So, what are you working on right now?

[Shadowhide]

I would argue that bump maps look good when they give "texture" to the difuse image, but not when trying to simulate depth/3d too much, IMHO.

thats why cobblestone texture which ground surfaced textured with shouldn't simulate depth too much

perfect usage of bumpmapping :

[GameDevGoro]

perfect usage of bumpmapping :

<image>

 

That there is parallax mapping, though. Something TDM doesn't have (but there are D3 mods to do it).

 

But yes I agree with you; normal mapping is done best in low to mid depth details. Deeper details are exactly why someone came up with parallax mapping.

 

/End nerdy butt-in.

[Shadowhide]

sometimes there is no need to make texture looks 3D,just adding some scratches and other details with normalmap would be enough

[Glyph Seeker]

@Shadowhide

 

Which mod is that screenshot from? I can't place it. :-X

[Shadowhide]

@Shadowhide

 

Which mod is that screenshot from? I can't place it. :-X

its my little test map for a fan made Deus Ex-like game called Option Implicit.

well,its not a game yet,only 1 playable level demo,but its very promising

it was made by a single person (game engine ect.)

not sure if english version exists

Edited February 4, 2012 by Shadowhide

[Serpentine]

I showed once here a few textures I made and someone said that the stones in concrete would do just fine if I make a normal map and so:

 

Here's a normalmap made from that texture.

Using Photoshop:

+ Using the black-and-white filter, adjust the balances so that the mortar is darker than the stones if possible.

+ With an ordinary soft brush, just go to any stomes that should be sticking out and with low opacity lighten them a bit.

+ Make a copy of the image, then use the 'minimum' filter, hopefully this will get nice black points in the mortar. Once it's done, it looks really messy, use the 'surface blur' filter to try and clean it up a bit, it doesnt need to look very accurate however.

+ Save both images out -> move to SSBump Gen.

+ Make a few layers, ideally two 'large' layers to pull out the shape of the stone, then a detail layer to get the surface detail. Blur the low levels heavily, it's fine for them to look completely smooth. Use the bi-linear filter to reduce the noise and round the stones.

+ Make sure that the high detail surface layer isnt pulling in much of the shape detail that we're blending it onto.

 

And you're done:

[Baddcog]

Spent the last hour plus with the dreaded, you got a leak, can't find the pointfile.... DOH!, had a mission installed so the pointfile was being hidden hate that.

 

Spent all weekend doing quite a bit of work on my map. The canal is pretty much all laid out, quite a few vportals in, really good performance everywhere so far. Ripped a couple building facade's from the training map. But I still need about 40 more, lol. So if anyone has building facade's they want to donate, lol.. Also ripped the startpoint/Inn from The Rift, might as well reuse it too. And I dropped in the Chapel I worked on awhile back. So I had a pretty small meager map in mind at first and it's grown quite sizeably.

[Bikerdude]

Spent all weekend doing quite a bit of work on my map. The canal is pretty much all laid out, quite a few vportals in, really good performance everywhere so far. Ripped a couple building facade's from the training map.

Your Welcome to use some from Dragons Claw, but just Pm flanders to make sure he is ok.

[Baddcog]

Alright cool. I did roam around there and look at em for refs, but everytime I get back in ediotr I lose track...forget what I saw, lol. I checked out quite a few missions, without being able to take screens it's hard to remember much.

 

Sometimes I get stuck in texture ruts too, using the same stuff too much.

[pusianka]

 

 

Here's a normalmap made from that texture.

Using Photoshop:

+ Using the black-and-white filter, adjust the balances so that the mortar is darker than the stones if possible.

+ With an ordinary soft brush, just go to any stomes that should be sticking out and with low opacity lighten them a bit.

+ Make a copy of the image, then use the 'minimum' filter, hopefully this will get nice black points in the mortar. Once it's done, it looks really messy, use the 'surface blur' filter to try and clean it up a bit, it doesnt need to look very accurate however.

+ Save both images out -> move to SSBump Gen.

+ Make a few layers, ideally two 'large' layers to pull out the shape of the stone, then a detail layer to get the surface detail. Blur the low levels heavily, it's fine for them to look completely smooth. Use the bi-linear filter to reduce the noise and round the stones.

+ Make sure that the high detail surface layer isnt pulling in much of the shape detail that we're blending it onto.

 

And you're done:

 

Thank you for taking your precious time and doing that tutorial, it is of great help to me.

 

I'd like to make it up to you somehow. Maybe I could model sth for you? Give your best shot!

[Bikerdude]

This isn't strictly TDM, but it shows what can be done with an inferior engine and how we need to improve some of our effects. Download link

 

 

 

Just wish Sliptip would make something for TDM, as his got to be the best or one of the or the best darkengine authors out there.

[AluminumHaste]

Getting there:

 

[Bikerdude]

Epic proportions...

[pusianka]

Yep this one is quite epic... whats the FPS count there?

[AluminumHaste]

Well with all the lights and fog and fancy fog light thingies in the windows performance has suffered, it's now running between 30 and 40 fps.

[pusianka]

good... good... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

 

 

no but really that's very good. Beautiful thing you're making

[jaxa]

Has anyone entertained the idea of releasing 2 versions for low FPS maps? A "light" version with fog and other effects reduced, lower poly models, smaller textures, etc.? That way everyone can have the cake or bread.

[Baddcog]

Well, we only have a few low poly models atm, but that works through user settings, so they can set model detail tohigh and get full use of the LOD system, or set it low and it uses the lower versions. The textures all have mip maps (dds at least-not normals) so they scale at distance, not sure if any menu settings effect that though .

[nbohr1more]

You can always chop off some effects manually via:

 

r_skipFogLights = 1

r_skipBlendLights = 1

 

(etc)

 

But... yeah, that might have an effect on the game-play due to changes in the lighting.

 

Fidcal setup different effect levels via the difficulty level system so it can be done.

 

Some of these effects might perform better in later TDM releases (if better render methods are found) so it may not be worth it to

setup a "low-detail performance mode" anyway...

[rich_is_bored]

With all those lights placed at the same height, you could possibly improve performance by combining them into one with a custom light texture.

[Serpentine]

Has anyone entertained the idea of releasing 2 versions for low FPS maps? A "light" version with fog and other effects reduced, lower poly models, smaller textures, etc.? That way everyone can have the cake or bread.

You can use the downsizing cvars if you need, models are already fairly low poly, there are cvars for removing various effects.

 

Most of the time it'd be more time to do that sort of thing, than to optimize the map with better portalling (not more, better placement), statics and the rest.

 

Poly count and textures are really not a massive problem well, besides the current normalmap situation, that will be changing soon with the compressed versions which will drop TDM usage quite dramatically.

 

For example, on my test demo of the training mission : http://waffles.za.net/temp/normalmapcompare.zip (screenshots, 30mb, tricky to compare if you arnt using an editor)

Memory usage :
   Uncompressed RGBA - 944mb
   >Compressed LATC2 - 248mb

Load time for images:
   Uncompressed RGBA - 6.2 seconds
   >Compressed LATC2 - 2.9 seconds

There should also be a pretty good fps buff if you're using a laptop, low end card or something rather old, 32bit windows or 2gb ram.

[jaxa]

I'm aware that some maps can be optimized more, and that many others already run fine. But if someone were to make a map with just a gratuitous amount of fog, animated models, dozens-hundreds of AI, or large open spaces, with the aim of taxing the engine as much as possible, it could be better to make two versions than a compromise map for performance. Once both versions are out in the wild, the people who can play the high end one can do so, and those who can't just have to wait for Moore's Law to kick in. Edit: Oh, and if it can be done by using the difficulty level system, all the better. I guess what I want to know is whether performance considerations are constraining anybody's creative visions, and are there ways in which planning for performance (visportals and room sizes) makes the map look worse.

Edited February 7, 2012 by jaxa

[Baddcog]

You can use the downsizing cvars if you need, models are already fairly low poly, there are cvars for removing various effects.

 

Most of the time it'd be more time to do that sort of thing, than to optimize the map with better portalling (not more, better placement), statics and the rest.

 

Poly count and textures are really not a massive problem well, besides the current normalmap situation, that will be changing soon with the compressed versions which will drop TDM usage quite dramatically.

 

For example, on my test demo of the training mission : http://waffles.za.ne...lmapcompare.zip (screenshots, 30mb, tricky to compare if you arnt using an editor)

Memory usage :
  Uncompressed RGBA - 944mb
  >Compressed LATC2 - 248mb

Load time for images:
  Uncompressed RGBA - 6.2 seconds
  >Compressed LATC2 - 2.9 seconds

There should also be a pretty good fps buff if you're using a laptop, low end card or something rather old, 32bit windows or 2gb ram.

 

That's awesome, should also help alot with visportal hiccups, when the card is trying to load new textures.

[AluminumHaste]

With all those lights placed at the same height, you could possibly improve performance by combining them into one with a custom light texture.

I did entertain this idea except up top there's a button panel that controls each light individually so they can all be shut off.

[Baddcog]

I made my first sitting ai!!!

 

Lol, I was a bit dissapointed. Was looking to kill a bit of time at the end of the night, looked it up on the wiki. Thought it was gonna be a chore. All you have to do is place an entity and link it. It only took a few minutes... At least I had to compile twice to tweak it just right.

--

 

Got a couple more gas light entities set-up and a bunch of mushroom light entities set up so those'll be easier to use when 1.08 is out.

 

Got some other fixes on my stuff coming too. And I'm going to get the window glass skins in place so there's more variety there.