Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 102 — October 13, 2019

Surface Gradient Based Bump Mapping Framework

• a mathematical framework for more consistent layering of bump/normal maps using linear surface gradients
• shows the problems with reliance on vertex level tangent space in existing techniques
• how to express existing methods in the new framework
• including source code
  

Emulating a fake retro GPU in Vulkan compute

• high-level system discussion of a retro GPU emulation implemented in Vulak compute shaders
• implementation details are discussed in the presentation
• using Subgroup and async compute for further optimizations

RenderDoc - Version v1.5

• new RenderDoc version allows explicit GPU playback selection
• improved SPIR-V reflection, performance improvements
• more extensions and feature levels supported for Vulkan and D3D12

Real-time Rendering of Layered Materials with Anisotropic Normal Distributions

• proposal of approach for rendering layered materials
• layers are defined by anisotropic NDFs on varying tangent vector fields

Living with Vulkan and DirectX 12

• the post describes the perspective from Stardock on D3D12/Vulkan vs. D3D11
• new possibilities but also many more problems
• performance improvements with D3D12 need to be balanced against the higher QA costs compared to D3D11

Progressive Real-Time Rendering of One Billion Points Without Hierarchical Acceleration Structures

• proposes a real-time solution to rendering unstructured point clouds
• combination of temporal reprojection, random point selection, and GPU vertex buffer shuffling

Denoising as a Building Block

• provides an overview of the foundations of denoising techniques
• expands pon the basics to explain how more complex schemes are constructed
• how to consider denoising as a building block for several different problems