DeleD Community Edition

jerrycasian · Member Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1

It would be nice to be able to use materials like normal maps. Just like the Valve Hammer editor from Half Life 2. To me normal maps for game dev. Is very Important, and then I would buy the pro.

Sindwiller · Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 5:44 pm Post subject:

Hiho jerrycasian!

I brought the issue before (meh Jeroen, why do you had to delete the Pro-Forum Wink

). Yes, it would be really cool to have NMaps withing DeleD. But its pretty senseless, regarding that most engines have it own material system.

Wfr, Sindwiller

Mr.Fletcher · Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 6:37 pm Post subject:

Hello Jerry and welcome to the forums Smile

Sindwiller: You mean that thread?

Ontopic:
I'm not sure how you imagine a normal map support, for I'm not a specialist on that topic. But did you know that one material can have up to 3 custom texture layers? Could't you put your normal map in one of those and then let your engine implement it the way you want?
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Daaark · Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 9:18 pm Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 9:33 am Post subject:

All valid points, thanks for input people! Material properties can be divided into three groups:

1. Properties that are essential during the modeling processes, and thus need to be directly and fully supported (WYSIWIG)

2. Properties that are non-essential and rather specific. Those will not be directly supported, but can be set using 'user properties/tags'. The final rendering engine then needs to take care of these. Support for these kind of user-definied properties will be extended indeed (has been requested a lot).

However, there is a third group that needs mentioning:
3. Properties that are non-essential during the modeling process, but very common and well-structured. For example, DeleD might allow you to specify layers as normal/spec/etc. maps, but without actually rendering them as such.

As we extend (2) the user set properties will become more structured than they are now, but I still think formalisation of some concepts into group (3) could be very beneficial, especially for plugins exporting these materials into engines that do support normal/specular/etc. materials.

Daaark · Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2006 8:56 pm Post subject:

I think as a property, alpha masking is sorely needed. It's not the same as alpha blending.
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Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 7:14 pm Post subject:

Hmmm, funny, you are the second person to request that particular feature in a very short timespan (while I don't recall anyone asking for it before... ever). Very Happy

Personally, I'd be leaning towards making alpha masking a "group 1" property: directly and fully supported by DeleD. We'd have to run a quick inventory check to see what 3rd party file formats do actually support this feature.

Daaark · Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 9:48 pm Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 5:17 am Post subject:

"double sided"... Be honest, have you been talking to Brian? Laughing

Or is there just naturally a strong correlation between people who ask for alpha masking and "double sided" geometry?

I have always been under the impression that implementing culling on a per-material basis is a bad idea, and as a rule of thumb you should just always use culling (building double sided geometry). If only for the fact that non-culling very much encourages the creation of 'bad geometry' (anything that is not a closed 2-manifold), leading to problems with lots of graphic algorithms (stencil shadowing comes to mind).

The only advantage I see of non-culling materials would be the convenience during modeling, but that can be achieved by improving the workflow for creating double-sided geometry. I don't think it would make the rendering more efficient: the amount of polygon reduction does not outweigh the overhead of an added material state in the batchsort-before-rendering.

But maybe I'm plain wrong, I'll ask around (and perhaps you can elaborate a bit more on how and why it would be a good thing to have).

Daaark · Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 7:56 pm Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 8:20 am Post subject:

Nice post, but I still fail to see the point ...

Am I wrong in saying there is _not a single situation_ where non-culling leads to visual results that actual double-sided geometry wouldn't have achieved? Other than the lighting being wrong because the normals are pointing the wrong way?

The point I am getting at is, I am not very enthusiastic about introducing a new concept that "makes geometry behave as if it has two sides" if we can make it just as easy to actually create geometry that has two sides.

Another thing I am not too happy about is exporters to file formats that do not support culling per-material, they would need to compensate for it on the fly to keep the geometry WYSIWIG...

Of course this is all banter, we might very well introduce it. I am just wary of adding a feature just because ex - 3DS Max (in Maya, double-sided is an object/polygon attribute) users have come to expect things to work that way Very Happy

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Daaark · Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject:

Oh well, that's what the usertag is for. Laughing

No one uses a .max file in their game. They make use of the custom properties dialog on their objects and materials, and then write exporters to create the proper data to use.

You always go about thinking about these things in the wrong way. Doubling your polycount is a sure way to go about going over your polygon budget in a hurry.

The type of objects that use this effect (properly) are not affected by the lighting issues you described. It's a complete non factor. The 1/2 sided toggle has been a standard feature going all the way back to DOOM, and I've used it to great effect in every game I've mapped for since. It's something a level artist will know how to put to use. Doubling the polycount in some cases can actually kill the effect.

Confused

I actually took some screenshots of a game I was playing last night, and was going to overlay text over them to show how all the various things I have listed are used in a 'real world' scenario, but I was pressing gthe wrong key to take the shots. lol I'm way past that point now, I'll have to find the screenshot key, and play back up to that point.

Laughing

Just as long as the usertag is there, it'll be fine. Another thing I forgot to list was a no mipmap toggle.
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JPulham · Member Joined: 28 May 2006 Posts: 39

how about Parallax mapping?
that would also be a cool type of "fake 3D mapping".
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