nbohr1more

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Yeah... I'm not asking for full-blown Sculptris but a simple re-sizable sphere deform would be great for smoothing geometry and adding large deforms. If you were crazy you could use the sphere deform to make REALLY detailed stuff but it would be VERY time consuming and frustrating. I just want a poor-mans version

To put things another way (an extreme over-exaggerated way... ) what if Arcturus could have "sculpted" the normals of his marvelous normal map directly on the surface he applied it to in Dark Radiant? http://modetwo.net/d...video-tutorial/

I agree that triangles are triangles but Normals are not triangles and do have a performance advantage. No matter which of the three techniques you use silhouettes are going to be an issue unless you ignore sane poly-count rules. The look of each technique would be produced by the texture and lighting rather than anything that is intrinsic to their make-up (again, triangles are triangles). I agree that Models and Patches are easier to texture but neither of them appear to be the primary building block in Dark Radiant. The look of shading is primarily due to the Normals. If you can make normals that span multiple brushes than you have virtually eliminated their major shortcoming. Having Normal editing in Dark Radiant would mean that more buildings and world geometry would have large, complex, unique implied surface geometry rather than having every normal map simply be a tile. Wouldn't it be cool to paint or sculpt normals like cracks in wall or complex embossments? Right again... but this technique precludes the need to increase the complexity of the brush work. In fact you can have the boxiest shapes in the world but use Normal Mapping to give them complexity (within reason... taking into consideration silhouette issues...)

The reason for this is that it's very hard to make sweeping normal map changes across multiple texture tiles. You can make all the tiles into one big texture then normal map that externally but keeping each separate texture tile means that you can have complex multi-brush multi-tile normals (and you can work out the visportal advantages of keeping as much as possible as Brushes rather than Models ). Plus you can virtually eliminate the need for Patches that don't have visible silhouettes.

I guess if you textured the patch the same as what was done with the brush work then the Normal Map damage would be minimized and you could control the look better. Then you would just need to remove the Normal Maps from the Brush Work before export. Again, an abstracted editor method that lets you do this (possibly even edit the actual Normals in real-time?) and that automatically slices up the editing into multiple textures... would be Heaven. If it could work the way I imagine every modified Normal would be written back to a copy of the original texture. Then the next time the map is compiled the modified texture copies would be used in place of the originals.

I was kinda wishing for an in-Dark Radiant way to modify Normal Maps across multiple selected Brushes or Patches. I think you could still kinda do this though: 1) Create a Patch 2) Stretch the Patch to conform to the contours of your Brush Work 3) Modify the Patch to include the new details and contours you seek 4) Export the Patch as an ASE 5) Export you Brush-Work as an ASE 6) Renderbump The problem here is... "Does the Renderbump inheret the original Normal Maps from the textures on your Brush Work???" (Other problem: Patch editor is not quite a sculpting tool...)

It would be texture data no? (Normal Map?) I see the confusion here. I'm referring to editing normals for the textures on Brush Work rather than a Model...

Feature request submitted as 0002328.

Should I submit a request for this feature in Bug-tracker or is it way too silly ?

Sorry if this is a foolish question but... "Would it be possible to create a sculpting tool for Vertex Normals in Dark Radiant?" I suspect it would work like: 1) Load the selected textures into a temporary memory space 2) Sculpt the normals 3) Bake the results to new textures

I cant wait!

Looks great! I can't wait so see an in-engine version

OK Biker ... I guess since my wife is always saying I'll die from GURD\Cancer\Etc. I felt like spreading the worry-warts around... Glad to hear that you don't have Acid Reflux...

I have acid reflux and take grey-market Nexium from Thailand (my sister-in-law lives there)... Have you looked into Acid Reflux (it's very common)... (presuming guts means stomach...)?

Thanks Bambini. The only reason why I gave any of these feelings any heed was because of a dream where God seemed to be yelling at me. This is what spurred the factions who are for "trying to listen to God" and those who are for "ignoring anything that seems irrational even if it appears to come from God"... into the discussion. I am probably the epitome of the Agnostic as I constantly teeter between a purely Scientific world-view and a belief that God is intervening in my life. Seeing this back and forth is like listening to my own internal dialog except the language and discussion points are far more entertaining and interesting .

@Sotha: Thanks again for your take on things. I can't help but be entertained by your colorful use of language (many native speaker/writers could only wish for such a skill). But I can't let you take any kind blame for a "derail" (as if such a foolish original topic could be derailed ... Even though I understood that he meant "the current course of discussion" I got a good chuckle when jdude claimed that you "ruined" the thread as if the thread wasn't "ruined" to begin with :laugh: ). Bambini has brought up a good point though. Through my efforts to find out how to navigate what seemed to be an irrational request from God to "do something dammit!". I forgot to explore the other factor of prejudice. I firmly believe that ALL people are inherently racist, sexist, age-ist, etc. I was actually HOPING that a bunch of folks would post in this topic yelling at me for being an age-ist bastard. I would much rather believe that the "creepy feeling" came from some prejudice that I could work out psychologically than believe that God is calling me to action. I would again rather be a prejudiced and paranoid fool rather than be guilty apathy to child abuse. The problem with prejudice being the root of this issue is that now I have an experimental "control". Yet another single-child family with ancient parents were walking through our neighborhood and I had no "creepy feeling" what so ever about them. Perhaps that is another prejudice because they were dressed like hippies and I've always liked hippies . So feel free to accuse me of age-ism. I cant deny it. I, in fact, firmly believe that it is an intrinsic part of the human condition. And (bonus) it will further reduce any feelings of guilt I may have for not going on some raving mad investigation. (No more lightning so I think God's cool with all this self-reflection instead of the vigilante investigation option... )

Yeah the same thing goes for GPU's... ATI has had PCF in hardware for several generations now yet most game engines will see ATI in the Vendor string for the card and automatically disable PCF. Some folks have software installed that makes these games think that their video card is nVidia just so they can have prettier shadows (PCF) Percentage Closer Filter

Sticky this thread so it doesn't get lost again?

Well a person using self-reflection to fight against their own prejudices and paranoia is bound to get philosophical no?

At the very least and aptitude in Modeling should translate to an aptitude in Dark Radiant. Are you interested in making "Fan Missions" as well...? (A question we would like to hear "Yes" to from any forum poster... anywhere... )

Each FM will have it's own directory in the Doom 3 folder. Each FM directory will have it's own Screens or Screenshots (I forget which) sub-directory. If you are running a Test map, and do not have an FM installed then it should land in the Darkmod\Screens directory...

I can see it! ... Look like there's no Specular... Perhaps the light is not set for Specular?

(Cant see the screen-shot... blocked at work ) Unless the Specular component isn't strong enough I think the look you want may require a transparent Cube Map?

THANKS