Hey guys,

I'm in a bit of a struggle at the moment in picking a project for my graduation and I am looking around for some suggestions. Or perhaps a direction. Let me first explain the situation I'm in:

I'm almost at the start of my graduation, and for this I will need to make *something* and this something is game(technology) related, should be done in about 20 weeks (give or take) with about 40 hours a week. Is you see, thing is a pretty broad thing, but considering Graphics programming is what I am specializing in, the topics already narrow. :)

Here's a slightly bigger twist: I am currently doing my Internship and I've already spoken/agreed that I am going to do my graduation project at them. This is something I really want to do, because well.. I like it here and I'm pretty free in what I can do, but I would like to make something that is beneficial for both of us. For me that would be something graphics programming related, for them that would be something nice for their next game. Here's where the twist comes in: We're using Unity here.

Now is using Unity in itself not really the problem, but Unity obviously already takes care of a lot of various topics, not all obviously, but it made my search for a nice topic more complicated (could be just me thinking too hard/constricted though).

So with these things in mind, the people at my internship and I have been brainstorming a little about various topics that would be beneficial for the both of us, but we're occasionally stumbling on a "Unity already kinda does this" or small things I can't fill my time with.

So my question is probably also a bit more aimed to the people that use/have used unity: In terms of graphics programming, doable by the user, what would you like to see? or, what would you do?

Of course, I have also been thinking about some topics and these are what I would find interesting:

- Volumetric lighting and/or Volumetric fog/clouds

- Physically based rendering

- Implementation of various BRDF types

- Game specific shaders

I'm just trying to get a list of interesting topics really, so any kind of suggestion, pointer or advice is welcome.I would also like to note that this specific isn't related to a grade, so it's not really a "make my homework" kind of thing. :)

P.S. I know it's probably something rather broad and tied to personal flavor, but anything will do really, just trying to get an idea in my head of what I can do and trying to get suggestions from all over.

Within the constraints of doing advanced graphics with Unity, I suggest good-looking and efficient antialiasing, both for simple textured polygons and combined with fancier rendering techniques. A number of factors should make it a good course project:

- Crawling textures and jagged edges look as bad today as on the Playstation 1, and they are only marginally less common.
A whole game with adequate antialiasing would be a significant practical advance compared with industry-standard carelessness.

- There is a significant body of existing antialiasing and fake antialiasing techniques to study, implement, compare, and write reports and theses about.

- Antialiasing needs to be tuned for specific objects, scenes, shaders etc. in the game, in many detailed and pragmatic ways, demonstrating attention to details and practical compromises. This kind of work would be much deeper and more mature than implementing something advanced in a tech demo, cutting as many corners as possible, and considering the job done.

- You can collaborate with a game-making team, on a real project, but without confusing your contributions with the work of other people too much. If they do X, you do X with good antialiasing; even rejected proposals are perfectly good for your reports and demos.

Cheers, that's certainly an interesting topic. :)

To which you end up summarizing the entire thing with "supersampling solved everything." Im joking.

Aren't realistic edges crisp?

Is this just an academic exercise? If so, maybe as mentioned it would be good to compare the plethora of AA out there.

And a question of my own. I remember back in the days with 3dsmax there would be many AA filters. Is this only for edge smoothing?

I've been playing Pokemon for DS a while now. I see subpixel alignment as the dominant issue. There may be some opportunities for high-impact comparison there between handheld and computers, if you need to prove some points.

Well, this isn't an exercise as in, it's not going to count. In the end, the topic of my choice (which I am trying to find) will be the topic I am going to graduate in. I just first need to find a topic of which I need approval before I can actually start making a plan, do the research and apply the knowledge.

Comparing the different kinds AA would most certainly be a valid and nice topic, especially considering the look of the project I'm working on need to be clean, sharp and crisp.

I know what AA is, but I haven't really done anything with it, except briefly read over some of the different techniques here and there so I can't tell you if it's used in anything else than for edge smoothing. I guess, due to the nature of it, it will always have something to do with it. Recently a friend of mine graduated where he did research in SMSR which is based on MSAA.

So yeah, AA is certainly on my list of topics to choose from.

I'm with Kaptein: You can investigate a lot of other techniques (imho temporal reprojection has the best results atm) but in the end you will find out that SSAA (supersampling) is by far the best.

I'll take you guys' word for it, but in the end it's more about the facts I present and the facts/conclusions I draw from it, rather than getting the best solution possible for that certain situation. I could do something like, realtime monte carlo path tracing in Unity and come to the conclusion that it simply isn't viable (yet) and still pass due to the proper conclusions and facts I present. Though personally, I would love a happy ending ;)

* Volumetric related stuff (like you mentioned can be lighting but also shadows and participating media like fog)

Volumetric stuff is certainly something high on the list. It sparks my interest and also that of the people here.

* dynamic global illumination

I also like to dive in global illumination, but I am not sure if that is doable in Unity while keeping some decent performance without a high end pc, but it's worth a mention for sure.

* voxel related techniques (GI, shadows, reflections, ... )

Never really done anything with voxels, also doesn't really spark my interest :)

* screen space decals

Could be nice, decals aren't really used at the moment, but that could change :)

* layered material system

Not sure what to imagine with this. Could you elaborate on this?

* GPU particles (either as vfx or for example fluid dynamics)

Certainly something I find interesting and something that would spark the interest here, not sure to what extend I can do this in unity, except with perhaps compute shaders. I'll have to check how feasible this is :)

* occlusion culling (software based, portals, .. )

Not sure if this can be done properly with unity, but worth a check.

* reflections (screen space, glossy reflections, ... )

Another thing to add on the list!

Thanks for that list, it also made me think of some other things like SSAO and stuff that plays with light (sunshafts, lensflares).