Hello,

I was wondering why games on consoles (Ps3, xbox …) could render quickly while not softwares like Houdini?
I mean when we move the camera or objects in the games, we have an instant recalculation of the output.

I guess there is a difference somewhere but can't we find a way to have the same kind of real-time rendering?

I'm always watch all news about realtime's tools.
Most game engines use backed stuff, and very hard limits for formats, materials etc. But many stuff now is really “real-timed”.

Look this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl54WZtm0QE&feature=youtu.be [youtube.com]
And that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRHqs4GJuCA&NR=1 [youtube.com]

In future i think, houdini can have some RT viewport's or nodes, with CUDA features using (like threads count).

Thank you for the links! I hope Houdini could reach that point.

I think a lot of that depends on how you setup your assets for your rendering engine and your hardware. In games, we do a lot of “cheats” to eMate functionality from software rendering. For example, instead of raytracing reflections, we use cubemaps with clever normal blending math. Instead of calculating occlusion by raytracing in 3d space, we use screen space ambient occlusion.

Hardware from current consoles still have a lot of limitations due to the fact that their video cards are not upgradeable (so for example, we cannot do geometry sharer operations because we are stuck on DX9, whereas pc games can take advantage of newer cards)

Houdini does have some realtime rendering capabilities. Under display options in your viewport, there are several options for doing realtime approximations of your render lighting, as well as some effects such as ao
and hdr lighting, LUTs, etc. I have not played too much with GLSL shaders to be able to speak for what is available though

Thank you for your reply grayOlorin. I will try those feature in Houdini's display option, if my slow PC enables it ^_^;