定製的一對一的UV貼圖和紋理。這次演示的確會在實時可能的情況下突破界限，以及大量的4K紋理和一些資源在三次計算中被認為是「高模」。
Substance 確實有助於我們快速生成高質量的外觀，必要的時候我們可以調整適應新的藝術方向。例如，開始，我們所有資源的許多材質和紋理有更多的磨損和汙損。從長遠角度看，我們認為，由於有RTX展示，許多材質必須更加清潔。所以，在特寫鏡頭下資源的解析度更高，在RTX和實時光線追蹤範圍內會有更多的反射和陰影。
3D團隊
Gavriil：我們全職團隊員工有六人，我們也會招聘一些兼職工作人員加入獲取額外的幫助。這個作品的製作過程從開始到結束共用時3個半月。對於這樣一個小型團隊而言，任務確實很艱巨，但幸運的是我們力量強大。
Jacob：正如Gavriil前面提到的，我們整個團隊都在努力地製作這個項目並使其成為現實。儘管從Substance用戶的角度看，只有David Lesperance 和我參加整個演示過程所有材質的製作。整個團隊都非常地努力，我也很高興看到最後的結果。智能材質和Substance內部無損工作流程助力我們在必要的時候改變項目，在一兩周時間內為環境和人物製作材質。
Substance Painter視頻解析
時代廣場
Gavriil：RTX代表圖表領域中一次巨大的進步。它是未來發展方向，也是一段時間以來最大的進展之一。我們為取得的成績感到非常自豪，也希望儘可能在多種場合展示。我們會更加敢於進步。時代廣場視頻是我們RTX啟動活動的一部分。在紐約時代廣場看到我們的作品真的很了不起。
利用Substance創作未來項目
Jacob：我們一直希望擴展Substance Designer材質庫和基礎材質集。增加我們目前已有的表面類型數量，控制選項，以及Substance Painter的內部快速調節，有助於我們在必要的時候進行快速調整，同時也有助於我們在所有的項目中，一直保持高質量的外觀，以及其速度和和靈活性也會使製作的速度不斷加快。我非常希望看到Allegorithmic團隊在繼續推出這個工作流程的時候，發布了哪些新工具和新的技巧。
感謝NVIDIA提供所有圖片
想了解更多內容，請查看美術師Artstation的頁面！
Gavriil Klimov
（https://www.artstation.com/hexeract）
Jacob Norris
（https://www.artstation.com/purepolygons）
David Lesperance
（https://www.artstation.com/metalman123456123）
Gregor Kopka
（https://www.artstation.com/scrutch）
Ilya Shelementsev
（https://www.artstation.com/devmod）
Fred Hooper
（https://www.artstation.com/freddyhoops）
Allegorithmic資源連結：
官網
https://www.allegorithmic.com/
資源庫
https://source.allegorithmic.com/
問答論壇
https://forum.allegorithmic.com/
官網教程（需科學上網）
https://academy.allegorithmic.com/
https://tutorials.allegorithmic.com/
優酷教程
https://i.youku.com/allegorithmic
中國區作品集：
http://huaban.com/allegorithmic/pins/
B站視頻
https://space.bilibili.com/177064095/#/
免費共享社區
https://share.allegorithmic.com/
微博
allegorithmic
商業合作
yan.meizi@allegorithmic.com
重申：大家的問題請儘量在推文後留言，而不是在後臺對話框中發送，過期後小編無法回復。
REAL-TIME RAY TRACING IS THE FUTURE: NVIDIA』S PROJECT SOL TEXTURED WITH SUBSTANCE
Pierre Bosset on October 3 2018 | Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Stories, Tutorials
With over one million views on YouTube, NVIDIA’s Project Sol has received high praise from the 3D community and highlights what is now achievable with real-time ray tracing techniques and the power of NVIDIA RTX. Here, we talk with the talented artists from NVIDIA who worked on Project Sol, as they explain what this demo shows and how they used Substance in the process, including a complete video breakdown on texturing one of the assets in Substance Painter.
Introductions
Gavriil: Hi, my name is Gavriil Klimov and I’m a hard surface designer and art director. I』ve been working in the industry for about 10 years, in roles ranging from movies and cinematics to product design.
Jacob: Hi everyone, my name is Jacob Norris. I’m an environment artist who has been working in games and 3D graphics for almost 10 years. Some people may also know me from my work at PurePolygons, where I create tutorials and 3D assets that I sell and share with the game community
Gavriil: I came to NVIDIA as I』d been freelancing for them for part of 2014, and most of 2015. I ultimately joined full-time in 2015. Shortly thereafter I was tasked to assemble an art team that would be responsible for creating original NVIDIA content. Project Sol is one of our early products. Expect more in the future ;)
Jacob: In terms of my background, I』ve worked for many AAA developers on some really fun and successful game titles, gaining as much experience and knowledge as I could along the way from some incredibly talented co-workers. I also managed to take on additional work in terms of freelancing, personal projects, and mentorship opportunities whenever possible. NVIDIA originally started as a freelance opportunity for me in 2016, and eventually became a full-time job at the end of 2016. I』ve been here full-time ever since, and I’m very happy with the strong team we』ve formed, and the future projects we』ll be working on together.
Our Roles on Project Sol
Gavriil: I’m an art director, and this was my role on Project Sol as well. When the project was in its early stages, I spent some time doing the initial concept designs to kickstart the overall look and feel of the cinematic. I did some 3D sketches for the interior room as well as some sketches for the servo arms. At that point, the rest of the team started to work on the design as well. Eventually, I ended up designing the whole interior room where the assembly takes place.
I always want to make sure that we’re all working as a team. I strive for overall design cohesiveness and clarity. This applies to all the stages, design-wise, but also everywhere else in the pipeline such as for textures, VFX and lights. Everything flows and connects together; if something goes through a certain change in the pipeline, sometimes you need to go back to fix its original core to make sure the updates reflect the new intent. I closely followed the development of the entire cinematic in all of its aspects and the team did a fantastic job, particularly considering the tight deadline we had. Everyone brought their 『A』 game.
Jacob: I had to wear many different hats while working on Sol, because we were still just a small team of artists at NVIDIA working on this project. I worked with Gavriil converting and optimizing his high-poly modeling work as well as converting high-poly work from Gregor Kopka and Ilya Shelementsev for the environment to the in-game assets in the final cinematic. Early on in the project, I began setting up the pipeline for creating all of the smart materials and shaders used on the assets in Substance Painter.
The lighting, post-process setup, and asset placement within the level was also my responsibility on the project. We have a very open policy in terms of feedback. So it’s great if someone has some comments on my environment work or sharing with other team members. It’s always the best way to get better as an artist I feel. So sometimes myself or Gavriil would also give feedback to Fred Hooper to help define the look of the VFX within the environment. Which turned out awesome and if you haven’t seen Fred’s work before, I’m sure actually that you have and you just didn’t know it haha. David Lesperance joined the project midway through. He was a huge asset in helping to bring the scene to a final state and texturing the assets with me in Substance Painter, as well as many other various contributions within UE4, optimizations, modeling, and to the final artwork in the video. I contributed a very small amount of camera work to the project, but most of that was completed by the very talented animator Brian Robison, whose contributions were invaluable to Project Sol. Lastly, I completed a 「per-shot」 lighting pass to make the visuals shine as much as possible and really showcase RTX.
Acclaim From the Community
Gavriil: I thought, and hoped, the cinematic would be warmly received due to the huge leap forward in graphics that’s presented. Basically, all the ray-traced content out there is rendered offline right now. Sol runs in real-time while being fully ray-traced. Lights. Reflections. AO. GI. Everything is ray-traced.
Turing represents the biggest shift in graphics technology we』ve seen for a long time, possibly as big as the arrival of GeForce 3 architecture back in the day. I am extremely excited for the fellow developers that will get to finally use this technology in their products. The future is really bright.
Jacob: Real-time ray tracing is the future. I』ve been dreaming of this ever since I started working in 3D. The advantages it offers for creating realism and not having to go through the hassle of all the 「fakes and cheats」 we currently use in Raster Rendering will be a lifesaver. I can also imagine some of the in-game uses for it - such as mirror 「accessories」 that you can throw on the ground to see your enemy around corners, or the difference in shadow sharpness as an enemy drops in from above, and a soft shadow becomes sharper as he gets nearer to the ground, indicating his distance from you. I think there will be a ton of gameplay uses for it if people are creative about it.
So, because of all this, I feel like it’s just so exciting for people to witness anything using the technology right now, and to learn more about it. And of course we all feel the demo came out really nicely; I think people appreciate the time we put into it, as well the way we showed off the technology as best we could. Hopefully, we』ll get the chance to make more things like this in the future, to continue sharing the major advantages and realism that using RTX can help achieve!
What Does the Demo Show?
Gavriil: The purpose of the demo was first and foremost to show real-time ray tracing. As mentioned, everything is ray-traced. Lights, AO and so on. So our focus was to showcase something beautiful while also showcasing the limits of the current rasterization techniques. We have a lot of shots in the cinematic which would be flat-out impossible without ray tracing, and others that look a lot better, and much more accurate, because of it.
A good example would be moving objects off-camera reflecting onto in-camera objects. This happens throughout the cinematic everywhere. For instance, in almost every shot you can see the off-camera yellow-robot arms reflected from the main character, always changing position while moving. Cubemaps don’t allow you to do that.
Another good example is when the ejection pod opens we see it from a reverse angle that’s looking at the helmet of the character. We can see the door open and move as a reflection on the helmet, something which isn’t possible without ray tracing. Even reflections that happen within the screen are much more accurate with RTX. Another great example is the laser shot that welds the character's leg. It's a moving reflection on an irregular curved surface, only possible with RTX. Working with ray tracing is more friendly for artists too. You don’t have to spend time setting up fake light sources, sphere reflection capture, cubemaps, and so on. The lighting will just work as it’s supposed to, bouncing around like in real life.
In conclusion, Project Sol showcases real-time ray tracing, the holy grail of graphics. This now possible thanks to the NVIDIA Turing architecture and the NVIDIA RTX platform. The entire cinematic runs in real-time while being raytraced on a single NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti.
Our Use of Substance
Jacob: Substance was used across the entire project in this case. The environment is a mix of both tiling textures and custom-painted textures using both Substance Designer and Substance Painter. Substance Designer helped to create a lot of the base materials, metals, rubbers, grates, drains, paints, etc. Then those initial base materials were brought into the engine to be used as simple tiling materials on assets further from the camera, while many of the hero assets and objects seen up close all had custom one-to-one UV mapping and texturing. This demo definitely pushes the boundaries in terms of what’s possible in real time, with a ton of 4K textures as well as some assets being almost considered 「high-poly」 in terms of the tri-count.
Substance definitely helped us to achieve such a high-quality look very quickly, as well as giving us the ability to adjust to a new art direction if necessary. One example of this was that, initially, many of our materials and textures presented a lot more wear and grunge across the assets. In the long term we decided, because of the RTX showcase, that many of the materials had to be cleaner. And so we gave the assets a higher resolution look in close-ups, as well as showing off reflections and shadows more within RTX and real-time ray tracing.
The 3D Team
Gavriil: We have a full-time team of 6 people, and we also used some external freelancers for additional help. We completed the whole cinematic from start to finish in three-and-a-half months. It was a hard task with such a small team, but luckily we have a lot of firepower!
Jacob: As Gavriil mentioned, we had a full team working hard to make this cinematic a reality. Although in terms of Substance users, only David Lesperance and myself worked on all of the textures throughout the demo. It was a huge team effort and I’m really happy to see the final result. The Smart Materials and lossless workflow within Substance helped us to make major changes to the project when they came up, and to texture the entire environment and characters within a matter of about one to two weeks.
Substance Painter Video Breakdown
Times Square
Gavriil: RTX is a huge leap forward for graphics. It’s the future, and one of the biggest advancements that has occurred in a while. We’re really proud of this accomplishment and we wanted to showcase it in as many places as possible. We decided to be bold. The Times Square footage was part of our RTX launch campaign. It was truly amazing to see our work in Times Square.
Substance on our Future Projects
Jacob: We』d definitely like to expand our Substance Designer material library and base material sets. Increasing the number of surface types we have, options for control, and quick adjustments inside of Substance Painter will help us to keep a consistently high-quality look across our projects, while allowing us the speed and flexibility to knock these out faster and faster! I can’t wait to see what other new tools and tricks will be released by the Allegorithmic team as we continue forward with this pipeline.
All images courtesy of NVIDIA
Want to see more? Check out the artists' Artstation pages!
Gavriil Klimov, Jacob Norris, David Lesperance, Gregor Kopka, Ilya Shelementsev, Fred Hooper.