New Visual Options in TDM: 1.03

[New Horizon]

The Dark Mod 1.03

Enhanced Video Options

 

So you want to know what the new video settings in Dark Mod 1.03 are all about do you? Well, pull up a chair kids and lets learn all about it.

INTERACTION SHADER:

 

The interaction shader determines how 3-D surface properties of objects are rendered, and how light interacts with these objects. We have two interaction shaders to choose from, Default and Enhanced.

 

AMBIENT LIGHT:

 

The Dark Mod requires mappers to encase their entire level with a single, 'low level' ambient light. This light removes the pitch black shadows that Doom 3 is infamous for. This ambient light must be named "ambient_world" and should only be bright enough to remove pitch black shadows, and should ideally not be bright enough to visually affect the light gem. There are more advanced options for location based ambient lighting, but we won't get into that here.

 

AMBIENT RENDERING:

 

The values from the ambient_world light can be used several ways. We now have 3 'user defined' performance options in the menu for how the light is rendered ingame. Two of these options require all of our textures to contain special code to support the 'simple' and 'enhanced' ambient settings, otherwise the textures will appear black when users try to use them. It is important for mappers to ensure any custom textures have the appropriate code in their material files to support 'simple' and 'enhanced' ambient lighting.

 

AMBIENT RENDERING SETTINGS:

 

Simple

As the name implies, this is a technique that renders the values of the ambient light by passing those values to the diffuse texture through a special stage in the textures material file. There is no normal map or specular pass for the simple ambient since this setting has performance in mind. Low end systems will see the best results with this setting.

 

Normal

This is the default way of doing things. Diffuse, normal and specular textures are lit by the physical light, and do not rely on any of the special material file code.

 

Enhanced

This is an enhanced version of the simple method where diffuse, normal and specular are all rendered by having the ambient_world values passed to them.

 

INTERACTION SETTINGS

Default

This is the basic Doom 3 interaction shader. Use the Doom 3 shader on low end machines for performance. When doing so, it is best to use 'simple' or 'enhanced' ambient lighting because the Doom 3 interaction shader does not correctly render the shadows for 'ambient_world' lights when using the 'Normal' ambient setting.

 

Enhanced

This is our own enhanced interaction shader. It does some special tricks like edge detection, nicer specular, and correct ambient light shadows when using 'Normal' ambient rendering. Lower end systems may not be able to handle the extra processes.

 

HDR-Lite

This setting adds some special post processing effects to the game. What you see on screen will have some added visual punch. It can be used in combination with any of the settings listed above.

 

Bloom Intensity

When HDR-Lite is enabled, you will also be able to turn on bloom with the bloom slider. Dragging the slider all the way to the left disables bloom completely.

 

In closing. Play around with the new settings until you find a combination that looks or works best for your system.

 

 

Edit:

 

I will add this to the wiki shortly.

 

In the meantime, here is a link to a wiki article on some advanced editing.

Advanced TDM Visuals Tweaking

[SiyahParsomen]

thanks for clarifying. I wasn't aware of differences between ambient rendering settings up to now.

[Melan]

Two of these options require all of our textures to contain special code to support the 'simple' and 'enhanced' ambient settings, otherwise the textures will appear black when users try to use them. It is important for mappers to ensure any custom textures have the appropriate code in their material files to support 'simple' and 'enhanced' ambient lighting.

I note that 1.03 material files contain extra code that was not present in earlier iterations. Do I need to rewrite my material files? The textures themselves show up properly with the new rendering options switched on, and it is a lot of extra work.

[lowenz]

Time for a new timedemo benchmark and better organize the results?

[Springheel]

I note that 1.03 material files contain extra code that was not present in earlier iterations. Do I need to rewrite my material files? The textures themselves show up properly with the new rendering options switched on, and it is a lot of extra work.

 

Textures won't work properly (will show as black under certain lights) without the new code. It's not hard to add, however. I do mine manually, though there is an automated script as well if you have a lot of them.

[New Horizon]

The textures themselves show up properly with the new rendering options switched on...

 

While they may show up with the "enhanced" ambient rending option, you would not actually be seeing the enhanced rendering effect...it would be the 'simple' effect.

 

As Spring says though, there is an automated program for doing this. I don't know if it's in the release, but if it's not we'll have to soon make it available for mappers.

[Fidcal]

I note that 1.03 material files contain extra code that was not present in earlier iterations. Do I need to rewrite my material files? The textures themselves show up properly with the new rendering options switched on, and it is a lot of extra work.

 

Note that we are still considering this in the private forums but existing FMs up on our official website I am planning to fix. Otherwise if anyone else does them I have to download that then upload again and I have limited bandwidth.

 

I think then I have to give them a new website version number which the New Missions downloader will pick up for anyone who wants to download the changed FM.

 

Regarding your own or forthcoming FMs with custom textures I print below JC's internal instruction BUT note the following:

 

I have never done this yet for my own custom textures. I assume it will change everything in the darkmod folder or at least take a long time finding out they are already done or stutter because they are in pk4 or something! If I was doing mine I think I would move all the shader pk4s out of the way while doing it I don't know.

 

I would BACK UP my own material files before proceeding.

 

Make sure you are in your game path where your materials folder is.

 

Sorry if I am hazy but I am new to this too. You might prefer to wait for someone else to give you clearer instructions.

 

An alternative is to extract a material from the new pk4s and look at the last two stages headed ambient something ... and that replaces the current single stage just there. Then you have to put in your diffuse, bump and spec paths/names where shown.

 

You do not need to change hud icons or shop icons so anyone who has the custom.mtr from startpack with the game map icon it doesn't need doing. I don't know if it matters if it is done anyway. I'm guessing not.

 

This instruction is for the whole of the Dark Mod materials....

 

Start TDM but do not load any level. Bring down your console, based on your RAM and video memory, start with a good guess of nMaterials. E.g.

tdm_batchConvertMaterials 0 2000 

 

This will parse first 2000 materials (don't use forceUpdateAll so that only materials that don't have ambient block will be changed). If it fails with malloc error then lower the nMaterials. After success, quit TDM and restart it. Enter the same command except this time change your starting index from 0 to 2000 i.e offset after the last batch of parsed materials. E.g.

 

tdm_batchConvertMaterials 2000 2000 

 

This will cause to update next 2000 materials. Restart TDM again and repeat the procedure till you see a message that says 0 materials processed.

 

Note that the third time the above command is used the startIndex would have to be 4000 i.e. 2000 in first step + 2000 in second step.

 

There are 9000+ materials in total and although the process seems cumbersome it takes less than 5 mins on my machine to update every material from scratch (i.e. with forceUpdateAll).

[7upMan]

Just to clarify: Are the stock materials included in 1.03 already converted?

[Melan]

Thanks for the tips. The batch converter seems to have done its work, and there is visible change in the textures. I'll also send them to Bikerdude with the next iteration of my map...

 

That said, the new effects seem to enhance light-shadow contrasts; so much so that the gamma calibration room in the Trainer no longer works properly.

[Noisycricket]

I only say this since our mod has so many available programmers, but it would be nice to see the world as you change settings.

 

Also, the highlighting on the edges of bricks look good, is there any way to increase that on the fly? I think thats one of the best results from all of this, I wonder if it could be increased even more with a positive benefit.

[New Horizon]

Also, the highlighting on the edges of bricks look good, is there any way to increase that on the fly? I think thats one of the best results from all of this, I wonder if it could be increased even more with a positive benefit.

 

The edge detection is done by the new interaction shader, so there isn't really any way to change that on the fly. Sorry. We spent a lot of hours tweaking the new visuals to get them 'just right'.

[New Horizon]

That said, the new effects seem to enhance light-shadow contrasts; so much so that the gamma calibration room in the Trainer no longer works properly.

 

The training map is being revamped a bit anyway, but to be honest I never really found the gamma calibration room to be accurate. I would adjust my gamma in there, and then readjust it when I played a real mission. lol I'll check it out to see what's going on.

[LEGION]

Yeah, just the last two days I spent nearly hours in Bikerdudes Cathedral-FM-town-section adjusting the gamma in the bell-tower and on the roof. In the TrainingRoom I can´t see the Capitals in the middle but I don´t want it any brighter. I hope that I have now a setting that fits most missions...

 

Oh, and congrats for 1.03 Release this way, though 2 days too early, you know that, eh? But the download-speed, only 50kb/s with 54mbps...

 

I can´t wait to test the performance with the new settings on my new GPU. Last night I found it that it´s not good to run TDM in 1080p (1920x1080), I´m down to between 30 and 40 FPS on some spots and it IS slower, with my GamePad I notice it even more when looking around. Only at 50 FPS it feels perfect. But in 720p (1280x720) it runs just fine at 60 FPS (playing without Vsync is not an option for me and it doesn´t slow down anyway) in Biker´s map, I wonder if the new settings have a dramatic impact...

 

You see, updater is so slow that I spam your thread here, but there is so much else to read, see you later...

[Bikerdude]

AMBIENT LIGHT:

should only be bright enough to remove pitch black shadows, and should ideally not be bright enough to visually affect the light gem.

 

So thats a 4-6 then as i have been trying to do on all my maps..

 

BTW, to all the TDM team I/we thourly love the work u have done on 1.03.

Edited December 22, 2010 by Bikerdude

[New Horizon]

So thats a 4-6 then as i have been trying to do on all my maps..

 

Yup, although sometimes if the ambient light has a colour tint that can make it a bit brighter or darker, so the rule doesn't always apply. The best advice is just to test and adjust accordingly.

[STiFU]

The edge detection is done by the new interaction shader, so there isn't really any way to change that on the fly. Sorry. We spent a lot of hours tweaking the new visuals to get them 'just right'.

That is not entirely true. To alter the edge amplification, you can edit the file test.vfp, that is located in the glprogs folder. Calling the command reloadARBprograms afterwards inside TDM will make the changes visible directly. The parameters of interest are the "lightparms" (just search for that term in the file), and they are explained one line above. However, please note that a mapper / modeller / texture artist, should always work with the default values. I am going to write up a wiki article about advanced visual tweaking soonish that also deals with this topic.

[Berny]

Oh man - that's what I wanted to have ;)

 

I like these new grafic effects!!!!!!

 

You are so great guys

 

 

[stumpy]

I had to change a material file on a custom object in my canal map to make the texture appear on the object in game, without the change the object appeared black.

[Noisycricket]

I am going to write up a wiki article about advanced visual tweaking soonish that also deals with this topic.

If its possible to lessen the saturation at all its within the realm of what you set out to do, i'd really appreciate that info.

 

Edit:, I meant to type in "and its within the realm of what you....".

[STiFU]

r_postprocess_desaturation...

 

I had to change a material file on a custom object in my canal map to make the texture appear on the object in game, without the change the object appeared black.

This is only the case if you had none of the ambient stages, neither the old one, nor the new one. You material would have appeared black in TDM 1.02 too, if you had used the fast ambient method.

[STiFU]

So when's that wiki article coming that you promised us, NH?

[LEGION]

I just want to report that I love the new visuals and the performance cost is barely noticeable!! Also the Bloom-setting seems more 'accurate' as far as I can judge. Also the lighting feels more atmospheric with enhanced settings. I bond a key with "toggle r_postprocess 0 1" and the difference is stunning. So, GREAT THANKS @ JC and everyone who helped to achieve it!!! I´m sure you will come up with more terrific stuff in the future with a low Performance-cost. That fog-banding f.e. is sth I hope you take a look at...

However, I haven´t tried to be underwater yet...

[Melan]

Indeed, it is a whole new look - at only a slight slowdown (there is one on my PC, but nothing too serious). Also, while these tend to take time to trickle down to the players (c.f. no lanternbot missions yet), the new editing toys are also very much worth the price of admission.

 

Bravo! Impressive work!

[STiFU]

You might also wanna try "toggle tdm_interaction_vfp_type 0 1", to better see what the new interaction shader actually does in comparison to the old one. Same goes for "toggle tdm_ambient_method 0 1 2".

[Noisycricket]

Can we play with the way the light system treats the normal map as well via a setting? Like increasing the effect or range of the normal map or the amount of lights that effect a texture? I notice in chalice, on the bottom level in the intersection near the library and kitchen doors, some of the walls don't seem be using normal maps effects, unless you put a candle right against the wall. Seems like sometimes they could and should have more or the normal map effect.