There are ways around it like biasing one over the other but it gets tricky. If we render two consecutive LODs by fading one out and the next one in, they might z-fight since they’re so close together.
RISE OF TOMB RAIDER SAFE COMBINATION CODE
There are many reasons why this is hard, but it boils down to the fact they’re now rendering through a different code path. Aside from the memory/complexity cost of having at least an extra shader for all opaque objects, they need to be accurate to avoid popping. You need a separate variant that does if you’re going to swap an opaque object for a transparent one.
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It seems to be rendering twice, but in reality it’s rendering a high LOD and a low LOD at the same position, each rendering to the pixels the other is not rendering to. It’s a common way to fade objects in and out at a distance, either to later replace it with a lower quality mesh or to completely make it disappear. It’s a relatively cheap pass that will pre-populate the Z-buffer with depth.Īn interesting thing I found is a level of detail (LOD) technique called ‘fizzle’ or ‘checkerboard’.
![rise of tomb raider safe combination rise of tomb raider safe combination](https://img.gamewith.net/article/thumbnail/rectangle/19537.jpg)
In short, the GPU can avoid running a pixel shader if it can determine it’s occluded behind a previous pixel. A concise article by Intel explains further. The game renders the biggest objects (rather the ones that take up the most screen space), to take advantage of the Early-Z capability of GPUs. Depth PrepassĪ customary optimization in many games, a small depth prepass takes place here (~100 draw calls). I chose a frame with atmospheric and contrasty lighting where the engine can show off. Lara is inside the enemy base at nighttime.
![rise of tomb raider safe combination rise of tomb raider safe combination](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/63d31cb79649b0e8de8a32d3d6e91f64-480-80.jpg)
I can safely say without spoilers that in this frame bad guys chase Lara because she’s looking for an artifact they’re looking for too, a conflict of interest that absolutely must be resolved using weapons. The engine offers the choice between a DX11 and DX12 renderer I chose the latter for reasons we’ll see later. I used Renderdoc 1.2 to capture the frame, on a Geforce 980 Ti, and turned on all the bells and whistles. Its rendering can be broadly classified as a tiled light-prepass engine, and we’ll see what that means as we dive in. Tomb Raider used the Crystal Engine, developed by Crystal Dynamics also used in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. For the sequel a new engine called Foundation was used, previously developed for Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (2014). The game is story focused and, like its prequel, offers enjoyable crafting, hunting and climbing/exploring mechanics.
RISE OF TOMB RAIDER SAFE COMBINATION SERIES
I personally find both refreshing as they move away from the stagnating original series and retell the Croft story. Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) is the sequel to the excellent Tomb Raider (2013) reboot.