gold Better looking metals in Darkmod

[peter_spy]

That makes sense since 64-bit mode lets you use values beyond 0-1 range, but I wouldn't rely on it to get basic things done, like the color of the bottle. It will be hard to get consistent results across multiple models.

As for the frob, have you tried switching to the frob outline?

[Arcturus]

14 minutes ago, peter_spy said:

As for the frob, have you tried switching to the frob outline?

No, is it an unofficial mod?

[peter_spy]

No it's in TDM 2.12, but it's turned off by default. Look for these cvars in darkmod.cfg:

seta r_frobOutlineBlurPasses "2"
seta r_frobHighlightColorAddB "0.02"
seta r_frobHighlightColorAddG "0.02"
seta r_frobHighlightColorAddR "0.02"
seta r_frobHighlightColorMulB "0.3"
seta r_frobHighlightColorMulG "0.3"
seta r_frobHighlightColorMulR "0.3"
seta r_frobOutlineExtrusion "-3.0"
seta r_frobOutlineColorA "1.0"
seta r_frobOutlineColorB "1.0"
seta r_frobOutlineColorG "1.0"
seta r_frobOutlineColorR "1.0"
seta r_frobOutline "0"
seta r_frobDepthOffset "0.0005"
seta r_frobIgnoreDepth "0"
seta r_newFrob "0"

[Arcturus]

@peter_spy Works well with r_newFrob

With the current frob:

[datiswous]

17 hours ago, chakkman said:

I think the exaggerated reflections on the bottle and the skull don't look good. The cross is great though.

Yeah I agree. Also, because the reflection is on top of the label of the bottle I think this needs a new model with a seperate part with the label on top.

Also there seems to be a lot of weird detail on those two models. Maybe the cubemap view needs to be blurred a bit.

[Arcturus]

29 minutes ago, datiswous said:

Yeah I agree. Also, because the reflection is on top of the label of the bottle I think this needs a new model with a seperate part with the label on top.

Also there seems to be a lot of weird detail on those two models. Maybe the cubemap view needs to be blurred a bit.

I already mentioned in this thread that new, less busy cubemaps will be needed. I also presented the solution to the masking problem. That's all we've been talking about for the past day.

Also there's nothing "exaggerated" about those reflections. Polished gold is a mirror.

What is reflected depends on how polished / rough the surface is and where the object is / what surrounds it. In more modern games there are roughness maps, and reflections are changed based on location. What we can do is make maybe two cubemaps, one with sharper one with softer reflections.

The color is probably too saturated.

[Arcturus]

Roughness maps simulate surface detail smaller than what you would normally put in a normalmap. That cross has some noise in normalmap, that's why it looks more rough. You could for example make noise texture and mix it with the normalmap using "addnormals".

bumpmap addnormals ( textures/darkmod/metal/flat/gen_smooth_gold01_local_tiling_1d , heightmap( textures/test/noise, 0.1 ) )

But this way resolution is limited by the size of the normalmap.

And here's how it looks with 2048x2048 px normalmap that's pure white noise:

[Arcturus]

You can take noise map as low as 128 x 128 and repeat it 16 times.

    {
    blend    bumpmap
    map    textures/test/noise_local
    scale    16 , 16
    }

But this model doesn't even have its own unique normalmap baked, so it's not a great example.

[Arcturus]

Here's the same skull in Cycles.

 

[nbohr1more]

I guess the correct "PBR" way is to blur the reflection based on roughness.

I think I can improvise a variable blur effect using one of our water glsl programs in the material but we should probably have native "blur map" features for other material designs anyway? @stgatilov @cabalistic ?

[peter_spy]

8 hours ago, Arcturus said:

Works well with r_newFrob

Nice! And a good case for enabling the new frob. IMO r_newFrob 2 + r_frobOutlinePreset 4 look pretty good

 

[datiswous]

11 hours ago, Arcturus said:

Works well with r_newFrob

It looks like the frob highlight inside the froboutline in r_newFrob is brighter than the default frob highlight. It seems to look better.

[Arcturus]

I set up a .blend file that outputs environment cubemap in Darkmod's format - 6 files with proper names and rotated / flipped accordingly. Tested with Blender 4.2.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KQuWqzzmwX3_N8NFA7nCGPRBdHF510ej/view?usp=sharing

There are 6 scenes, one for each camera. nx_default scene has compositor nodes that output each scene to a separate image, properly rotated, flipped and named.

You can set up your scene inside the linked_collection or you can load some environment map from polyhaven.com for example.

Render settings are not linked, but there's a Blender extension called "Copy Render Settings":

It may display an error on some of the settings, but I was able to copy max samples from nx_default to other scenes.

I wasn't able to get rid of the "0001" from the file names (there's probably a way), so I asked a chatbot to write me a .bat script that simply deletes "0001" from all the file names in the folder the script runs from.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kpkawT-BiatVAQlVfRZkkY2dLfovhB8T/view?usp=sharing

 

[Arcturus]

I made a typical, abstract, studio lights type of environment map. Of course on a big chrome ball it becomes obvious what it really is. In this video it is 6 times 512x512 px.

 

[Arcturus]

On 11/4/2024 at 7:38 PM, peter_spy said:

What does the makealpha do in that stage before specular map? Don't you have to place it before cubemap stage and add maskalpha after the blend mode to make it work? Like this:

  Reveal hidden contents

  {
        maskcolor
        map makealpha (image_to_make_alpha_from)
        alpha 1      // adjusts cubemap intensity if needed
    }
    {
        blend gl_dst_alpha, gl_one
        maskalpha
        CubeMap    path_to_cubemap
        texgen        reflect
    }

At least that's the working example I know.

Edit: Hmm, looks like that maskalpha keyword is redundant with cubemaps, nothing changes when I delete it

Edit 2: source https://modwiki.dhewm3.org/MaskAlpha_(Material_stage_keyword)

Does maskalpha work at all? It doesn't seem to do anything.

[Wellingtoncrab]

17 hours ago, Arcturus said:

I made a typical, abstract, studio lights type of environment map. Of course on a big chrome ball it becomes obvious what it really is. In this video it is 6 times 512x512 px.

Imo not sure this is an improvement in terms of the metallic reflections, or why it would be desirable to have less variation and more resolution in what will ultimately be an abstraction? But always happy to have another cubemap to mess around with.

[Arcturus]

@Wellingtoncrab Higher resolution means sharper, crisp lines, which in turn gives impression of a perfectly smooth surface. It also might be beneficial on bigger, higher resolution monitors. Six times 512x512px might seam like a lot, but that's just equivalent of one and a half of 1024x1024px image. It might be an overkill, I don't know what effect would it have on performance.

For rougher surfaces we would have to make another, softer cubemap. Or wait until we can modify roughness in the material, like @nbohr1more proposed.

As for how detailed it is. I'm trying to achieve something that's clean, aesthetically pleasing and universal, that would work on different shapes, sizes and environments. Current env maps that have been used have very noticeable cobblestones at the bottom of the reflection which not only introduces noise, but also doesn't make much sense. Most objects in the game don't lie on the ground outside. They also have been tinkered with so much, that they have noticeable seams and are messy.

I haven't committed anything to the repository yet, we can think of adding more detail to the cubemap.

[nbohr1more]

A better generic cubemap is welcome. The one I created to replace Doom 3's asset for "Standalone TDM" definitely has shortcomings.

[Arcturus]

Because of the way the reflections are projected onto an object that I don't fully understand, they retain sharpness on curved surfaces. It's the flat surfaces where lower resolution is apparent.

[Arcturus]

Just for shits and giggles, I tried to capture the reflection in-game.

 

[nbohr1more]

I wonder if that would look better with parallax correction:

?

(  We need that automatic probe thing for this to be practical ... https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=5239  )

[Arcturus]

@nbohr1more I did not manage to get it to work. The code in the linked thread uses

cameraCubeMap

that doesn't work. When I use it, the game says something about conflicting stages. When I used cubeMap instead - the parallaxCubeReflect files in the repository produced black image and the ones attached in the linked thread were ignored.

[nbohr1more]

25 minutes ago, Arcturus said:

@nbohr1more I did not manage to get it to work. The code in the linked thread uses

cameraCubeMap

that doesn't work. When I use it, the game says something about conflicting stages. When I used cubeMap instead - the parallaxCubeReflect files in the repository produced black image and the ones attached in the linked thread were ignored.

Hmm... maybe the Ambient cubicLight changes in 2.11 removed the cameraCubeMap keyword?

Can you try

cameraLayout( /path/to/env )

instead?

[Arcturus]

@nbohr1more The material renders black. Also keep in mind that I'm using different blending mode. But either way it doesn't seem to work.

[Arcturus]

@nbohr1more I didn't change any coordinates values. I assume it should render something regardless.