The 3D optimization technology behind "Halo" and "Douluo Continent: Soul Master Showdown"

With the intensified competition in the game market and the acceleration of the trend of high-quality products, players are more willing to pay for high-quality products. Under such changes in the pattern, the tail end companies are gradually clearing up, and the main theme of the game industry is to become high-quality products, to go overseas, and to VR. key link. The game development series of this Microsoft Game Overseas Developers Conference will take the two games "Douluo Continent: Soul Master Showdown" and "Halo" as examples to introduce how large-scale console games and boutique mobile games are implemented based on Microsoft Simplygon Low cost high quality 3D optimized.

Simplygon - the industry benchmark for 3D optimization - less time, less cost, more stunning results

Simplygon in the Microsoft Game Development Suite is a leader in 3D game optimization, helping creators and users optimize 3D data. Based on the Simplygoon platform, 3D assets such as models and textures can be optimized for different purposes without manual (or minimal) operations. Simplygon can be used to create LOD chains, reduce draw calls, combine multiple high-resolution models into one lower-cost model, optimize scenes for specific perspectives, remove invisible geometry, and more.

With Simplygon cloud services, developers can build visually fidelity 3D images in a minute, then spend a few minutes automatically optimizing them for smooth rendering on any platform, saving valuable time and money. In the case of rising marketing costs and increasing complexity of the network environment, this service can undoubtedly help game manufacturers to optimize the game interface and loading speed, and add a helping hand to attract players and break through the current dilemma of going overseas.

Simplygon provides an optimized engine that allows artists and game creators to maximize their imagination within the tightest budgets, reducing production time, costs and manual processes, and has been called "one of the most important companies in the future of VR" . Now, Simplygon has been used in many fields such as architecture, 3D CAD, 3D scanning, 3D network and 3D printing, and has been recognized and adopted by many 3A game studios, including "Halo", "Douluo Dalu: Soul Master Showdown" " Final Fantasy "Gears of War" "Forza Motorsport" and other masterpieces to show their skills in the production of more than 450 AAA games.

Epic built Paragon in conjunction with Simplygon to drastically reduce draw calls and rendered polygons per frame with limited manual effort.

Uppercut Games used Simplygon to cut months of manual labor down to a week when porting their beautiful game Submerged to iOS.

Simplygon saves render time, improves visual quality and performance for Forza Motorsport 7

Restore the real animation scene, help create the popular game "Douluo Continent: Soul Master Showdown" to verify the "quality" strategy

As a world-renowned game research and development institution, Sanqi Games mainly focuses on the three major tracks of SLG, MMORPG and card cards. While forming a professional layout, it deepens the strategy of quality, globalization and diversification, and is committed to the refined operation of games. Its classic self-developed game "Douluo Continent: Soul Master Showdown", with its main beautiful graphics and innovative gameplay, highly restores the original plot and settings, realizes the perfect combination of IP and games, and has achieved excellent market performance. and highly recognized by players. "Douluo Continent: Duel of Soul Masters" has top-level animation and art effects in the Douluo IP series games. Since its launch on July 22, 2021, the number of downloads on that day exceeded 400,000, and the number of downloads in the first week exceeded 1.5 million. In the first month of launch, the turnover exceeded 700 million, and the cumulative download volume in the first three months was nearly 4 million; , as the popularity of the game continues to increase, it ranks among the top four in the best-selling game list on the ios side, and maintains the top ten position in the best-selling list for a long time.

Although the game has achieved outstanding results after its launch, at the beginning of development, how to be loyal to the original animation and create a 1:1 real Douluo world through 3D free perspective, gorgeous character special effects, real-time weather system, etc. The visual effects of the mainland world adventure once became the most difficult test encountered by the self-research department of Sanqi Games.

For mobile game projects based on PBR (Physical Rendering), all models have the need for proper reduction and simplification, and LOD is one of the necessary technologies. After comparing the mainstream automatic surface reduction tools on the market, Sanqi Games found that Microsoft Simplygon was more in line with the project's use environment in terms of art effect restoration, script running speed and ease of use, so it decided to cooperate with Microsoft to optimize its design through Simplygon. The creation and expansion of 3D models, while reducing complexity, realizes ultra-large-scale environment rendering, ensuring that games can run smoothly at the target frame rate on different platforms, reducing restrictions on client hardware devices, and thus providing more user groups. Create more realistic game effects.

Through technical optimization, "Douluo Continent: Soul Master Showdown" has achieved panoramic 3D special effects, real-time seamless day and night switching, dynamic volumetric light tracking, and optimized and adjusted the Shader algorithm, lighting model, etc., to create a more textured effect. , presenting a more delicate picture, enhancing the real experience and taking into account the gorgeous visual effects.

In addition, as a cutting-edge solution for 3D game content optimization, Simplygon's software is also used to optimize the cross-platform graphics performance of "Douluo: Soul Master Showdown", supporting the ingestion of GLTF, FBX and OBJ file types; rendering engine, Includes Unity 3D and Unreal Engine and all major MR platforms including Windows Mixed Reality, iOS and Android.

"Thank you very much to Microsoft for bringing us Simplygon 3D such an easy-to-use optimization tool, helping us develop a high-quality game such as "Douluo Dalu: Soul Master Showdown", and also providing some Sanqi games on the road to high-quality game development. It is convenient. I hope that we can continue to deepen cooperation in the future and bring better game works to players." Wang Mo, a senior client expert of Sanqi Games, the developer of "Douluo Dalu: Soul Master Showdown", said.

3D optimization of the world's top game IP "Halo"

The shaping of pleasing scenes, the exploration of the open world map, the fierce and grand game confrontation... Microsoft's flagship IP "Halo: Infinite" has all done it. From the very beginning of the development of Halo: Infinite, the developers of the 343i realized that a powerful rendering solution was necessary to optimize and render the game's expansive world quickly, smoothly, and efficiently.

To that end, the 343i leveraged Simplygon to optimize the massive environments in Halo Infinite to ensure the game renders the world flawlessly, running smoothly at the target frame rate on any platform. At the same time, Simplygon allows game development teams to integrate existing content for more efficient content development and faster version iterations. The developers of the 343i will also be able to extend the capabilities of Halo Infinite with Simplygon, allowing players to get a higher performance experience across different systems.

Kurt Diegert, Art Director of 343i Environmental Technology: "It's hard to imagine how we would have developed this game without Simplygon. Simplygon allows us to focus our time and energy on building quality assets, and provides the ability to reduce and optimize content for the target platform. tools needed."

In the future, Microsoft will continue to customize more solutions for game developers, cooperate with more game manufacturers and development teams, and use Microsoft's game development technology to empower a wider range of game projects to achieve high-quality products, bringing more game players around the world. What fun.

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