Military Terrain for Games Pipeline
The Military Terrain for Games Pipeline (MTGP) is an RDECOM-STTC research effort that is developing a set of processes and tools for the rapid conversion, manipulation, optimization, and enhancement of military terrain databases for use with the latest commercial game technology. Employing off-the-shelf tools, the MTGP aims to significantly reduce the time and cost associated with recreating geo-specific and geo-typical environments for the virtual domain.
The MTGP begins with standard digital terrain source formats (DTED, ESRI Shape, GeoTIFF) and automatically processes them using the Rapid Unified Generation of Urban Databases (RUGUD) framework to create the initial set of textured terrain meshes, buildings, trees, and other geometry. RUGUD, a currently available GOTS tool, then exports the geometry into correlated SAF and visual terrain database formats, including the widely adopted open-source COLLADA standard. Once the source data has been converted to formats such as COLLADA, it is algorithmically manipulated and optimized for efficient and high-fidelity rendering inside of a game-based system. This includes procedural operations such as duplicate edge removal between polygons, vertex-welding, normal reassignment, and refactoring the UV layout. Finally, the data may be directly exported to a virtual environment for real-time rendering, or further manipulated by-hand to create the desired functionality or aesthetics.
Motivation: Military terrain data is not intended for rendering in next-generation commercial game technology
- Unoptimized geometry
- Poor-quality textures
- Lack of general game “standards” – per-pixel shading, normal mapping,
- High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imagery
As a result, significant human (i.e. artist) investment is required to create highly-immersive game content from existing terrain databases.
Technology Toolkit:
Source Data: Rapid Unified Generation of
- Urban Databases (RUGUD)
- Data Interchange format: COLLADA
- Authoring & Scripting: Maya 8.5
- Importer/Exporter: Feeling Software Collada Maya Plugin
- Renderer: Gamebryo 2.3
- Agent Path-Planning: AI.Implant
Preliminary Results:
- Software scripts for manipulating military terrain data
- Transparency resetting
- Normal resets
- Mesh combining
- Vertex welding
- Merging and culling of duplicate shaders
- Transform hierarchy cleanup
- UV resets
- Manual Manipulation (artists)
- Building retexture
- Additional groundplane cleanup and retexture
- Decor layer additions (statues, props)
Estimated time savings to recreate West Point in a commercial game environment using the MTGP: 25 man-days
Tags: games, military, pipeline, real-time rendering, terrain, virtual environments
