dim3 Forum

BTW, thanks guys. As I thought I've obviously broken some things and you guys really help me nail them down so I can get them fixed.

[>] Brian

I wanted to e-mail this to Brian but now we got the 2.5 b9 to test I thought everybody should give it a try.

This is some stuff I did intended for a (potential) new dim3 Demo. Please keep in mind that I got zero experience creating game content and that this started as a mere baked lighting test and then grew into style testing.

There are two maps, the respective textures, some including bumps. In Engine, access the maps from the standard chooser.

Problems:
a.) look through parts of the textures for the trees and scrubs are gone. In 2.5 b8 they were there, in b9 Editor preview and Animator they are there, too.
b.) the Tavern has a cheap spec, which looks totally weird. The player model has a light implemented. When you go close to the Tavern the spec shows. But it also shows from the distance, the blue shine maybe comes from the ambient lighting. This might be it.
c.) The day scene has a fish in the water that is supposed to walk along a path. Console says the nodes are not on the same path.

Zipped Data2 folder, 55 MB:
http://files.filefront.com/dim3+RPG+Demo...einfo.html

EDIT:
Testing the levels with raytraced lighting it proves to be unplayable. Be warned.

If you really want to enjoy this scenes, delete the spec texture for the tavern in Editor, then fire the whole thing up in 2.5 b8.

Some stuff I learned:
- The night scene benefits a lot from halos in the lanterns. To keep work down I imported the lanterns as meshes, not objects. The problem is that right now you can only stick halos to bones, hence you need an object. Would be helpful to get more flexibility here.
- The player object has a light and you can see it influence the bump shadows, but there is little to none visible light area.
- We need some solution for vegetation. You can not go and create 10 grass variations and then place 200 objects in the scene. Maybe in Editor mark the faces that have vegetation and then via a setting bring in random vegetation.
- The rain does not spawn ripples on water. Water is a little cheap right now anyway. Placing a light object above the water surface does not light the water tex.
- Importing the lantern as an object it does not create a shadow. At least a blob shadow would be good.
- Adjusting path nodes is a pain. Maybe a "automatically stick to ground" option?
- Auto texturing drove me nuts, maybe off it per default?

Data folder given runs about 30 fps all the way through. My forest runs -slow- though, might be because of the transparency problem.
Bugs in engine:
Transparency is broken, at-least for models. (nothing is transparent, displays background color)
>This< normal map doesn't seem to work right, might be my fault.

I agree with brad, we need some way to automatically scatter foliage around the map (along with an LOD system). Maybe an option to put foliage on all segments with the specified texture(s)?

Yeah normal maps don't have to be nearly that big unless there's a crapload of detail -- which there isn't. 256x256 would be sufficient for that probly.

Also I lies. Normal mapping still doesn't have specular built into it. Needs that. Please. Thanks.

teh1ghool Wrote:Yeah normal maps don't have to be nearly that big unless there's a crapload of detail -- which there isn't. 256x256 would be sufficient for that probly.

Me? I know, it was just a test.


Brian, specular still doesn't seem to work right. The darker a pixel is because of the bump map, the less the specular map should effect it. I think. Right now specular maps make the bump mapping look faded. (try using an all-white spec with the demo's "metal_bump")

That's where the built-in-spec comes in. A specular component is supposed to be part of the calculation of the normal map. And that is why it doesn't work having them separated. Though a specular map is still needed for regular specular things that aren't part of the normal map.

I was working on a sunset variation of my scene. Only changing the sky setting had a large influence on overall performance, i.e. form globe to dome hemisphere.
Activating a camera background instead of a geometry sky got me maybe 3-5 FPS more.
Originally I had no fog in the scene, but including some i suddenly got 8-10 FPS more. Maybe because activating fog the sky is not drawn?

This is all Editor 2.5 b8, but I posted here not to spam the old thread anymore.

EDIT:

Today I fired up the sunset scene again, and without any changes I suddenly get 70-80 FPS, while yesterday I got 30-35 o_O
What's going on here?

Btw, in 2.5 b9: de-activating bump and specular brings back the look through parts of the vegetation textures.

ccccc Wrote:

teh1ghool Wrote:Yeah normal maps don't have to be nearly that big unless there's a crapload of detail -- which there isn't. 256x256 would be sufficient for that probly.

Me? I know, it was just a test.


Brian, specular still doesn't seem to work right. The darker a pixel is because of the bump map, the less the specular map should effect it. I think. Right now specular maps make the bump mapping look faded. (try using an all-white spec with the demo's "metal_bump")

ccccc, that's what it LOOKS like, but that's not how it works. The specular isn't supposed to be more or less effective based on how dark the pixels are due to bump mapping, it's supposed to act like the bump mapping is actual geometry, but right now it isn't.

Alexander Smith Wrote:

ccccc Wrote:

teh1ghool Wrote:Yeah normal maps don't have to be nearly that big unless there's a crapload of detail -- which there isn't. 256x256 would be sufficient for that probly.

Me? I know, it was just a test.


Brian, specular still doesn't seem to work right. The darker a pixel is because of the bump map, the less the specular map should effect it. I think. Right now specular maps make the bump mapping look faded. (try using an all-white spec with the demo's "metal_bump")

ccccc, that's what it LOOKS like, but that's not how it works. The specular isn't supposed to be more or less effective based on how dark the pixels are due to bump mapping, it's supposed to act like the bump mapping is actual geometry, but right now it isn't.

I'm still playing with it but you guys are getting near stuff that can only be done in shaders as it's very complex math, so there's only so far I can go without shaders and without slowing everything way down.

[>] Brian

Hi Brian,
Im going to check out the new beta today and get beck to you.

In other news I was wondering ( I know that you are a busy guy) if you ever wanted to expand on Animator at all. I have been a TD rigging specialist for 5 years now. I only use c4d. Although to get a decent rig going you only need around 3 or 4 custom expressions.

If you are at all interested in what im talking about let me know. That way we could generate some really great animations out of Animator,

just a thought.

cheers,
-Danny