ATI TruForm was a brand by ATI (now

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...

) for a SIP block capable of doing a graphics procedure called

tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety ...

in computer hardware. ATI TruForm was included into

Radeon 8500 The R200 is the second generation of GPUs used in Radeon graphics cards and developed by ATI Technologies. This GPU features 3D acceleration based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3, a major improvement in features and performan ...

(available from August 2001 on) and newer products. The successor of the SIP block branded "ATI TruForm" was included into Radeon HD 2000 series (available from June 2007 on) and newer products: hardware tessellation with TeraScale. Support for hardware tessellation only became mandatory in Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4. Tessellation as defined in those APIs is only supported by newer TeraScale 2 (VLIW5) products introduced in September 2009 and GCN-based products (available from January 2012 on). The GCN SIP block carrying out the tessellation is the "Geometric processor".

Overview

Before the adoption of pixel shader-enhanced bump mapping methods such as normal and parallax mapping that simulate higher mesh detail, curved 3D shapes in games were created with large numbers of triangles. The more triangles are used, the more detailed and thus less polygonal the surface appears. TruForm creates a curved surface using the existing triangles, and tessellates this surface to make a new, more detailed polygonal model. It is designed to increase visual quality, without significantly impacting frame rates, by utilizing hardware processing of geometry. TruForm was not significantly accepted by game developers because it ideally required the models to be designed with TruForm in mind. To enable the feature without causing visual problems, such as ballooned-up weapons, the models had to have flags identifying which areas were to be tessellated. The lack of industry-wide support of the technique from the competition caused developers to ignore the technology. In later version of Catalyst drivers, the TruForm feature is removed. Beginning with Radeon X1000 series, TruForm was no longer advertised as a hardware feature. However, Radeon 9500 and higher (as well as hardware supporting Shader Model 3.0) include Render to Vertex Buffer feature, which can be used for tessellation application

In the case of Radeon X1000 series, it supports binding up to 5 R2VB buffers simultaneously. Tessellation as dedicated hardware has returned in Xenos and Radeon R600 GPUs.

Games with TruForm support

Counter-Strike ''Counter-Strike'' (''CS'') is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games, in which opposing teams attempt to complete various objectives. The series began on Windows in 1999 with the release of the first game, '' Counte ...

(ati_subdiv "2.0", ati_npatch "1.0") *

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six ''Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six'' (often shortened to ''Rainbow Six'' or ''R6'') is a tactical shooter video game series by Red Storm Entertainment and Ubisoft, marketed under the '' Tom Clancy's'' banner of military-themed video games. Based on t ...

* Soldier of Fortune * Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix * Quake (TruQuake Patch) * Quake 2 (TruQuake2 Patch) *

Hexen II ''Hexen II'' is a dark fantasy first-person shooter (FPS) video game developed by Raven Software and published by id Software in 1997. It is the third game in the '' Hexen''/''Heretic'' series, and the last in the ''Serpent Riders'' trilogy. Usi ...

(TruHexen2 Patch, edit of the TruQuake2 Patch) (developed by RaVe

*

Unreal Tournament ''Unreal Tournament'' is a 1999 first-person shooter game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. The second installment in the '' Unreal'' series, it was first published by GT Interactive in 1999 for Windows, and later released on the P ...

(TruUT Patch) * The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (unofficially, with the FPS Optimize

*

Madden NFL 2004 ''Madden NFL 2004'' is the 15th installment of the ''Madden NFL'' series of American football video games. Former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick is on the cover. Gameplay New features in ''Madden 2004'' include a new owner mode option t ...

* Bugdom *

Return to Castle Wolfenstein ''Return to Castle Wolfenstein'' is a 2001 first-person shooter, first-person shooter game developed by Gray Matter Studios and published by Activision. It was initially released for Microsoft Windows and subsequently for the PlayStation 2 (as '' ...

Serious Sam ''Serious Sam'' is a video game series created and primarily developed by Croteam. It consists predominantly of first-person shooters. The series follows the advances of Sam "Serious" Stone against Mental, an extraterrestrial overlord who att ...

* Unreal Tournament 2003 and

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and Its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 60 ...

(must edit the game's ".ini" file and set "UseNPatches=True") * Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory * Command & Conquer: Renegade *

Neverwinter Nights ''Neverwinter Nights'' is a series of video games developed by BioWare and Obsidian Entertainment, based on the ''Forgotten Realms'' campaign setting of the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' role-playing game. Aside from also being set around the city Nev ...

(must edit the game's ".ini" file and set "Enable Truform=1") * FTEQW (QuakeWorld, Net Quake, Quake II, Quake, Quake III: Arena, Hexen 2, Nexuiz

* Quake III Arenabr>
(developed by RaVeN )

References

External links

Official ATI's List of TruForm Enabled Game TitlesTruForm whitepaperR2VB Programming (March 2006)Render to Vertex Buffer with D3D9area3d.net: NitroGL Demos
- home of TruQuake, TruQuake2 & TruUT {{DEFAULTSORT:TruForm 3D rendering ATI Technologies