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Yay More Problems From Me (i'm Such A Noob)


AluminumHaste

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In this picture:

 

shot00033vj2.th.jpg

 

You can see light shinning through the roof and against the wall. The reason for this is that the faces on the brush that isn't seen by the player, have the "caulk" texture applied so that the engine doesn't render unseen faces. But this causes light to shine through everything.

 

Is there another texture that I should be using that blocks light but is not rendered??

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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I believe shadow would work for that.

 

However, if there's spots where lights are showing through, that's a bad sign that there may be holes the player can see through. Keep in mind that caulk is completely transparent, and can create HoM effects if the player sees through it to the void.

 

I know, the caulked faces are like faces that are completely covered by other faces. Stuff like that.

Thanks I'll try shadow.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Okay I found this info online about the errors:

 

Warning: Backwards triangle generated

 

Benign: This is a compiler optimisation problem and can be ignored.

 

Warning: Backwards triangle in input

 

Benign: This is a compiler optimisation problem and can be ignored.

 

 

Okay it's more serious than that. When I changed all the caulked faces to shadow faces and tried to compile in Doom3, I waited for more than 10 minutes with nothing but WARNING: Backwards triangle generated

scrolling across the screen, and my commit charge was up around 1.5 gigs.

So yeah, this is a problem that I want to fix. It's not benign, benign would be something that doesn't affect anything at all. When it starts increasing compile times, yeah that isn't benign anymore.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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What happens when you change them back to caulk, set r_clear to 1 and walk around the level? Do you see any pink?

 

Of course, half the level is still caulked lol. I tried copying and pasting all the brushes and patches into a new map, but still the same problem.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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More to the point, why are you using a light volume that encloses a room that is entirely in shadow? This will give you poor performance - if you want light to shine down through the hole in the ceiling you would be better off using a spot or projected light texture just in that area, rather than enclosing the whole lower room.

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More to the point, why are you using a light volume that encloses a room that is entirely in shadow? This will give you poor performance - if you want light to shine down through the hole in the ceiling you would be better off using a spot or projected light texture just in that area, rather than enclosing the whole lower room.

 

 

Okay that is a better idea. Also instead of using a big light to simulate the moonlight, can't I just tell the sky shader to emit light??

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Also instead of using a big light to simulate the moonlight, can't I just tell the sky shader to emit light??

 

No. Only lights can emit light.

 

You can make a texture appear to glow, but it won't cast any light on other objects.

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No. Only lights can emit light.

 

You can make a texture appear to glow, but it won't cast any light on other objects.

 

Why did they change the shader engine that much from quake 3?? Skyboxes used to have a light emitter, so you could have a sun. So what, now we can't have a sun in the sky??

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Why did they change the shader engine that much from quake 3??

 

Because Quake 3 uses static, precalculated lighting, and Doom 3 uses fully-dynamic lighting. This was a design decision to support the dark, shadowy style of Doom 3, but the performance impact prevents certain techniques that were common with the older lighting model.

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Because Quake 3 uses static, precalculated lighting, and Doom 3 uses fully-dynamic lighting. This was a design decision to support the dark, shadowy style of Doom 3, but the performance impact prevents certain techniques that were common with the older lighting model.

 

I see. That makes sense, but then again not really. What's the difference if a skybox has a light emitter or I put a light entity really high in the sky and change it to like 2000 2000 2000??

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I see. That makes sense, but then again not really. What's the difference if a skybox has a light emitter or I put a light entity really high in the sky and change it to like 2000 2000 2000??

 

None. You'll get piss-poor performance either way (unless it is a non-shadowcasting light).

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None. You'll get piss-poor performance either way (unless it is a non-shadowcasting light).

 

HUH, the map still runs at 60fps with a light at the size. Weird.

So how do you simulate a really bright light in the sky? Just don't bother?

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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HUH, the map still runs at 60fps with a light at the size. Weird.

 

It is not the light that is the problem, it is the shadows. If your level is fairly simple it won't slow down much, but once you start adding lots of detail inside that huge shadow-casting lightvolume, your performance will rapidly drop.

 

So how do you simulate a really bright light in the sky? Just don't bother?

 

Doom 3 is not really the best engine for bright outdoor scenes. You could probably get away with carefully-placed ambient lighting and some localised projected shadows, but this is not Half-Life 2 and will never be ideal for this sort of thing.

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How did they do it in Quake 4?? The scenes which were outdoor and that huge ship lands and you get on it. That was big. Did they use a projected light??

 

Oh and I just noticed that DarkRadiant (Well any version of GTKRadiant) does not support projected lights. It's on the todo list though. :(

 

So the only way of doing those lights is to use D3ED.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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There's nothing wrong with having a large sunlight, as long as you can ensure that it won't be casting much shadows. D3 does have a wonderful optimization that if an unmoved light cannot reach a portal-area (ignoring the existance of shadows) entities inside that portal area will not be hit by that light and won't cast shadows with respect to it. This is useful for making complicated interiors chock-full of junk in buildings that are entirely inside the volume of a large sun/moon light. However, worldspawn geometry of those areas still casts shadows. (fortunately, this can be combatted using certain levels of compile-time shadow optimization and carefully designed geometry)

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That's something I didn't know. So if you have a large outdoor shadowcasting sun light, it won't cast shadows inside buildings as long as the interiors of those buildings are separated by portal areas?

 

What are the compile-time optimisations needed? Are they documented anywhere?

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It will cast shadows on any world geometry, but assuming that the visportal into the area faces away from the light (or the light shining through another vis portal can't reach it), entities inside it won't have their shadows calculated for it, and they won't have a lighting pass for that light.

 

The compile-time option is shadowOpt <n>. It's described in the id dev site news under dmap options. I've found that higher levels of shadow optimization (above 3 or so, I don't quite remember) are buggy and will result in shadow-volumes missing faces. However, even lower optimization levels are useful, as they delete redundant shadow volumes.

 

An idea I have, is to use non-divisible shadow-casting surfaces on the undersides of roofs to create large simple shadow volumes cast by roofs, so that any complicated geometry in the shadow of the roof has its shadows removed by low optimization levels.

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