Ubisoft has developed Micropolygon, a virtualized geometry solution for its Anvil engine, similar in concept to Unreal Engine 5's Nanite. The technology, debuted in Assassin's Creed Shadows, allows rendering millions of geometric details while minimizing polygon restrictions. Its goal is to eliminate the need to manually create levels of detail (LODs), automating the streaming of dense assets.
GPU-Driven Architecture and Rasterization at GDC 2026 🎮
At GDC, Ubisoft technicians Lionel Berenguier and Jack Minnetian detailed the Micropolygon architecture. They explained improvements in rasterization, extensions to the deferred materials system, and the GPU-driven streaming pipeline. The talk addressed the practical challenges of implementing this system in a massive open world, where efficient handling of geometric complexity is essential for performance.
Goodbye to LODs, Hello to Microproblems 😅
With Micropolygon, artists can forget about creating mountains of manual LODs. Of course, instead, they'll now have to deal with virtualized geometry pipelines, new workflows, and the classic feeling that, no matter how many micropolygons you have, someone on the team will always find a rock that looks too polygonal. A technological advancement that changes the type of headache, but doesn't eliminate it.