Just a few years ago, most games were filled with generic content. The amount of content the game would have and its approximate size could be predicted in advance.
When the Metaverse was born, a noticeable shift occurred. Users received a possibility to take a more active part in the content creation, adding new characters, 3d models, etc. to the games, on par with professionals.
Even ordinary games began to grow in size, pushing the demand to fill these virtual words with content.
The problem of data compression rose to an entirely new level. In modern games, the lighting alone can take up to 30% of the assets’ weight. SDFs and high-quality visual effects also take a lot of memory. Depending on their amount, they can easily weigh hundreds of gigabytes.
What is Zibra Compression
Zibra Compression – is a system of complementary next-gen AI-powered tools for compressing virtual volumetric data. It drastically decreases the asset size and simplifies the process of working with SDFs, precomputed lighting, and baked visual effects. We will talk about each of these branches in detail. But for now, let’s discuss SDF compression.
The problem with SDF
SDF is a data structure that is often used for advanced render techniques. One of the examples where the SDFs are commonly applied to is Unreal Engine. They are used for particle simulation, global illumination, ambient occlusion, ray tracing acceleration, shadows, etc.
However, while extremely useful, this data format has its limitations. SDFs are very heavy and can easily weigh hundreds of megabytes.
Considering that one project may contain hundreds or even thousands of different objects, the weight of SDFs alone can reach hundreds of gigabytes, thus dragging down the entire game.
This problem can be solved by lowering the quality and baking SDFs into smaller grids. This approach, however, greatly affects the 3D object’s geometry. And while in some cases – for example, when working with ambient occlusion – this is an acceptable sacrifice, for others, like particle simulation, such a trade-off between quality and performance is not an acceptable option.
How Zibra SDF compression can fix this
ZibraAI’s innovative SDF compression technology can fix this problem, drastically compressing the size of even the most complex object, down to just 148 Kb.
The compression rate itself may vary depending on the complexity of the mesh.
In general, our technology allows for greater compression, while taking up to 300x less memory compared to standard 3D texture with the same quality.
It paves the way for numerous possibilities. Using SDF compression technology from ZibraAI, you can lower the overall weight of your asset, save infrastructure costs, and add more content that otherwise would have to be cut out or reduced in quality.
For example, you can create particle simulations with larger amounts of objects, add more physical collisions, etc.
How to get Zibra SDF compression tech
Zibra SDF Compression can be computed on the cloud backend or integrated into the game engine as SDK.
Currently, all operations are done on the ZibraAI cloud backend. Our algorithm extracts the mesh from the game engine, sends it to the ZibraAI server, processes it there, and sends it back to the engine, where SDF of a mesh is decompressed in real-time.
In the near future, we are planning to release the Zibra Compression SDK – this way, there will be no need to send any data to the backend, and all the files will be processed directly inside the engine.
If you are interested in getting the SDK, make sure to contact our team. It’s also possible to discuss other ways to integrate Zibra SFD compression tech into your project: hello@zibra.ai
