pureLIGHT for Leadwerks

[Josh]

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:

 

[macklebee]

it looks impressive. so whats the interface with LE? is the pureLight just performed on the models themselves and you load them into LE or is there a new inherent command or something that loads the pureLight pre-calculated render?

[Josh]

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.

[macklebee]

Cool... sounds straight forward enough. So basically you would create the scene in pureLight instead of the Editor... and the Editor will automatically load the lightmap, I assume, from something being called out in the SBX?

 

When do you expect the posting for pureLight for Leadwerks for purchase to be available?

[Josh]

Any day now...

[L B]

Mm. Too bad I can't go from Editor to pureLIGHT, remaking my scenes will be extremely time consuming, considering I choose to do so. Is the pureLIGHT scene format plain text? If so, I could attempt an exporter. I think I'll just wait for a better integration, even if that means LE 3.5.

 

Here's a more direct comparison for those who want it:

[ArBuZ]

So, basically it just bakes GI to maps, right?

[VicToMeyeZR]

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.

 

 

Thats not really PureLight for LE, thats just an export plugin for pureLight...

 

Just adding more to an art pipeline.. Yes that pictures look good, but is it worth all the extra in the map building process?

[TylerH]

It is simply the beginning of some options and alternatives for people using the engine.

 

You are not forced to use it, but the option to utilize the middleware is there, tested, and proven. Just like with Torque and pureLight, you don't have to use it, but they have support, and that's what counts; same thing applies to the model formats supported by the engine, you don't have to use FBX or Collada, but there is support for them.

 

I personally think if Josh continues to do this with other middleware and such, the engine would have quite a lot of scalability and possibilities.

[VicToMeyeZR]

I don't think there is anything wrong with it. Just posing a healthy question of debate..

 

I do like the added lighting, just asking is it worth it.

 

I do agree going into the middleware realm is the way to go, and I know josh didn't like even mention of middlewar(the whole license discussion on the other board about middleware), so its refreshing to see he is not afraid of it.

[TylerH]

True, in reality it is just adding more to the art pipeline, but since it is optional, there really is no disadvantage to it.

[Canardia]

I think it's a nice option to have baked colormaps, because some games have static scenery. And most games have mixed static and dynamic scenery, where it works too, because you can render the colormaps for the static scenery only.

 

Maybe in future we get also more optional add-ons for LE, like Tyler said. I would pay lots of money for a sparse octree realtime Voxel raytracing add-on. I would also pay for 3D Sound physics (refractions, reflections, doppler-effect, etc...). Might also pay for pureLIGHT, but I think I'll wait first to see if NA comes up with some alternate solution, which is open source and works on Linux also. I kinda don't want to support Windows/PS3 only programs, although sometimes I have to break that rule.

[AggrorJorn]

I am sure there are a lot of people who want to make use of PureLight. The price might be a little out of my reach but it is surely something to keep an eye out for.

 

Regarding to middleware and the support of plugins. It would be cool if community users could write a plugin which could be integrated into the editor. There have been a couple of person talking about creating their own editor. It would be cool if there is an option to integrate plugins. Lua already handles this for a great deal (thinking about thingoids), but when it comes to larger menu's that would come in handy (for instance, Pixel perfects editor being used as a pluging to create everything inside the editor.)

[Roland]

Hi all.

 

Of course I will show up as a totally wally now,

but I can live with that

 

What exactly is the difference between baking lightmaps

in your 3D application and make it with pureLight.

 

Isn't the effect the same ?

[Josh]

Thats not really PureLight for LE, thats just an export plugin for pureLight...

 

What exactly is the difference between baking lightmaps

in your 3D application and make it with pureLight.

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.

 

Just adding more to an art pipeline.. Yes that pictures look good, but is it worth all the extra in the map building process?

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.

[VicToMeyeZR]

 

Regarding to middleware and the support of plugins. It would be cool if community users could write a plugin which could be integrated into the editor. There have been a couple of person talking about creating their own editor. It would be cool if there is an option to integrate plugins. Lua already handles this for a great deal (thinking about thingoids), but when it comes to larger menu's that would come in handy (for instance, Pixel perfects editor being used as a pluging to create everything inside the editor.)

 

 

+1 to that. Plug in capabilities would be a great feature. Adding an editor API for plugins.

[Thomas Pittman]

Hello everyone, I'm the lead programmer on the pureLIGHT team. Let me clear up a few things in this thread (and a few others):

 

-pureLIGHT will be available sometime in the next few days. We have to set a few things up on our end first.

 

-pureLIGHT itself is a seperate program from Leadwerks. They are not integrated at this time.

 

-Using these features are quite simple. The colored shadows are simply a toggle in the light properties inside of Leadwerks, and a lua script that gets attached to the shadow-casting mesh. Bringing in a scene from pureLIGHT to Leadwerks is as simple as a menu click, it will setup all of the materials automatically for you. We also only merge in changes to the sbx and material files, we won't overwrite any changes that you have made afterwards inside of Leadwerks.

 

-Current supported import file formats are Collada and ASE, FBX isn't supported at this time.

 

-There is nothing stopping you from using any lightmapper that you want with Leadwerks. We offer quality, speed, an iterative bake process (no waiting hours before you can preview your lighting), indirect-only options, a powerful unwrapper, an easy workflow (pureLIGHT was created partially in response to how time-consuming baking lightmaps in 3d max was for us), and 1-click exporting/importing into Leadwerks. We're also considerably cheaper than other commercial lightmappers. Give our 30 day evaluation version a try. I think you will be happy with our product.

 

-You could probably figure out a way of bringing a Leadwerks scene into pureLIGHT. If there is enough demand, I may be able to work out something to do this for you.

 

-We have a very thorough manual and an extensive set of youtube tutorials http://www.youtube.com/user/pureLIGHTTech on how to use pureLIGHT itself.

[Canardia]

My understanding is that the benefit of using pureLIGHT over other raytracers is the speed, quality and short (and especially integrated, which apparently will be still more tight in future) pipeline between LE and pureLIGHT. It might be well worth the money then, although I'd be more willing to pay if there was a Linux version planned too, since I'm running XP and might need more RAM some day.

[niv3k]

i remember wanting this on the old forums...too bad its not integrated into the editor; it would be nice.

 

well if we're getting middleware stuff with the engine...can i recommend scaleform? sparse voxel octree?

[Thomas Pittman]

My understanding is that the benefit of using pureLIGHT over other raytracers is the speed, quality and short (and especially integrated, which apparently will be still more tight in future) pipeline between LE and pureLIGHT. It might be well worth the money then, although I'd be more willing to pay if there was a Linux version planned too, since I'm running XP and might need more RAM some day.

 

There are no plans at this time for a non-Windows version.

[AggrorJorn]

The tutorials on youtube look very interesting. The scale in which you can control your scenes lighting is greatly extended. I am eager to see this for in my editor when combined with leadwerks dynamic light.

[Josh]

The page is up now:

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

[Naughty Alien]

..this is nice official addition for lightmapping..I am not sure about purchase of pureLIGHT since i have already 3dsmax + Vray, and it can do the same (and better) things far as i can tell..it is however very handy solution if people doesnt have any advanced offline renderer in hands..really nice..is this price temporarily 350$ for LE or it is real price (im asking because its cheaper than other versions, so im wondering, whats going on) ?

[Rick]

They did mention that it would be cheaper for LE users for the first month or so. Then probably back up to $500. That price is insane if you ask me, but maybe it's just Josh spoiling us with way more functionality for way less than pureLIGHT's price for basically 1 thing.

[Pancakes]

Josh has spoiled us. And it's a bit pricey too imo. Otherwise they couldn't just knock 150 off like that could they? I understand the mark up though. For a well funded studio $500 is like, ok. It save us this many hours so it pays for itself kind of thing.