Christian Clavet
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Posts posted by Christian Clavet
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Hi, Since Leadwerks will never support lightmapping again. It would be really important (at least for me) for me that at least have support for 2UV. And would be really useful as Michael mention: BIG OBJECTS need TILING. If we want to bake the lighting out of Leadwerks on those big objects that have tiled texture, we absolutely need a second UV. (I've read somewhere that this could be bypassed by using a TRIPLANAR shader, but I don't know to implement it)
Have someone made a material that support this or we will have to create it?
-Texcoord 1 - diffuse
-Texcoord 2 - Lightmap
Michael, using a 3rd texcoord for details is interesting (especially for big objects!!), do you have any more information on how it's done? I always used decals for that.
By the way, I tested exporting a map yesterday from Leadwerks to 3D Studio Max and bring it back, it work perfectly! The scale is not affected at all and we can really use the mesh as reference in Max. I only baked everything in a diffuse map, so I've not tested how to import back with a diffuse tiled map, and a lightmap yet...
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Hi! Just a quick question here. What is the material you use with your decal? Normally we should be able to set a material to any object including decals. So if the material is set to opaque, then logically, it would have a black background.
Can you check if you can change the material of the decal to use a material that support transparency?
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Hi,
This open source project has managed to get a way to bake the global illumination into "light sampler" in their environment lighting. I think they use a deffered rendering system and their source is MIT so you can check if it's possible to have that in Leadwerks and you will not need to publish back the code.
I don't know how they proceed, but the result is really impressive!!
Check here.
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That is a good thing that this happened. Perhaps in future versions, Leadwerk would split in multiple archives when it's more than 2Gb. I've just buyed "Shadow of Mordor" on steam and it's 37Gb!!
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Hi, Tjheldna!
The clothing look absolutely incredible! Can you show a close-up of the face? It seem to me the eyes are a little bit off (position).
Excellent work!
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If the recording is fine and you have issues on your end, it might be probably a hardware issue with your GPU. Most of the time, this is due to the chip that overheated. If you can check the temperature.
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Hi, I've done a small test with the new .VMF export and it seem to work well here. I used "Crafty" to then convert this into a .OBJ that I was able to load in Max and see it. The only thing that is required is that your BSP geometry have a material, because it's needed by "Crafty". (Here is the link to the convertion tool if you need it: http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=46)
So now I'm really happy with this, since I can now have level references, that I can re-use inside a modeling application to make it pretty. Will also be useful so I can create a "box" around a character export the box, then have a relative size reference for a character in my modeling application.
I don't know if you can export everything but it work well with brushes, and for me that's mostly all that I was needing to design levels.
Thanks Josh!
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You are not required to code in multi-threading to do streamed loading. (Could perhaps increase the performance, that all).
I think what BES want to achieve is loading progressively most the time but continue the execution of the application. Most frameworks (not sure for LE, but been asking for this in Irrlicht for years and they are not ready for it), do their loading once and then resume the application.
What is needed is a method to check if the application is loading (like IsLoading()) if true then update some kind of loader manager, at in the main loop of the application, so you can do other stuff in your application while you are loading.
The loader manager then will load pictures, and objects not entirely but build their buffers by steps at each update and they will have also a flag to be monitored like: MyModel->IsLoaded() to check if this model is completely loaded then be used in the scene. If the model have some textures, the same rules applies, until they are fully loaded it can't be displayed. (pointer will not be available to the renderer)
What this does, is that it allow to load progressively assets in your game. As BES was talking, loading models as the player is getting near of it then unload them when the player is far. If you take the standard approach, you need to load the entire level AT ONCE (So wait for the whole level to load), also you need to calculate a proper size for your level (for the memory you can use). Steamed loading of a level, is different as you can define for about any size for your level, then you define manually a proper distance to load/unload the assets. So you could define a bigger distance if your user have more ram in his system.
As I said multithreading can perhaps increase the performance (complicate also) but is not a requirement.
As for this kind of implementation being native of LE would require extensive modifications. If it's not done, Josh would have a lot of work to make this happen.
Another thing to note, is that using streamed loaders will only work well with relatively small objects. For example, a terrain would require a tiled/streamed loader. With thoses big objects, it get more complicated. Sometime, it's so big that you need to add LOD to the tiling system. (Planet rendering, very big terrains, etc)
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Thanks! The new script installed the missing stuff. The Leadwerks_updater started and is installing the application now.
Uh oh! I will need to get a better video card in there. The intel HD4600 was good but only support Gl3.3 on Linux. (Strangely, their driver support GL4.0 on Windows)
But now the application install and launch.
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Hi, Just got 14.04 64bit (first install on a new rig). The install will fail because the ia32-libs-multiarchs is no longer available.
How can I get it? The updater won't lauch without it.
Checked with google and seen it had been removed in 13.10 (supposedly because they considered this a huge hack)
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Shadmar, can you post a test with and without the shadows? YouGroove got a point that the scene is really too simplistic to really see the difference. Shadow calculations in a scene like that would be really fast. Perhaps adding some walls?
I'm about sure, that if rendering optimization were made there in shadow rendering first, we could gain more FPS than in other areas. With proper lightmapping, on a "static" scene, shadowing could be faked, and we would get high FPS and simulate high quality. Putting shadowing everywhere at the moment I think, kill the performance.
I see that Josh give the option on the editor to decide to calculate shadows with models. And from what I see so far, I would only try to cast shadows from moving models everything else would be "baked" in the scene.
From what I've learned so far, it's not alway the tools that give good results but on how we use them. And in this area, it a game of illusions. (I take for example "God of war" that achieved incredible results on the PS3). Trying to get "realtime" rendering that would match this is unrealistic with a single or small team in my opinion.
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Hi, YouGroove. I'm not totally sure the lightning system would need much optimization, for me its performance is decent. Can you test again by putting all shadow off? I think it's the shadow rendering that eat the more ms per frame.
For the lightmapping, if we can do it externally (meshes + brushes), and bring it back (using a material shader), would be fine.
For lighting, would be nice if we could have shaders that use "spherical harmonics" and that we could render "samplers"(like an environment cube map) to light the models. I don't know much how this work, but seen results and it's seem to really mimic global illumination.
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Hi, If you plan on doing this, if we could also have the option export the lights as a reference so we can "match" the base lighting in LE back in the 3D Software that would also really nice! (could be a simple cube named "light").
That could allow us to define a base lighting in LE and export it to a 3D software to create and bake lightmaps to static models of environments.
If that is done, is there a way to tell a model to not take any lights, or selected lights (like self illuminated)? It would receive the shadows, but the lights already there will not shade the model. Selected lights would be better, in case there is something dynamic in the environment like a campfire.
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Hi, YouGroove!
Yes, asked for this. And got answered that the lightmapping will never come back. Then I learned that the old way of doing the lightmaps (light baking) was about of the same quality of the current lights. So I perfectly understand now why it's not coming back.
As for improvement in lighting to mimic the effects of Global Illumination, Josh said he was thinking of something. Seeing really impressive stuff made by UBI in their latest games using some kind of "sampler spheres" they seem to use to light the level.
For doing "quality/realistic" rendering of environment, using this version of the engine, I hope the editor will be able to export the CSG models we create, so we could "lightmap" ourself in a 3D application then import and replace the current "reference" we have with one that has better overall quality (if we can export the mesh, we can also improve the details).
When I was modding with the "source engine" we used to create the level using the CSG tools to have a fast prototype, define the gameplay, then export the models to artists to improve the model, then import it and use the CSG for collision only.
I hope to be able to do the same. If I need to create a "realistic" level, right now, it's still possible, but the level would have to be created outside LE from the start.
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Since we have the post-process system, It's only a matter of creating the shader now.
Perhaps someone that's good with shader could take that information for creating one for LE
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Ha! Thanks. I now fully understand why Josh did not want to incorporate the lightmap system. Unity use BEAST, that is a middleware, acquired by Autodesk now, so they've not done it themselve and used another product to do it, since it require lot of work.
I was hoping to get better lighting effects on CSG (I used that a lot when I was modding with SourceSDK). Now, I'll hope that Josh would implement a way to allow the editor to export the CSG to external applications so we can use the level design we've done with the editor using the CSG and have a reference on the geometry for modeling assets that have baked global illumination.
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I am still planning to do some demo with Leadwerk Engine, but atm working on my main project (rpg editor), and doing some modeling work on a spaceship game.
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What was the ability of the LW3.0 lightmapper in Global Illumination? Could you get a Illuminated texture and light with it? Was it handling well bounced light? If it were as good as in Source, then your shaders could help a lot! Just me to find way to get LE3.0 if this work.
For static models (not CSG), this can be done by baking the light into the diffuse texture. Done that a couple of time with Irrlicht.
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I don't really trust theses numbers.
Theses use LOD and I'm about sure they mean cumulated count of poly of all the polygons for ALL lod for a character. I'm about sure a "normal" character won't have a 350+ bones as they mention as it's nonsense. It only make sense on cutscene version of the characters that show expressions (So about LOD level 0). They are really "bull****ting us" with these numbers. Why not take the total polycount of a character before baking the model in a normal map?!
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I plan to redo my "player" character for my IRB project (open source RPG project), I could make a version for LE and provide the final model with .FBX files once it's done.
But I have lots of other things to care first, I've already took a note about this, and when I will have replaced my player I will make a version for LE.
Animation will be basic. Should be sufficient for most. If you need for example, a swimming animation, since I will provide the FBX you could create it in any editor and add it to the animations.
I've not checked the Asset we can have from LE, but surely some other have done something like this already.
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@ScrotieFlapWack. I think your doing it the right way. I'm used to create very high poly objects (no poly restriction) then do a low poly version of it when the model is completed. From what I've learned most studios also work that way.
I think the first priority for a model is the quality.
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For Assassin Creed EA has it's own engine not UDK
Checked and you are right their engine is not UDK. (But was used previously on some older Splinter Cell games)
You mean Ubisoft? For Assassin Creed they used Anvil - AnvilNext. I suspect that they might still use UDK or something really similar to level design.
With all those big games they release, they will re-use stuff from games to games see there. This is common practice in about every studio. So new tech stuff that has been added into an engine will be also applied into the other one they have.
For Watch dogs, the engine is called Disrupt, From the look of it, for me it look like an improved "fork" of the Dunia engine used in Far Cry II and Far Cry III.
p.s. How do you embed a video?
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Hi!
bad quality games ugh this is allot:fallout 3
oblivion
skyrim
I'm curious, what are the things you don't like in Fallout and Skyrim? (don't remember oblivion). These 2 are in my favorite list.
bioshock 1, 2I did not like them either, but only for one reason: the game "context". I was feeling too uncomfortable killing those poor people (all of the them got mad because of a strange illness, and the only way to "stop" them was to kill them)
. Lots of players liked that game, and got very high popularity. I played Bioshock Infinite and the context was much better for me.Also I have "developed" a certain understanding why is it like this in modern graphics, ...it used to be you just throw a lightning or 2 and it was already too much for hardware so spending much more on graphics would make game unplayable, and so if they spend 1M$ on a game not more than 5% were on graphics but everything else.
Today if they spend 1M$ on game 99.99% of it goes to graphics, ...
and usually if they do spend 5M$ on a game it goes 95% to graphics.
Humm.. Not have the same opinion as you on this. Been working in the game industry here in Montreal, and got some friend working, at EA, Ubisoft, Gameloft, etc. Never heard something like this as putting all the effort on graphics like that.
The video that YouGroove showed is a video coming from the Ubisoft R&D team. They are NOT putting that effort for the game (watch dogs) but for theirs games, so their engine. Proof here: Look at "
" game. The look have the same features as watch dogs:So there is about 0$ budget for this kind of development for the game itself. They are really put money where they need it. I've heard that for a AAA game (example: Assassin Creed) the budget for the game development is around 33-34 Millions for about 2 years. That does not include advertising or engine licensing. (Unreal engine was costing 1 million US$ on licensing fee and support for a AAA project at the time)
Sometimes the really bad things that can happen is that we see too much of theses AAA games and want to "mimic" them with a really small team. When that happen, most of the time, as you said, they will not have the budget and put most of it on the graphic side... For me, the most successful indie games are the most simple at the same time.
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There been very beautiful games that failed, not because they were beautiful but they were dull. What designers and producers are looking for is a game that is FUN. And to be be fun, that combine a lot of ingredients: (Good gameplay, good picture, good sound, really interesting story, some hype
, etc.)
NO BUG: NPC seem to see thru static meshes. Ok with only brushes.
in General Discussion
Posted
Hi,
I'm using the beta version on steam, using it on Window 10 Home (French) currently.
My graphic card is a NVidia GTX 780
I've buyed yesterday the MERC model and tryied it in a quick level made with brushes. I really like it and it's so simple to use it! But I've seen some issues on how leadwerks seem to make NPC "see" in their environment.
On the level made of brushes, I had to enter the room where the merc was to see me and then he started to chase.
I've exported the map in .OBJ (Great feature!) and imported it in MAX then done a quick bake of lighting and imported it back, mostly to test if the scale/position was not changed in the export/import.
Everything worked, I was able to make the collision shape from the tools provided in Leadwerks. Collision is working perfectly, and the map work as before except this:
If the brushes are hidden or removed, the NPC will see me immediately and start chasing me (using the NAVMESH to get to me even if I'm behind a door / wall). For Leadwerks the level that has that problem has no brushes and only is composed of static meshes.
So if I want to fix this temporary, I will have to create brushes and hide them inside the model, so the NPC`s will not be able to look thru the wall. Doing this will surely decrease the performance.