Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5-8.
Each department produces different types of geometry data. Each time an asset is updated by a department,
a cache is exported. Then the caches of various departments are merged together using a set of rules
Conclusion
At DuranDuboi, we developed a framework and a complete set of tools dedicated to the efficient handling of baked
geometry in cache files. The system is used uniformly across all of our production pipelines. The ability to allow
simultaneous work on the same models by different departments as well as the automated external processing of
geometry data have proved extremely useful.
Our geometry production workflow is built to enable multiple teams of specialists to work in parallel. This
solution is combined with our other tools such as the production tracker, asset versioning system, and job queue
dispatcher. Such a system would remain equally efficient with an order of magnitude more people. Nevertheless,
because this pipeline is aimed at tackling big production challenges, it is probably too constrained to suit small-scale
teams of generalists.
Our uniform cache system reduces disk usage by consolidating final data into one file per asset and removing the
need for geometry in RIB files. The cache preview and cache geometry modes in Autodesk Maya are faster and lighter
than the alternatives. The main drawback of our system is the rigor imposed on users. As the systematical locking of
various parts of the scene might appear daunting to artists, we addressed this issue by allowing them to switch back to
plain geometry whenever needed.
The system has been used in production and will be upgraded. We expect future versions of the system to be
able to support more commercial software programs such as VRay and Houdini. We know that the tag system for data
chunks could benefit from increased flexibility and plan to address the issue. For example, each chunk should be
referenced by more than one tag, and the chunk type metadata could be replaced by a tag. As geometry complexity is
rapidly increasing, particular attention should be paid to memory management and out-of-core capabilities, notably
using virtual memory mapping approaches such as presented in Kamp.
1
1
P.H. Kamp. “You're doing it wrong.” Communications of the ACM 53:7 (2010), 55-59.
