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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

DS3LE-PT COTD WIP. Lot of bug fixes in BVH and tech perspective. Testing is going well. Slowly fixing issues in area one at a time

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

DS3LE-PT adding/updating light sources in Irrythil dungeon.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

DS3 has lot of LODS for every mesh. In LE I can add the base LOD to the BVH, as LE doesn't know when the LOD is actually swapped in main view, this will create self-intersection issues, however added a feature to detect these cases and path tracer will do a stronger ray bias

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Translucent shadows in DS2LE - PT. Already had previously demoed it in DS3.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Transclucent Windows/Foliage SSS, also some foliage tex edits from @triviavanille.bsky.social

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Sun transclucent shadows and much better window support(sky lighting) in DSLE-PT. Will also be updating DS2LE (Few windows in Drangleic castle later)

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

DSLE - Editor feature/Subsurface. These meshes are "Static" but are not rendered as normal foliage. So added a feature to mark the Base game meshes as "Foliage", which disables screen-space shadows and also enables transmission/SSS on the leaf meshes

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Large emissive meshes. 100k triangles, emit light and shadows, however importance sampling is not done by not including them in LightBVH, so the normal BRDF sampling catches them. This makes them essentially free of cost as the path tracer picks the emission based on the hit. Descriptions below

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Implemented Caching mechanism for Skinned objects. Now the BLAS is rebuilt only if the mesh has changed enough. The build time drops from 5-6ms down to 0.5ms . Without caching it dropped to 45FPS here. LE uses double buffering and Async build as well for GPU.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

3/3. I unload/reload Lothric wall BVH in LE, the LOD's and the level match.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

2/2. Firelink Level when character is in Lothric wall bonfire

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Darksouls3 has excellent LOD placement and many places are visible from each other zones. Firelink/Lothric wall are actually fully connected too. This is one instance. Similar behavior like Lothric wall LOD is correctly placed from COTD/Cruxifion woods 1/1

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Working on improving Foliage shading with subsurface and transmission. DS2LE is using Beubeu Faraam Preset for testing and DS3LE is WIP for release end of year. Thanks to NRD Author Dimitrii Zhdan for guidance on changes with updates to NRD-Sample

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Integrating OMM , the latest DXR 1.2 features in LE. Left is AlphaTesting in Shader(Max 5 tries). Right is OMM for the meshes(2 state) and Subdivision level of 6. It saves about 2.5ms to 3ms. Yet to optimize fully like arranging OMM buffers contigously for all meshes.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Things we already knew, Just say this post, not sure if the account is on Bluesky

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

DS3-PT. Lothric wall progress. DS3 areas are much brighter than DS2. I held back sun power a lot in DS2. Aerie/Loyce are probably only 2 places where sun is >10000 lux. Most places are cloud or dark.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

DS3 - Pathtracing. LightPortals placed in this room to capture windows/doors and cut the ambient lights.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Working on PT in DX12, made me understand CPU/GPU timelines lot better. DS3 uses deferred command lists to render. LE overrides camera for Jitter/ReverseZ and also for editor. Jitter/ReverseZ are ensured that they are updated, UpdateSubResource was done during draw-call while tracking dirty flags.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

DS3 - Pathtracing, Enabling and integrated features. Volumetrics are now integrated(Note VFOG Shadows are raster). Some out door shots as well, Almost all of firelink is now in BVH

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

For Stats. DS3 Firelink alone is 150MB BVH Package, while whole of DS2 is 280MB BVH Package. As a whole I have yet to exceed 5ms trace time(very similar to fofg in DS2) as shown in image its at native res

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

DS3-PT Early WIP. LE Is able to scale up to DS3 Geo.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

4/4 - PT Main, FullRes Path tracer uses the GBuffer data to reconstructs the primary hit. Handles mirror surfaces, local light sources(Light BVH sampling), Uses stochastic selection of Diffuse/Spec. Image courtesy of @fromsoftserve.bsky.social

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

While studying SER(Shader Execution Reordering), I came across a blog which showed that Pipeline tracing i,e (TraceRay) is faster than Inline tracing(RayQuery) on AMD GPU, SER requires PipelineTracing(Dispatch Rays) call. AMD GPU's see a 10-25% speedup using TraceRay vs RayQuery.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Thanks to Dmitrii Zhdan(NRD Author) for including the Cavity shadows which I had showcased earlier now as part of NRD Frontend. As mentioned earlier It works amazing with NRD-SH modes when combined with Parallax mapping.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

DS2 SOFTS vs LE PT with Beubeu work. Beubeu environment composition is really excellent and consistent, he has done this across the game

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Lights associated with Pharos lock stones in DS2LE these are kept as is :). I love this concept in DS2, Pursuer fight below servants quarters becomes much easier with this or detect ambushes in plain sight.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

A small note. I personally think DS2 was ahead of its time in level design, the coherency of lighting setup done in Base game DS2, there is a sconce always before dark entrances. I cannot claim to know fully what was the original intent, regardless this is something which excited me to build PT.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Known issues with Path tracing build on left. Make sure to also enable HWRT-Sunshadows and explore the Path/Ray counts (importance sample). All your perf needs are in Shading/Quality/Performance under User setttings.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

DS2LE Path tracing build is now on Nexus as V_0.1. Here are some sample shots. Whole game should be playable end to end. Thanks to all the members from community who were part of the project.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Added GT7 Tonemapper as an option for SDR/HDR Monitors. The difference is in the behavior of Highlights. Tweaked the Filmic (toe) to give the similar contrast as GT7 default and readjusted manual contrast added in dark areas. Left : Filmic (John Hable) Right : GT7

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Shrine of Amana. OG Vanilla vs Default LE vs Scholar. Personally as I have said before I like the more natural CG vanilla. Scholar puts a green tint on things, change color. LE one has all the blue flowers as emissive as well

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

LE new beta build is now out. Contains Texture AO update, importantly fixes for AMD/Intel cards(especially on Linux), discoloration was happening during denoising when pixels foregrounded sky, tested on AMD 7/9, Intel Arc GPU, with this LE should now work on all RT Capable GPU's

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

LE Majula is the OG Majula. Scholar makes Majula extremely bright and contrasted. I personally played the OG. There are other places I have tried to match the OG as well, like Heide, Copse, Aerie, they are not 1:1, but are close matches. Left images are OG

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Directionality to the texture cavity. LE uses NRD Reblur SH mode. SH dir(Dominant light dir), pixel normal and cavity can be used to compute shadow. Texture cavity not used vs applied vs a multiplier vs 3rd image using SH. Note the sun already has parallax shadows there.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Integrating Texture "Cavity" which was already present in the normal maps. I had not integrated it before as I wanted the right stabilized output, well its time now to integrate that, I see again many ppl "Path tracing lose texture detail" , but they forget I can just do things.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Twitter is just insane. I had blocked this racist/transphobic account long ago. I also have my bio and everything linked in my profile, yet they think "Account based in" posting is cool. The changes were made to recover saturation on the heide skybox. Also the comparison of the same mod before/after

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

This also had PBR texture edits by @triviavanille.bsky.social . Left image is base game textures. Right image is with her edits. Parallax on walls, gloss and albedo maps tweaks as well

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Found this Dark souls looking fort IRL, so had to complete the roleplay.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Path tracing hides texture tiling issues and also adds contrast from lighting breaking up montony of surfaces, this is something very noticeable in DS2 where base game had many areas unnaturally bright and some surfaces were made visible, that were never meant to be seen.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

DS2LE - Path tracing is now in Public Beta. You can try it from discord only currently. After some Beta bake time then I will upload to Nexus. Enjoy the mod and the game.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

RTX 5090 can easily do 8 paths at 1440p or 2 paths at 4k. Here is a sample of 4paths at 1440p, with plenty of GPU of spare as a sample

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Brute force Path tracing on RTX 5090. As an experiment this is using Ultra-performance (480p) upscaled to 1440p. No denoiser only DLSS-SR. Doing 120 paths per pixel at 50FPS. Here is the video. Thanks to discord user Perhapsy for doing the testing.

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dslightingengine @dslightingengine.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

GPU Performance metrics using queries. Long overdue, but better late than never, For DS3LE - PT the variable parts are GI Render trace and GI Cache update(not as impactful due to lower resolution update). The denoiser times/scene bvh build times should be similar to DS2LE - PT

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