Q&A: How Capcom Brought Path Tracing to RE ENGINE Across PRAGMATA and Resident Evil Requiem | NVIDIA Technical Blog

This post details Capcom's implementation of path tracing in their RE ENGINE for Resident Evil Requiem and PRAGMATA. Key contributions include: 1. Evolving from a ray tracing pipeline to a path tracing pipeline by developing a reference path tracer, validating it against DCC path tracers, and then scaling it down for real-time game environments optimized for DLSS Ray Reconstruction. 2. Extending path tracing to cover direct lighting in addition to indirect lighting, significantly reducing the visual gap between gameplay and cutscenes. 3. Implementing custom solutions for specific challenges, such as ScreenSpaceAlphaTest for alpha geometry and a proprietary ReSTIR GI for noise reduction in complex lighting scenarios. 4. Demonstrating the impact of path tracing on the content pipeline, requiring new workflows for asset production, material handling, and quality control, particularly for strand hair rendering and reflection-aware asset creation. 5. Highlighting the use of NVIDIA RTX Kit and DLSS 4 for efficient denoising and performance. The post emphasizes the grounding effect of path tracing on visual realism, especially for character lighting and scene consistency.