Darkmod: Inspiration thread

[Springheel]

so there is no way just to have said shadow on the top then..?

 

There are some D3 shaders that suggest it's possible, but I have no idea how.

[nbohr1more]

Currently you would need to have two lights (at least) to achieve that effect.

 

When Cubemap light support is added to the mod, all six directions can have unique images for

one light.

[Tels]

I think the best way to fake the shadow at the top only would be to ake it a "darkening decal". Draw a black square on white, blur it, then apply it in a shader with I think filter. Then manually apply this decal on the ceiling.

 

There really is no way to get correct soft shadows with the way the D3 engine works - it just fakes some projections and this can't really possible work unless you use a cubemap - but I think these are expensive, and I am not even sure doable. Definitely you don't want to have for every lantern due to performance reason, but it would be nice to have for it looking correct.

[nbohr1more]

Cubemap projection is barely more expensive than standard light projection. Sikkpin pretty much proved that

with his dedicated demo.

 

The problem is not of performance but is instead setting up the dedicated keyword method

so you don't need to replace all existing lights with cubemap versions.

 

Going forward, however, you would want all "new" lights to be Cubemap based as they will look "better" and more physically correct thus reducing

the need for lots of extra "decorative" lights to correct the incorrect appearance of Doom 3's native lighting.

 

Since Rebb made a dedicated vfp for Ambient light, he would likely have the aptitude to make one for Cubemap lights and could

just copy Sikkpin's shader (with attribution of course). Ideally, however, this would be rewritten in GLSL so that's another

thing that might best wait till the GLSL path is fully functional.

[rich_is_bored]

I don't know if the illustration I made for this page is clear enough but here's how the lights in Doom 3 work...

 

http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Light

[nbohr1more]

I think that illustration is great. I wish there was a way to visualize the whole volume to confirm my idea about

how the Falloff Image can act like a lathe and shrink or enlarge a gradient circle (projection image).

 

 

Going back to the decal idea, another idea I kinda stole from strombine (but that had occurred to me

prior to re-reading his article) is that you can specify a different texture for the ambient stages than the regular diffuse.

Thus you could have a diffuse stage with the shadow baked in and the ambient without the shadow.

This, of course, requires that the texture based ambient methods are used.

 

Lunaran's idea was to make the Ambient light read the alpha in the one of the map types and use that as

a different texture method (a true ambient map stage) but that would require sacrificing alpha for some stage type (etc).

With that change he had the ambitious idea of painting tons of custom "ambient" textures with shadows, normals, etc.

that would only show in ambient light.

 

It's actually possible to do this in TDM right now because of the texture based ambient stages, but that's quite a labor intensive

process obviously. (Akin to all the gazillion ambient textures in the Hexen EOC mod).

[jay pettitt]

I did a gig at the weekend (I don't play, I only do techy sound & electricals stuff) at a very nice pub with a very very nice old (disused) Brewery building standing watch behind it - <3 the Victorian industrial dirty red brick vibe.

 

 

 

Google reveals that other more intrepid people have taken other more inspirational photos -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ant_43/sets/72157628829984029/with/6716620113/

Edited June 25, 2012 by jay pettitt

[grayman]

The exterior would make for a nice museum or court house exterior.

[Bikerdude]

Looks like a bunch of our texture were cool enough to make it into a new texture pack for thief gold :-D

 

http://darkfate.org/news#

 

 

 

 

 

[Tels]

Looks like a bunch of our texture were cool enough to make it into a new texture pack for thief gold :-D

 

LOL. Oh yeah, I can see it now, the circular logic of people avoiding TDM because Thief is better

[Melan]

Those textures stand out like a sore thumb in the low-poly environment, though. I wouldn't say the overall visual effect is pleasant (compare and contrast to Thief Gold HD, which actually looks cool).

 

On the other hand, look at this window texture here:

 

 

Holy hell! I would love to see it in TDM!

Edited July 4, 2012 by Melan

[Bikerdude]

Hehe, I knew you would like that gothic texture. I image as he used our testures there should be no reason why we cant use his.

[SiyahParsomen]

Hehe, I knew you would like that gothic texture. I image as he used our testures there should be no reason why we cant use his.

 

and imagine that if he can use darkmod textures(I assume), he can use any other's texture as well. In this case the texture you want to use may not be his own.

[Melan]

Someone ought to track these down; there are also other good textures in the ThiefG/Res/ddfix/ntex folder. They are replacements for Thief originals, but they are basically someone's original work, so if we can get permission, we are okay. They are mostly 256*512 and the small windows are even 128*256, but there may be high-res originals...

 

 

 

 

[Bikerdude]

I think this place has been spoken about before "Highgate Cemetery", but forgot all about it. Its not that far from me so I'll have to take a spin down there and take some more shots!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Melan]

Wow.

 

(I think I have seen that first shot in a FM... Rose Cottage maybe?)

[grayman]

Those are some beautiful shots.

[SeriousToni]

We need more wine decals O.O

[Bikerdude]

(I think I have seen that first shot in a FM... Rose Cottage maybe?)

Saturnine is based in the UK so probably

[Sotha]

Gorgeous. Creates an urge to start mapping... I'll resist.

 

Why did you not resize the photos to some 1024xsomething? Would be more sane download.

[demagogue]

Saturnine said RC's cemetery came from a famous real-world site, I remember. So this must be it.

[Sotha]

I spent a few moments thinking how a forest scene like those could be made. Probably very difficult with current assets, I suspect some kind of forest texture would be needed to make the impression of a thick forest.
Viewer -> model trees & model bushes -> forest background texture -> skybox.

[Bikerdude]

Why did you not resize the photos to some 1024xsomething? Would be more sane download.

Done

[Melan]

This picture! (Found on Google+ while searching for something else)

 

 

Edited July 12, 2012 by Melan

[Bikerdude]

Looks like an upmarket version of the street in St Lucia.