DeleD Community Edition

Daaark · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:48 am Post subject: Misc Features

1) I loaded up a scene tonight, and about half the objects weren't saved in it.

2) When copying an object, it gets the name of the object type it was originally, instead of the name of the object it was copied from. ie... copying a 'crate' will get you a copy named 'cube'

3) Weird things happen when trying to create a primitive when the grid settings are set at or below the creation size settings. You end up with a stick, or a flat profile.

Jeroen · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:02 am Post subject:

1) That's no good, can you send me that file?

2) That's programmed behaviour, not a bug. DeleD previously used the name + new ID value but this resulted in names like crate1121231234 etc. No good. So now we use the type+new ID value.

3) DeleD automatically snaps new objects to the current gridsize. If the size of the new object is below the current gridsize, you might get strange results. If you have suggestions on how to improve this technique, please elaborate! Smile

Edit: hmm... maybe the naming function should use name+ID afterall. Just thought about another way to accomplish that.

Paul-Jan · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:04 am Post subject:

Maybe we shouldn't allow objects to become smaller than the current gridsize + not allow the creation properties to be < gridsize. Would that work?

Daaark · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:12 am Post subject:

Jeroen · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:26 am Post subject:

Note that you can change the snapping of individual objects using the Object Inspector. You might want to set the snapping to None after your object is totally finished.

Please do send the file, we need testdata to work with. Smile

Daaark · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 9:33 am Post subject:

I have to go for abit now. I will be back in a few hours, and I'll send you the files, and explain some things more. I took some pics of the light mapping to show bugs, or things that look abit wrong, I'll explain them later when I come back.

For now, the pics are in this folder... The lightest_proof image is taken from something else, with a similar lighting setup to my scene.

http://photobucket.com/albums/v227/Vampyre_Dark/misc/

Daaark · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:02 pm Post subject:

Do you want the texture pack?

(Ack, the file is too large to post.)

I mailed a zip with the map and textures.

Daaark · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 2:01 pm Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 2:23 pm Post subject:

I didn't get your files, but maybe Jeroen has. Yesterday has been quite hectic with bugfixes and all, so that could explain why you haven't seen any reactions.

About your comments, I don't really get what you mean, so I am going to guess. If I'm guessing wrong, please correct me!

I think what you are saying is that your are disagreeing with our definition of the ambient light colour of the scene (being: the basis amount of light hitting objects that are not directly exposed to any light sources, in simple-speak: shadows), and that shadows should be black, always.

The reason we introduced this property is because, in most applications, you don't want your shadows to be black, you want them to have just a wee bit of colour. In real life, reflecting light off other surfaces will make sure no surface is ever pitch black (except for maybe the iside of a very very dark cave). However, as the DeleD lightmapping is not a global illumination solution, this effect won't occur (no reflections), so we allow the user to set a basic colour that is the 'absolute minimum lighting level'. Or, the colour of the shadows, if you want to look at it that way.

I think that you are having problems because you expect the ambient colour to be something else. The thing is: we introduced the ambient colour especially for the purpose of it being our "shadow colour" as you refer to it. I don't really understand what other purpose you are using it for (to 'render our objects'??? Have all your entities the same colour multiplier? Why?) but you should probably request for a special property for that purpose. Unless I am awefully mistaken (I could very well be) our definition of 'ambient colour' is the very very common one, same as for example used in default OpenGL/DirectX lighting.

p.s. the tweak3d screenshot is not working.

Daaark · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 2:47 pm Post subject:

Daaark · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 4:00 pm Post subject:

I understand what the ambient light is for, and how it is used. Since you know OpenGL I will talk in those terms. To put it simply, it is used to to cheaply simulate the bouncing of light off one surface from another.

Ok, so knowing that. Say we have an outdoor map, and it's set at sunset. So we need to simulate that light coming down from the sun and casting orange, and it bouncing all over the place. So we set the ambient light in our map to that orange colour.

Now when rendering it in game, we set OpenGL's global ambient light to that same colour. Then render the map. The map is drawn normally, but with this orange hue too to make it look like sunset. Also, the lightmaps are modulated over this and blend on top. So even though the shadows are black, they lighten up abit to the orange ambient color when they are blended in automatically. OpenGL / Realtime lighting is off here, except for the golbal ambient color.

Then you render all your objects/creatures, and they all get the same ambient colour lighting on them (ornage). Also, if they are near one of the lights placed in the map, they are light by that too.

That is how the ambient colour is meant to be used. What you are doing, is flooding all the lightmaps with it, when the ambient color has no reason to be in them at all. Also, the ambient color can be changed at runtime, like to simulate time passing, and let the scene get darker or brighter.

Ok, here is a quickie image I drew to show what I mean, and a pic from world of warcraft to show it in use. The first one is a quickie I made in paintshop to simulate the proper effect of the map rendered with the ambient light color stored in the map turned on in opengl, and then the lightmaps modulated in.

The second pic is from IGN, it's a pic of World Of Warcraft, drawing things like I described above.
...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/Vampyre_Dark/misc/lm_example.jpg
http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/535/535419/world-of-warcraft-20040803102040322.jpg

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 4:10 pm Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 4:13 pm Post subject:

Oh, and that also clears up why I hadn't seen your mail, please don't mail me at my hotmail account as it is for messenging (i.e. i HATE it, so I never ever check it Wink

) only, us my delgine address in stead:

paul justalittleplaceholdertoavoidtoomuchspam at andanotherone delgine dot com

Thanks again Exclamation

Daaark · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 4:37 pm Post subject:

Ok sent.

Oh yeah. I also noticed some weird artifacts in the shadowing that you can see in my screenshots

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v227/Vampyre_Dark/misc/deled_lighting_wrong.jpg

That one shows it best. Look along the bottom of the back wall. Above the baseboards. There is no light low to the ground that show be casting that shadow upwards. And in the box under the window (The box that makes up the wall part) there is no shadow.

I tried to play around with the light, and do different things to try and see why that was happening, but I couldn't find out.

Edwin · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 5:20 pm Post subject:

I think that is happening because the lightmapper saves multiple lightmaps in one texture, so other lightmaps are overlapping the edges.