Josh

Yes, there is a bug...will sort it out fast.

No, it works independently from pureLIGHT, but PL automatically exports the materials for the effect for convenience. I implemented it at the same time because they had some nice scenes with stained glass lighting, and it seemed silly to not have the dynamic lighting match.

They work with transparent materials as well. The pureLIGHT demo can export these, but I'll also set up another tutorial demonstrating how to do this.

It appears that the way Epic and Valve have set it up, Unreal Engine licensees (for real engine, not UDK) automatically get the Steamworks SDK. Valve made a big deal out of making the SDK free a while back, but then you have to send a demo of your game to get approved for it...so I am not sure how it is any different or why they even need to make a name for the SDK and make press releases about it.

A trial version is now available here: http://purelighttech.com/demo_files/PureLightLeadwerksTrialSetup.zip

We're talking about things beyond just the software and docs.

This thread is not about software or documentation. Please stay on-topic.

The page is up now: http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/page/products/_/tools/purelight-for-leadwerks-r6

Please stick to topics other than the software and documentation. Regarding investment: You'd want to spread your money out over a lot of projects, just in theory, but it could be profitable. And it would help small developers. One way to do it is for the investor to buy wholesale copies of the game. Let's say the game's final price is $20. The investor might buy 50 copies at $10 each. When the game goes on sale, the money from the first 50 sales would then go to the investor, so they would put in $500 and get back $1000. The developer gets money up front to contract artwork, pay for advertising, or get other help. An individual's reputation would be the best way to ensure they finish their projects. Your online reputation is yours for life. If someone didn't finish a project, they would probably never get another chance. Of course a developer with a track record of getting things done makes a better investment. Of course I wouldn't put everything I had into one person, but that's true of any investment.

Leadwerks software is designed to make game development fun and easy, but that's not what I want to talk about in this thread. I am interested in hearing what kind of support we might be able to offer beyond just software. What are your limiting steps? Do you need artwork produced? Do you need other people to work with? Would team management features help you? What about funding? If you had more money, would you be able to put it to good use? There are some interesting developments in peer financing that are evolving right now. Any other ideas? Don't worry about problems of implementing things right now, I just want to hear your ideas. This isn't me complaining and prodding you guys to publish more games. I am interested in doing things in this area that no one ever has.

I get between 28-56 FPS on a GEForce 9800 GTX, with all effects enabled, at 1024x768 resolution. You really took advantage of the renderer here. It looks fantastic! Those numbers look reasonable. SLI will give you less than a 100% performance increase. You got a 50% and 37% performance increase with the second card, which seems reasonable.

A special option was added to pureLIGHT to make it discard the primary light hit. This makes it so you are calculating indirect lighting only, and discarding the direct lighting component. Then Leadwerks dynamic lighting is used for the direct component, so you still have dynamic lighting that works on moving objects. pureLIGHT support was requested by many people a while back. It's not appropriate for all scenes, but if you want high quality indirect lighting, this provides a way to get it.

Any day now...

pureLIGHT loads FBX or Collada files, and then exports an .sbx file along with .gmf meshes, materials, textures, and lightmaps. You can load it immediately in Leadwerks Editor, and the lights match what you set up in pureLIGHT.

I wanted to explain how pureLIGHT works with Leadwerks deferred dynamic lighting. pureLIGHT has a mode to discard primary light bounces and calculate only secondary hits. Basically, this ignores the stuff Leadwerks direct lighting gets, and only adds the stuff that real-time lighting can't handle. The combination of the two gives you high-quality global illumination along with dynamic behavior. Objects can still move through the scene and be shadowed properly, and you can even move lights around, since the global illumination components doesn't have to match the direct lighting exactly. Here's what you have right now with Leadwerks deferred dynamic lighting: Here's the part pureLIGHT calculates: And here's the result when the two are combined: As you can see, the result looks much better than direct lighting alone, and still maintains the dynamic nature of Leadwerks lighting. As you can see in this video, dynamic objects can still move around in the scene and be shadowed properly, and you can even change the dynamic lighting without any noticeable error:

It's just specular lighting and bloom.

I wouldn't get stressed about it right now. You can always add it in later when you are further along.

I don't have enough information at this time to even guess what the problem could be.

In that case I would post a demo that demonstrates the problem.

Sounds like maybe you are using the old shaders with the new SDK?

Is this 2.32 or 2.40?

Light passing through surfaces and changing colors is something no other engine I have heard of has ever done. There's been uses of projecting a texture onto a scene, but ours is actually created from the scene itself in real-time. I don't think anyone has ever done particle shadows, except possibly in some academic demos. pureLIGHT is only required if you want to mix global illumination lightmapping with deferred dynamic lighting. It was requested some time ago, then I met the guys at GDC 2010, and we have been working quietly on it since then. The price of Leadwerks Engine 2 will likely continue to rise incrementally. It's a mature technology now, and you guys got a lower price because you were early adopters. David of pureLIGHT has told me there will be a discount for the first month, for those who want to buy the pureLIGHT tool.

I don't make any money off sales of pureLIGHT, so it's up to them. They said they would offer a discount the first month.

pureLIGHT is not required for colored shadows, but they work nicely together. Basically, pureLIGHT provides the secondary light bounces, and Leadwerks lighting is still used for the direct lighting. The two do not have to match exactly, and you can move Leadwerks lights around and still have a good-looking GI effect, in most cases.

The version 4 update is automatic / free. pureLIGHT will be offering a substantial discount for the first month.