Dear Fellow Scholars, this is Two Minute Papers with Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér.
Today we are going to create a virtual world with breathtakingly detailed pieces of geometry.
These are some results from a new technique,
and boy, are they amazing. I wonder how expensive this will get. We’ll see about that in a moment.
Now, here , we wish to create a virtual world, and we want this world to be convincing, therefore we
will need tons of high-resolution geometry, like the ones you see from our previous episodes.
But all this detail in the geometry means tons of data that has to be stored somewhere. Traditional
techniques allow us to crank up the detail in the geometry, but there is a price to be paid for it.
And the price is that we need to throw more memory and computation at the problem. The more we do,
the higher the resolution of the geometry that we get. However, here comes the problem.
Ouch. Look. At higher-resolution levels, yes, the price to be paid is getting a little steep.
Hundreds of megabytes of memory is quite steep for just one object, but wait, it gets worse!
Oh, come on. Gigabytes? That is a little too much. Imagine a scene with hundreds of these
objects laying around, no graphics card has enough memory to do that.
This new technique helps us add small bumps and ridges to these objects much more efficiently
than previous techniques. This opens up the possibility for creating breathtakingly detailed
digital objects, where even the tiniest imperfections on our armor can be seen. Okay,
that is wonderful. But let’s compare to how previous techniques can deal with this problem
and see if this new one is any better.
Here is a traditional technique at its best, when using 2 gigabytes of memory. That is quite
expensive. And here is the new technique. Hmm! Look at that - this looks even better. Surely
this needs even more memory. How many gigabytes does this need? Or, if not gigabytes, how many
hundreds of megabytes? What do you think? Please let me know in the comments section. I’ll wait.
Thank you! I am super excited to see your guesses. Now, hold on to your papers, because actually,
it’s not gigabytes. Not even hundreds of megabytes. It is 34 megabytes.
That is a pittance for a piece of geometry of this quality. This is insanity.
But wait, it gets better! We can even dynamically change the displacements
on our models. Here is the workflow - we plug this geometry into a light simulation program,
and we can change the geometry, the lighting material properties, or even clone our object
many-many times, and it still runs interactively. What about the noise in these images?
This is a light simulation technique called path tracing, and the noise that you see
here slowly clears up over time as we simulate the path of many more millions of light rays.
If we let it run for long enough, we end up with a nearly perfect piece of geometry.
I wonder how the traditional technique is able to perform
if it is also given the same memory allowance? Well, let’s see…wow,
there is no contest here. Even for other cases, it is not uncommon that the new technique can create
an equivalent, or better geometry quality but use 50 times less memory to do that.
So from now on, we might get more detailed virtual worlds
for cheaper. Sign me up right now! What a time to be alive!
And, one more thing. When checking out the talk for the paper, I saw this. Whoa…20 views.
20 people have seen this talk. Now, I always say that views are, of course, not everything,
but I am worried that if we don’t talk about it here on Two Minute Papers,
almost no one will talk about it. And these works are so good, people have to know!
And if you agree, please spread the word on these papers and show them to people you know!
Thanks for watching and for your generous support, and I'll see you next time!