DeleD Community Edition

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 6:33 pm Post subject:

In theory, the packed textures are surrounded with a bilinar filtering-proof border, and mipmapping is turned off for the lightmaps, so there should be no artifacts because of the packing. I shall double-check. This bug is on top of my list now.

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 6:35 pm Post subject:

Also notice the 'stippling' on the vases. The effect you see here only occurs on non-planer (convex and concave) surfaces, and is caused by the fact that adjacent surfaces cast shadows on each other (or so I believe). Ofcourse by introducing epsilons (epsilon minimum distance for a face to cast shadows, stuff like that), the problem is less pronounced, but because of the low resulotion of the texture, shadows are still peeping through. Put in simpler words: the lines you see are the very edges of the shadow cast by the adjacent surface, and the reason you see them is because the resolution of the lightmap is much lower than the resolution of the geometry.

I believe a solution to this latter problem might lie in ignoring 'adjacent' triangles, where adjacent is definied as
1. Sharing an edge
2. Facing in the same direction

However, I am still working on this one. I'll try to have it fixed by the time the next major version comes out. This is very much work in progress, and there is not much reading material on this topic available, so I'l keep you al posted how things go.

Daaark · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 6:50 pm Post subject:

The embrace (qeradient for vampire) exporter used to run through all the geometry and remove faces that were touching each other, or couldn't be seen.. (like the undersides of boxes that were touching the floor) before doing the lighting. This took forever though.

Also, there were toggles so that lights could only effect geoemtry in their own sectors. But you have no sectoring in here, so bringing this up is pointless right now. Surprised

Daaark · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 10:26 am Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 11:10 am Post subject:

About the ambient colour v.s. shadow colour/intensity discussion (maybe we should decide on having a separate thread for each feature/bug/request somewhere in the future, as this thread is becoming quite confusing Confused

), I did some testing and thinking, and basically vampyre_dark is right: the ambient colour should not be the shadow colour. These are two separate concepts:
1. The ambient colour for the scene as a whole and
2. The intensity of the shadow

While the ambient colour could be baked into the lightmaps (but then for all texels, not only for the shadows) for a slight performance boost at real-time rendering, that doesn't weigh up to the loss of flexibility (changing he ambient colour at runtime), so we won't. A new property will have to be added to set the shadow'intensity/darkness/brightness (have to settle on the correct approach here). We'll take care of this in a some future (not too far future, I'm thinking days, not months Wink

) version of DeleD.

In the meanwhile, Vampyre, you'll have to work around the way it works right now, so the scene.ambient is pretty useless for your purpose at the moment. Then again, we never meant it to be used that way, so just consider it an upcoming feature.

Thanks again for bringing this up, it was a most valuable remark!

Daaark · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:01 pm Post subject:

Did you solve the problem you were talking about when you mailed me? Have any screenshots? Very Happy

Paul-Jan · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:21 pm Post subject:

Yes, the problem I was talking to you about ("if not by assigning the ambient colour, how do I prevent my shadows from becoming impenetrable black") is solved by introducing the new "shadow intensity" (or whatever the name will be) concept. The shadows will then be rendered in a corresponding shade of 'gray' (neutral colored light), any actual colorization will be accomplished by the setting ambient scene color at runtime.

And no there are no screenshots yet Smile

Now I will start a separate thread to discuss some lightmapping artifact you pointed out earlier. You keep us on our toes, really Wink

Daaark · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:33 pm Post subject:

granada · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:39 pm Post subject:

Paul-Jan · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:52 pm Post subject:

In case you meant that seriously (hope not): No no no! No! No no no no no no no! We were considering awarding you a Most Valuable User of the Month Award or something similar, only the fact that something like that would reek a little too much like Microsoft/Macdonalds practices stopped us Very Happy

Keeping us on our toes with your input is a good thing. Gooohoood.

Daaark · Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:54 pm Post subject:

Heh. I wasn't taking it seriously. If you want to give me a title..

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