Wishlist For Darkradiant

[Atheran]

FBX is a longshot as it contains a lot of info compared to more widely used extensions liko obj. It'd be quite usefull as all of Autodesk programs can export in FBX and it contains mesh info/textures AND animation. I imagine it'd be a lot of work to make an importer for it in DR. Plus the fbx files are quite big because they contain all that info (2-5 times bigger than obj and up to 10 times bigger than lwo). I agree tho it'd be 1 click-everything solution. We could build everything from model/shading groups/textures/animations in Maya/Max/Motionbuilder even Mudbox and simply import something ready to get ingame to DR with 1 click.

 

I can settle with an obj tho'

 

Unless of course coding gurus can decode http://www.autodesk.com/products/fbx/overview the FBX SDK from Autodesk. It's written in C++ but I highly doubt it's open sourse or something.

[motorsep]

FBX SDK is no open source as DR/TDM, but it has docs and ok interface. There are a lot of people working with it, including Epic (UE4). UE4 has full source code accessible, so if someone would be determined to make it happen - there is no issue doing that.

[OrbWeaver]

Switching ASE for OBJ or some other format isn't going to provide much benefit, because even if DarkRadiant and the TDM engine understood the new format, you're still going to need to edit the exported model to point to the correct Doom 3 material shader if you want to see a material on your model in-game.

 

The only way to make this a "one-click" solution is to provide support in the exporter (i.e. inside Blender, Maya or whatever) to browse Doom 3 materials and choose which one(s) to apply to your model before exporting. This would theoretically be possible but would require the exporter code to duplicate the existing functionality in DarkRadiant to parse and load Doom 3 materials (or to factor out this code into a separate tool which could be invoked by the exporter).

[Atheran]

So it's the materials and shaders that limit our options to lwo and ase? If so... Now I'm sad I'll now need to create a new email every month for the free trials.

[OrbWeaver]

So it's the materials and shaders that limit our options to lwo and ase? If so... Now I'm sad I'll now need to create a new email every month for the free trials

 

Currently it's the game engine the limits the options to LWO and ASE. But in both of these cases, there is a hack which allows you to tell the game which material to apply to your model. For LWO this involves setting the material name to the Doom 3 shader name (e.g. "textures/darkmod/floor/whatever"), while for ASE it involves editing the file in a text editor and changing the texture image path to the Doom 3 shader name.

 

Adding support for a new model format isn't going to get rid of the need for this hack, which means it still isn't going to be a "one-click" solution unless the exporter itself can choose the material before exporting.

[Atheran]

What I meant with 1click is that we (people making models in something other than LW or Blended) don't have to convert between file types. While I don't know how, I'm pretty sure the "surface name" in LW where you put the shader/texture name exists in one form or another in all the programs

[motorsep]

I use ASE/LWO exporters in in both cases it's one-click-export. Just name Blender material exactly like your Doom 3 material and that's all. No need to edit anything after export (LWO can't be edited anyway).

 

So it's just a matter of the exporter for any 3D package of grabbing 3D package's material name, and writing it into appropriate place in the ASE/LWO/OBJ in appropriate format.

[Atheran]

No working exporters for maya tho'

 

At least none that I found for 2014

[motorsep]

Use Blender?

[Atheran]

No? I tried it several times but I can'twork on it. It seems too chaotic for me. Hell even Max seems chaotic to me

[motorsep]

Oh well. It's either Blender, or writing/fixing ASE exporter for Maya

[Atheran]

How about tessellation? It would really give a bump to the graphics quality for the machines that can handle it. In the same spirit, any chance for displacement? Not even sure if it's doable in DR but if it is the very few people with monster pc's will be really really happy

[motorsep]

What games use tessellation ?

 

Does Dishonored use it? Or Deus Ex HR ? Or Wolf TNO ? If they do, I probably had it off for performance reasons and not having it didn't really diminish quality of visuals and overall presentation of these games

 

Somehow I think TDM shouldn't bother with modernizing the engine, because A. engine is old and would require too much refactoring, B. savvy graphics programmers are so scarce, that having half-savvy programmer digging that deep will result in unstable, inconsistent and poor performance (and constant breakage on various hardware)

 

I think adding maybe extra shader effects that don't require engine overhaul, and poking at better visuals (keeping it stylized, getting away from photo-realism) is a way to go.

[New Horizon]

Yeah, the whole photo-realism thing is just a big gimmick. A game doesn't have to look photo-realistic.

[nbohr1more]

Tessellation is not at Dark Radiant related concern other than that patch divisions already exist in DR.

 

As for Tessellation in Doom 3 or TDM?

 

John Carmack gave a rather weak rebuttal against implementing tessellation. He said that it would cause the model

silhouette to differ from the shadow silhouette. Since we already use low-poly shadow meshes this justification is even

weaker...

[Atheran]

Several games use it. From tomb raider to online games like TSW. As for the shadows that's right We'll need different shadow models to be tessellated along with the mesh. I completely agree with needing very good programmers for it. As for mentioning DR i did so because is based on doom3 and even if i knew the limitations of doom3 I'm not sure if they stay with DR or if they are changed. I don't know how much customised Dr is already or even how much customisable it is.

[motorsep]

John Carmack gave a rather weak rebuttal against implementing tessellation. He said that it would cause the model

silhouette to differ from the shadow silhouette. Since we already use low-poly shadow meshes this justification is even

weaker...

 

You can have shadow mesh, like in ETQW.. It won't match visual mesh, but who cares!

[motorsep]

Several games use it. From tomb raider to online games like TSW. As for the shadows that's right We'll need different shadow models to be tessellated along with the mesh. I completely agree with needing very good programmers for it. As for mentioning DR i did so because is based on doom3 and even if i knew the limitations of doom3 I'm not sure if they stay with DR or if they are changed. I don't know how much customised Dr is already or even how much customisable it is.

 

DR is DarkRadiant, a level editor that has no dependency on graphical features used in a game, whether it's Doom 3, Quake 4, The Dark Mod or any derivative from those engine (as long as core framework doesn't change).

 

So even if Doom 3 derivative engine would be CryEngine 3-like in graphical features and appearance, that wouldn't affect you making maps for it using Dark Radiant

[Atheran]

eh? Always thought of DR as the modified version of doom3...

 

Seems I was wrong. Now I got hide behind maya again

Edited August 27, 2014 by Atheran

[nbohr1more]

You can have shadow mesh, like in ETQW.. It won't match visual mesh, but who cares!

 

Yeah, with id software themselves violating the silhouette parity rule this seems to be a totally nullified excuse.

I'll bet dollars to donuts that this is more related to Carmack's sour grapes about the leak of the Doom 3 demo by an ATI employee

and ATI's "trueform" tessellation tech...

[motorsep]

Yeah, with id software themselves violating the silhouette parity rule this seems to be a totally nullified excuse.

I'll bet dollars to donuts that this is more related to Carmack's sour grapes about the leak of the Doom 3 demo by an ATI employee

and ATI's "trueform" tessellation tech...

 

Well, for once ETQW wasn't ID's baby. You are missing the point. If you tessellate model, then silhouette becomes too complex for shadow volumes. I don't know if you can selectively tessellate model, per surface.

[nbohr1more]

To my knowledge, the shadow silhouette is calculated on the CPU using mesh data in the render frontend prior to

being submitted to the backend for volume GPU extrusion (if the hardware supports it). To the contrary my friend,

this setup is ideal for tessellation as the tessellation geometry would be added "after" the shadow silhouette is calculated.

 

In BFG, however, this is an open question because of GPU skinning.

Edited August 27, 2014 by nbohr1more

[HMart]

Shadow maps solve that problem easily, that is why shadow volumes (not to talk about supporting alpha surfaces) are not used anymore on modern engines.

[motorsep]

Shadow maps solve that problem easily, that is why shadow volumes (not to talk about supporting alpha surfaces) are not used anymore on modern engines.

 

What's in the white papers on deferred rendering and shadow mapping, is not what they have in UE4, CE3, Source 2, etc. Btw, since UE4 source is available, I wonder why no one cares to learn from it o.O Even Epic said that they encourage people to learn from the source.

[Gantolandon]

My wish is a pretty minor one - something happened between 1.8.0 and 1.8.1 that made camera view work much slower. Is there a possibility this could be fixed?