SSAO in 3.1 ?

[YouGroove]

Using dynamic lightening what can bring back good look shadowing details without using shadows that costs more power is SSAO.

ssao off :

 

ssao on :

 

Will that be included in LE 3.1 or in another future update ?

[Rick]

Those pictures look the same to me. What should I be looking for in them?

[YouGroove]

Bad example i put.

In this example, you can see without SSAO it seems like objects are just objects without any light interaction, not natural, with SSAO each one influence on the other : the telephone cab influences the wall

 

Second example : you can see on white part of the cylinders how SSAO really changes the FLAT white color to a more natural shadowing.

 

 

Another one where you can see clearly wihout SSAO , objects looks like just "posed" above ground without any shadowing information, with SSAO, they influence the ground shadowing, and it looks more natural indeed.

 

So you could avoid shadows on some models of the scene to save power, but keep a good looking using SSAO instead. And SSAO si ambient occlusion what light shadows don't do.

 

So will LE 3.1 will integrate SSAO or will it be for futur updates ?

[Rick]

Yeah the second example is way better. Almost every example I've seen that really pops out uses white heavily. The second example with no AO doesn't even look like it has shadows at all as I would think the pillars there would be casting more on the white.

[YouGroove]

Even last example without white makes the difference : without it's like objects are just floating on the scene.

SSAO brings shadows even on corners of objects, it makes the scene more unified without needing lightmaps.

[Josh]

It's fairly easy to bring the Leadwerks 2 post-processing shaders forward in Leadwerks 3.1.

 

We also have a normals-based ambient term built into the lighting that gives a soft enhancement to shaded surfaces based on their normal map.

[rubenjavier]

That means that LordHippo's SSAO shader could work in LW 3.1?

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/files/file/309-crysis1-ssao/

 

by the way I'm new an the community but eager to start with 3.1 with all the improvements I've seen so far, but I cant even download LordHippo's shader, download button keeps saying that I dont have permission for that, even when I'm logged in, thanks in advance, and congrats on this great project

[Shirk]

Id be interested in finding a way to get that to work too.

[nate066]

I think it would be cool if there was a built in command to turn SSAO on in c++ and lua.

[YouGroove]

Yep :

By code for your game menu graphic options and in the editor to test it directly.

Let's wait some time for fullscreen effects to come.

[Rastar]

If I remember correctly there will a custom postprocessing pipeline which is defined at you camera, both in the editor (the label is already there under the camera properties) and in code.

[ESP]

If I had never shown my customers ambient occlusion they would be none-the-wiser. As they have all seen it and agree that it makes a huge difference to the believabilty of a scene I am for this.

 

Robin

 

P.S. God Rays pretty please

[Rick]

If I had never shown my customers ambient occlusion they would be none-the-wiser.

 

This is how I sort of see this. It looks like it's way more noticeable with solid colors (like the white in one of the above screenshots) than busy textures. To this day I still can't tell the difference between the 2 WoW screenshots at the top of this post.

[gamecreator]

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To this day I still can't tell the difference between the 2 WoW screenshots at the top of this post.

It's pretty clear when you save both to your hard drive and cycle through them with a good viewer that can switch instantly, like XnView (free). The polish / extra effort thing is always a tradeoff. In this case, I really think it's worth it.

[Josh]

One of the features we'll have out soon is a post-processing stack you can add to a camera. Rather than implement a fixed set of effects you can toggle on and off, I'm just going to implement a generic stack and let the community make all the effects they want. Based on what we've seen in the past, some of the implementations will be better than what I can do, and there will be a much wider variety of rendering styles. Once I put that out, we'll probably have every post effect you could ask for within a week, plus all the effects from LE2 can be easily ported over.

[Kavex]

One of the features we'll have out soon is a post-processing stack you can add to a camera. Rather than implement a fixed set of effects you can toggle on and off, I'm just going to implement a generic stack and let the community make all the effects they want. Based on what we've seen in the past, some of the implementations will be better than what I can do, and there will be a much wider variety of rendering styles. Once I put that out, we'll probably have every post effect you could ask for within a week, plus all the effects from LE2 can be easily ported over.

 

That sounds nice

[DudeAwesome]

Josh for el presidente !

[shadmar]

No blur added yet:

 

[Christian Clavet]

Wow! Thanks Josh! With that stack we'll surely be able to render:

- DOF (Depth of field effect) (This one will require access to depth buffer)

- God rays

- Glows / Bloom FX

- SSAO

- HDR

- Antialias (seen a post-process shader that was improving the aliasing of edges in the render)

 

 

- Some oclusion query mask like they used in L4D (Can be useful in lots of situation when your character is occluded when using a 3rd person cam for example)

 

[Rick]

The L4D example is great because this is generally used in so many different genres.

[Josh]

Wow! Thanks Josh! With that stack we'll surely be able to render:

- DOF (Depth of field effect) (This one will require access to depth buffer)

- God rays

- Glows / Bloom FX

- SSAO

- Antialias (seen a post-process shader that was improving the aliasing of edges in the render)

 

 

- Some oclusion query mask like they used in L4D (Can be useful in lots of situation when your character is occluded when using a 3rd person cam for example)

 

Edge blur antialiasing is an obsolete technique. We have true MSAA which is far superior, and is only possible with OpenGL 4 hardware. It's a little frustrating to me to see people actually asking for an old low quality hack and it tells me need to do a better job educating everyone why our approach is better.

[Wchris]

- Some oclusion query mask like they used in L4D (Can be useful in lots of situation when your character is occluded when using a 3rd person cam for example)

eeeekkk ! Does it mean you can do the colored blur around the characters with a shader ? I want, I want, I want !

 

If there's an easy way to do it I would like to know. Yes, please teach us.

[YouGroove]

It's a little frustrating to me to see people actually asking for an old low quality hack and it tells me need to do a better job educating everyone why our approach is better.

 

About anti aliasing, the old technique would have sense if the engine would support OpenGL2 and 3 , not only OpenGL4.

 

@Christian :

HDR is missing on the list.

[Christian Clavet]

Ha? We will have better antialias with 3.1?

 

Sorry, Josh. I just pre-ordered 3.1. That I don`t have yet, and never had a version before that. I'm still not totally sure of what we have yet. Still learning with the tutorial and the forum. By the way, the videos are really cool, thanks to you and all the community that worked on them, it`s really like having a teacher that show me how it work! Just consider me as a PRE-NOOB! (Until I get 3.1 and pratice a bit)

 

I wonder why I did not come to Leadwerks before, as it`s the tool that seem to use an approach like I learned at school. I'm a level designer that learned on SourceSDK, and done some LUA on Gameloft "Dungeon Hunter II".

 

So having a editor that is really similar to Hammer, LUA scripting and C++ seem to be perfect to me. I think I will be able to really quickly adapt to it and produce prototypes really fast!

 

@YouGroove, edited my post to add HDR.

 

@ Wchris "If there's an easy way to do it I would like to know. Yes, please teach us."

Hi, I'm not too good with shader, but was using IRRLICHT to call a Occlusion Query, once I had the result for the query, just redraw the mesh as a post process. The one from L4D is better since it's done with a shader.

Here is a screenshot from my C++/Irrlicht project that use to learn and practice C++:

 

If you look the character is redraw in RED so we can see it even it's behind the wall. To make the character in RED, I simply swapped the texture for a RED color and redraw the character over when the scene was fully draw.

 

Once I will have leadwerks 3.1, I could perhaps create a "demo" with source if you want to make that. If we can do occlusion query it should be really easy to do. (the way I do it here, for the way they do it in L4D, they simply redraw in post process the character with a shader. But, as I said before the shader part is still difficult to me.

[Shirk]

Although that is one way to do it, I feel that its limiting and would be a bad decision for performance, unless the model would be an instance and in that case wouldn't really be expensive at all. You also run into the problem of what happens when you get close, it will be a perfect outline of all the detail on the model, if it is lit it will still receive light (unless the texture is emmisive or doesnt receive shadows)