Leadwerks 3 Experience

Have you some screenshot ? Could you lake one or two to see if it really looks so out dated please ?

 

For PC :

 

I would say, wait for next update, make all your level in some modeler and use only real time shadows.if you target High or good PC only.

If you target Lap Top, lowPC , yes use BSP and wait for self shadowing.

 

In a modeler you can go fast at level making , if you make a scene containing a library of 3D Tiles :you have just to load this scene , than copy and align 3D Tiles to make your level

Normal map is coming for BSP i read on the forums (so you'll have normal map + light map on your BSP level)

For specular i don't know.

 

If you need different shaders for the base level , you'll better choose models and not BSP.

 

Another solution :

Use Baked normal maps (normal maps transformed to gray levels)

I seen that , even on Uncharted game.

You won't notice the difference alot , specially in a action game.

It depends if you target eye candy with dynamic lightening, or simple normal map look ?

Yougrove, i honestly think you just enjoy typing.

I would say, wait for next update, make all your level in some modeler and use only real time shadows

I am aware of this, hence in my post i refer to the "current version" of leadwerks 3.

 

Normal map is coming for BSP i read on the forums (so you'll have normal map + light map on your BSP level)

I know this as i explained in my post.

 

If you need different shaders for the base level , you'll better choose models and not BSP.

Same again, i said in this in my post?

 

Use Baked normal maps (normal maps transformed to gray levels)

I seen that , even on Uncharted game.

You won't notice the difference alot , specially in a action game.

It depends if you target eye candy with dynamic lightening, or simple normal map look ?

Are you a modeller? Baking normal maps is a process of baking a normal map from a high-poly model, this is the only thing i can assume you are refering to. But again, like i mentioned, normals and spec on models is no problem, but models dont cast or receive any shadows on other models in this current version of leadwerks3, nor does BSP have normals or spec (at the moment) so in a complex scene there are visual conflicts that make the scene look bad.

@at the confusing posts above.. Maybe he meant baking all additional maps into the diffuse texture?.. of course this only works in limited situations, and not in your case..

 

But im finding in its current state a, quick game or demo is about all i seem to be able to do.

That was my impression when I looked at the beta demo.. PC is also my main platform of interest and right now, in it's hugely unfinished state LE3 is simply not cut for doing a more complex or big game on this platform.. Hopefully the big updates will come soon enough!

 

anyway, thanks for the nice in-depth report!

In a renderer designed to run on everything, it's useful to have a distinction between CSG and model geometry. CSG geometry forms the "background" of the scene and is very cheap to render, since no lighting information has to be calculated. If you look at Left 4 Dead 2, the dynamic lighting only affects the models as well. They put a lot of model geometry into the scene, and you don't really notice when you're getting eaten by zombies. If it's good enough for Valve, I think it's good enough for our basic renderer.

 

It's not really worth it, IMO, to worry about physical accuracy of light when you just want something that runs everywhere. The new deferred renderer will provide very realistic lighting, and the basic renderer is intended to provide a fallback for hardware that can't handle high-end graphics. If it turns out a lot of people absolutely need dynamic lights to affect CSG brushes, it's pretty trivial to add, but I don't want to make spur-of-the-moment design decisions.

 

Likewise, models do not self-shadow because they just use vertex lighting. I don't think it's worth putting a lot of effort into making a better "fake" lighting system when we can put that effort into writing a new deferred renderer. The basic renderer is meant to run fast on everything, not provide physically accurate lighting.

 

Now, I can add CSG normal maps by baking the light direction into the lightmap. The challenge there is I want to store the light vector in the alpha channel of the lightmap, not in the RGB components of a second texture. It's not perfectly accurate, but it looks good. (Again, Source Engine uses this approach.)

Hey Andy. I have some "hybrid" shaders which does both lightmap and dynamic lights. (Not for mobile). Let me know if you want to test in one of your csg levels)

Shadmar that would be great to have a play with them if you don't mind of course. How do you want to get them over to me?

 

Josh I do agree, and like I said I know the future renderer will bring them big graphical features back. But in the videos I watch of left 4 dead there's a torch being emitted and that torch lights up everything, models and geometry? What I did notice is the torch doesn't effect the shadows of the zombies, but nevertheless they do have some basic projected shadows from somewhere. And I guess this is what's missing the most, simple shadows for animated objects and maybe some dynamic lighting for csg, even if for pc/mac use only.

 

Thanks

Andy

In a renderer designed to run on everything, it's useful to have a distinction between CSG and model geometry. CSG geometry forms the "background" of the scene and is very cheap to render, since no lighting information has to be calculated. If you look at Left 4 Dead 2, the dynamic lighting only affects the models as well. They put a lot of model geometry into the scene, and you don't really notice when you're getting eaten by zombies. If it's good enough for Valve, I think it's good enough for our basic renderer.

 

It's not really worth it, IMO, to worry about physical accuracy of light when you just want something that runs everywhere. The new deferred renderer will provide very realistic lighting, and the basic renderer is intended to provide a fallback for hardware that can't handle high-end graphics. If it turns out a lot of people absolutely need dynamic lights to affect CSG brushes, it's pretty trivial to add, but I don't want to make spur-of-the-moment design decisions.

 

Likewise, models do not self-shadow because they just use vertex lighting. I don't think it's worth putting a lot of effort into making a better "fake" lighting system when we can put that effort into writing a new deferred renderer. The basic renderer is meant to run fast on everything, not provide physically accurate lighting.

 

Now, I can add CSG normal maps by baking the light direction into the lightmap. The challenge there is I want to store the light vector in the alpha channel of the lightmap, not in the RGB components of a second texture. It's not perfectly accurate, but it looks good. (Again, Source Engine uses this approach.)

 

Josh, source engine bakes directional lightmaps which stores light direction into a RGB channel, this is useful to fake dynamic lighting on static meshes (as CSG brushes) and even compute lighting dynamic on moving entities veary cheaply as the light direction is already computed. The only downside is that light sources must remain static (never moves). Directional lightmaps doesn't need to be as big as lightmaps. You can have as many detailed lightmaps in a big scene and few or even only one directional lightmap per level.

And i agree with the Source approach, if you can mimic the source engine, you will have a very good renderer that runs everywhere.

A defferred renderer won't run on current mobile devices it is too bandwith hungry. Maybe in a two years when the iPad4 will be the lowest thing you can get on a tablet then maybe you'll have good chances to write a defferred rendering for it. Otherwise, stick with the Source way.

Even in a forward renderer you can compute multiple lights in the same pass and you automatically switch their positions in the shader (for each dynamic object affected by lights). For example you let the user chose how many dynamic lights should any entity be affect by (to a maximum of 4) and switch lights position in the object shader. If i remember well, source engine does exactly this with dynamic entities. Unless you really want to see tons of lights moving in a game (hich is really rare), i don't see any urgent need for a defferred renderer.

But in the videos I watch of left 4 dead there's a torch being emitted and that torch lights up everything, models and geometry? What I did notice is the torch doesn't effect the shadows of the zombies, but nevertheless they do have some basic projected shadows from somewhere. And I guess this is what's missing the most, simple shadows for animated objects and maybe some dynamic lighting for csg, even if for pc/mac use only.

That's true. I will add that in. It's pretty simple to do.

Looking forward to it.

 

Andy

PM'd the shaders.