In the whitepaper for the next incarnation of “Ark: Survival Ascended”, a “fully dynamic open world” was high on the priority list. A major step towards achieving this objective involved conceptualizing and implementing a custom foliage/fluids interaction solution to bring Ark’s lush, vegetation-rich environments to life.In combination with UE5’s Nanite technology, we developed a unified force-injection system feeding into various environmental solvers. Millions of high-resolution Nanite-based tree, plant, and grass assets dynamically react to players, NPCs, visual effects, and even to each other. Running exclusively on the GPU, the same injected forces are used to drive the world’s water interactions, drastically upping the levels of immersion in “Ark”.
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UE5’s Nanite brings incredible asset fidelity to the table, but turning all this static high-resolution geometry into a living and breathing world is a challenge. Our system shows a next-gen approach to dynamism, creating highly interactive environments, even for AAA, open world, multiplayer games. In the next phase of development for future Ark products, we plan to implement a true physics solver for individual foliage instances, calculating motion based on factors like stiffness, impact, and stress. This move will offer a new level of realism and responsiveness. As an added benefit, we will transition away from volumetric render targets to leverage Niagara's optimized Grid3D structures, enabling seamless interaction within the Niagara context for enhanced performance.


Watch our #GDC2024 talk about GPU-based Foliage Interaction below:
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