Cube maps howto?

[Bikerdude]

I have had a look but am having trouble following the wiki article - http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Cube_maps and the article on the waybackmachine

 

The issue is getting the images in the correct orientation, for example the WBM says the foreward image is basename_pz, but you look at the envshot image and its clearly not the forward facing image.

 

What I am looking to do is place the player directly outside a window and then take an EnvShot, it would be great is if darkmod.exe took envshot in the correct orientation so the mapper dosent have to muck about trying to get them facing the right way, rotate or flip them.

 

There dosent even seem to be any tools out there what will import your images to give me a preview, as I am convinced that TDM isnt taking EnvShots correctly.

[Springheel]

Yeah, I looked into that a few weeks ago, because I noticed when making some new windows that the envshot we use for glass is incorrect--the images don't line up properly. But I couldn't get very far in the wiki about how to properly set them up either.

[VanishedOne]

I think the complication with that TDM wiki entry might have something to do with how texgen reflect works, since the example is a pseudo-reflective pool of water. In the example image of TDM's output, _pz appears to be the ceiling, which makes sense ('positive z-axis').

 

I recently ended up altering water01 for my w.i.p. to make it look right as a reflection of skybox_darkland_ne. (The 'reflected' moon was opposite the one in the sky in X and Y as well as Z, though if you open water_01_pz.tga and darkland_NE_up.tga in an image editor they don't look flipped relative to each other.) What I had to do was along the lines of the instructions like 'Flip it horizontally and rotate it 90° counter clock wise'.

Edited January 16, 2015 by VanishedOne

[SteveL]

I'll fix this after I finish with 2.03, if someone wants to open a tracker issue and assign it to me. It can't be too hard. The functionality works -- I used it for that dynamic moonlight skybox last year -- it's just that the images need renaming and possibly flipping and rotating. It's ringing a bell, I think I had a written page at some point of the list of transformations for TDM and Terragen. I probably lost that but I can do it again.

[Goldwell]

I'll fix this after I finish with 2.03, if someone wants to open a tracker issue and assign it to me. It can't be too hard. The functionality works -- I used it for that dynamic moonlight skybox last year -- it's just that the images need renaming and possibly flipping and rotating. It's ringing a bell, I think I had a written page at some point of the list of transformations for TDM and Terragen. I probably lost that but I can do it again.

Is it also possible to increase the resolution possible with the cube maps as well? Or is that a whole other ball of wax?

[motorsep]

You have to have 640x480 game screen resolution to make proper cubemap that lines up (at least in original Doom 3). Any other resolution would result in broken cubemap.

[Bikerdude]

I'll fix this after I finish with 2.03, if someone wants to open a tracker issue and assign it to me. It can't be too hard.

I will do this.

Is it also possible to increase the resolution possible with the cube maps as well? Or is that a whole other ball of wax?

Well for a laugh I was able to take EnvShots @ 2048*2048, but wasn't able to test what they may have looked like in-game.

[SteveL]

Is it also possible to increase the resolution possible with the cube maps as well? Or is that a whole other ball of wax?

I'd be talking out of my hat if I said I knew it'd be straightforward because I haven't checked it out, but hopefully yes

 

@Biker: thanks

[Bikerdude]

@Biker: thanks

Done - 004041

[SteveL]

What I am looking to do is place the player directly outside a window and then take an EnvShot, it would be great is if darkmod.exe took envshot in the correct orientation so the mapper dosent have to muck about trying to get them facing the right way, rotate or flip them.

 

I've fixed this in svn and committed a new engine so svn users can now use envshot without having to rename, rotate, or flip anything. The generated images can be used immediately. It'll be in 2.04 but for anyone else who wants to use the fix in the meantime, I'll link a version of the 2.03 engine including the envshot fix in this thread as soon as 2.03 is out.

 

You have to have 640x480 game screen resolution to make proper cubemap that lines up (at least in original Doom 3). Any other resolution would result in broken cubemap.

 

Correct, any other screensize will screw it up. I've opened a separate tracker for that because it's caused by a wider issue.

 

Is it also possible to increase the resolution possible with the cube maps as well? Or is that a whole other ball of wax?

 

Yes, it turns out this already worked. You need to be using 640x480 when you take your envshot, but you can make it as big as you like. I generated a 4096x4096 envshot using my tiny 640x480 window, and it was perfect -- beautifully detailed. You specify the size as a 3rd parameter after the image name, e.g:

 

envshot imagename 1024

 

Last note: skybox is not compatible with envshot, so it's good only for indoor scenes.

 

Do people think that that needs fixing? The skybox is controlled by game code not the engine, so enabling skyboxes in envshots would mean moving the facility from the engine to game code. Not a massive job, but I don't know whether it's needed or not.

[Goldwell]

 

I've fixed this in svn and committed a new engine so svn users can now use envshot without having to rename, rotate, or flip anything. The generated images can be used immediately. It'll be in 2.04 but for anyone else who wants to use the fix in the meantime, I'll link a version of the 2.03 engine including the envshot fix in this thread as soon as 2.03 is out.

 

 

Correct, any other screensize will screw it up. I've opened a separate tracker for that because it's caused by a wider issue.

 

 

Yes, it turns out this already worked. You need to be using 640x480 when you take your envshot, but you can make it as big as you like. I generated a 4096x4096 envshot using my tiny 640x480 window, and it was perfect -- beautifully detailed. You specify the size as a 3rd parameter after the image name, e.g:

 

envshot imagename 1024

 

Last note: skybox is not compatible with envshot, so it's good only for indoor scenes.

 

Do people think that that needs fixing? The skybox is controlled by game code not the engine, so enabling skyboxes in envshots would mean moving the facility from the engine to game code. Not a massive job, but I don't know whether it's needed or not.

 

Well damn that's quite interesting.. I should give that a try next time I need a cube map.

 

In terms of the skybox thing that would be very handy to have it working in the envshots because when I did the cubemap for the accountant 1 it was a nightmare to try and photoshop the sky into the shot so that it fit across all images properly.

 

After that it sort of turned me off using them because I usually want to place them inside reflecting the outside world (looks great through a tinted window and doesn't kill the fps)

[SteveL]

 

In terms of the skybox thing that would be very handy to have it working in the envshots because when I did the cubemap for the accountant 1 it was a nightmare to try and photoshop the sky into the shot so that it fit across all images properly.

 

After that it sort of turned me off using them because I usually want to place them inside reflecting the outside world (looks great through a tinted window and doesn't kill the fps)

 

Ok, I'll see what I can do. New tracker for skybox in envshots #4085

[Bikerdude]

Do people think that that needs fixing? The skybox is controlled by game code not the engine, so enabling skyboxes in envshots would mean moving the facility from the engine to game code. Not a massive job, but I don't know whether it's needed or not.

Yes please, as several FM's would have benefited from being able to have 'fake outside and inside' textures for simulating a transparent window without the perf penalty.