Video: NVIDIA Ansel Architecture Explained

NVIDIA Ansel Architecture Explained by Nvidia. This new in game capture tool enables high quality images and different view angles. But how do you enable Ansel in a game? It's explained for gamers and game developers.

This video was recorded at U.S.A. Texas Austin Nvidia Global Presentation of GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. After the agreed NDA date we are making the record publicly available for all technology enthusiasts. There are great many details about new Nvidia Pascal architecture, new 16 nanometer production process, new drivers, software features and VR (Virtual Reality) in this series.

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There is a lot of functionality in Ansel. Ansel hooks the free camera of the game, pauses time, and then
allows the gamer to manipulate that camera in interesting ways, such as switching to a higher
resolution, using a 360degree camera, going Stereo, and more.

The Overlay UI portion of the code reads input from the game and then and then displays the options
that are available. Note that not all games will support every feature that is available to Ansel. For
example, not all game developers will want a free camera because maybe they want to curb cheating,
or they may limit the field of view because it could give gamers an advantage.
Ansel will come with an open SDK. Many of the effects offered in the SDK will be provided to the
community.



A few of the Ansel interfaces that are available:

• setConfiguration — Game settings, such as coordinate system used by game
• isSessionActive — Informs game whether Ansel is in control. (pause game, remove HUD, etc)
• updateCamera — Ansel takes shot, respects game limits

Free Camera

Screenshots taken in games today face a problem: they are stuck with the ingame view of the static camera. Ansel frees the camera so it can be moved around the inworld environment. This includes going 1000 miles up in the air, or panning around a thirdperson game to snap the camera in front of a character. A free camera is one of the key pieces that makes ingame cinematography powerful.




360 Degree Pictures

360 degree pictures of the game world are easily captured with Ansel. The result is essentially an echo
projection image unwrapped as a planar image. These images can be viewed in a VR headset, or with a
cell phone by moving it around to view the 360degree image, or by using Google Cardboard to view it in VR.



Super Resolution Pictures

Ansel’s Super Resolution takes enormously highresolution photographs, regardless of what the game
natively supports. Integer multiples of resolutions are supported in both X and Y, limited only by hard
drive space and I/O speeds. Once captured, many details can be seen by zooming in because Ansel
hooks and then forces the maximum level of detail (LOD) to give the best possible image that the game
is capable of producing.



Achieving the Best Screenshot

One of the benefits of rendering at Super Resolution is combining it with super sampling so that
photographs have a highly filtered, supersharp edge. This especially helps when images are used for high resolution prints.



CUDA-based Stitching

One of the challenges of stitching images together is matching lighting values. The typical resolution for
this in the past was to import all of the images into Photoshop and manually adjust the tone and
colors.



Ansel uses a CUDA-based stitcher to get around tone mapping issues. The screen is tiled, with the number of tiles used depending on the resolution that is taken, and these tiles are then overlapped. A special algorithm is used depending on how the tiles overlap, and then a postprocess is performed across all of the tiles in a single pass. This postprocess fix is GPU accelerated, with the limits being the game settings, the resolution of the game picture being taken, and the I/O of the hard drive. The current limitation is 4.5 Gigapixel images with 3600 stitched tiles.



EXR Capture / Exposure

Ansel can also grab the raw buffers in order to capture a Raw or EXR picture.



EXR is a high dynamic range imaging image file format, released as an open standard by Industrial Light
and Magic (ILM). EXR support in Ansel supports FP16 (half precision floatingpoint 16bits) so that Raw images can be taken and then manipulated in Photoshop, much like Raw/EXR images from cameras can be manipulated. Since the image contains full dynamic range, elements like exposure control can be changed.

Ansel Postprocess Shader

One of the best things about integrating with the game is gaining access and knowledge of all of the games buffers, which can be used for very clever postprocessing techniques.




Ansel has a post process API with a shader API so that any postprocess effect can be used in any game that Ansel supports.

Ansel will include the following effects:

❖ Color curves
❖ Sketch
❖ Color space
❖ Transformation
❖ Contrast
❖ Film grain
❖ Bloom
❖ Lens flares
❖ Anamorphic glare
❖ Distortion effects
❖ Color aberration
❖ Tonemapping schemes
❖ Lens dirt
❖ Lightshafts
❖ Vignette
❖ Gamma correction
❖ Convolution filters
❖ FXAA
❖ Sepia tone
❖ Halftone
❖ Deband
❖ Denoise


Ansel Game Support