Irrlicht Screenshot Thread

[Quall]

which is also addicting

[afecelis]

here's a test room using Zdimitor's My3d format:


it's not an impressive screenshot but a tool to ask how to make those shadows look smooth and not with all those jaggies. Has anyone found out a way to smooth them up?

I'm planning to use this same room for global ilumination tests using FinalRender to see how it behaves so enhancing those shadows is crutial.

one last thing; The highest lightmap res My3d supports is 512x512; I tried a 1024x1024 lightmap and shadows went nuts! Anyone else having this prob?

[Spintz]

afecelis, that looks like an anti-aliasing problem [ or lack of AA at all ]

[jox]

Hm, you think it's an antialiasing problem? To me it looks like the resolution of the lightmaps are not high enough for such sharp edges (contrasts).

[vermeer]

or...

organize better the space in UVs: scale up , down certain parts in uv template.

bsides, divide into chunks areas which are big in distance. Also dedicate lightmaps for morde detailed small areas.

512 is quite a good size, if done so, just u use more...
FSRAD achieves perfection witha lot of 128x128

There's a script, deconstruct, at scriptspot, great for gridifying a mesh, or just use the slice plane in max.

dont trust auto uvs(flatten) in Max render to texture...it's usually no good... It can be used, but with care.

one thing is clear, that casted circle needs more pixels, but surely not need use a 1024 texture, which chunks old cards...(well, a gf4ti4200 128mb eat it easily...)

[Spintz]

Maybe, if you're looking at the shadow, but the whole scene looks jagged, even very slight angles, like the doorway, and the white thing on the wall.

[jox]

Maybe, if you're looking at the shadow, but the whole scene looks jagged, even very slight angles, like the doorway, and the white thing on the wall.

Of course I'm looking at the shadow. That's what Afecelis asked for:

...ask how to make those shadows look smooth and not with all those jaggies.

[afecelis]

thnx for the tips guys!

yup, the jags in the level itself is an AA problem so I'll have to enable it in Irrlicht. Gonna try DX an 4x AA to see if it gets better. But the shadow problem is something different. I'm using 512x512 lightmaps which should be om with such a small level. 1024x1024 lightmaps make My3d go crazy.

Vermeer's suggestion makes sense to me. Instead of a 1x1 segments wall, I'll add some more subdivisions for the shadows to have more detail.

lets' see. Thnx for the valuable tips guys!!!

[afecelis]

whoa!
I tried DX with Chips modification to get AA working (at 4x) and the results are really smooth!



but my shadow problem persists, so next step is to try subdivin my walls some more.

and now another question crosses my mind; how do you enable AntiAliasing for opengl?

[AlexL]

afecelis,
I have yet to really play around with My3D, but to get the shadows looking smooth you might try opening up the LM files in Photoshop or the like and applying a gaussian blur to them. Not sure if you want to go through the trouble, just a suggestion for a temp fix

[afecelis]

thnx for the tip Alexl! but the images produced in the render-to-texture process are very smooth. I'm about to think it's the RLE compression process whn exporting the My3d file. Gonna try one with no compression.

meanwhile test it yourselves; as usual WASD navigation, alt+f4 to quit. Not using GI yet.
http://www.danielpatton.com/afecelis/files/FRGI.zip

final note: if it gives you touble it's because of the 4xAA I'm using in DX.

[afecelis]

just tried it with no compression and no change. It only brought the My3d file from 3 megs up to 20mb.

arrrggggghhhhh!

[vermeer]

afe. compadre.


The rle is lossless compression... ie: like a zip, or png, similar in that matter....

If u look deeply in that circle, it has pixels of the size of a tomahawk missile...


So...very pretty little space for a curved or diagonal shadow....

Follow my first advice...If u just wanna make a quick test...grab only the floor...the chunk where more or less lay the projected shadow (don't change lights position) . CUT it... I'll put the dirct link of a wonderful, but wonderful maxscript for it (though should be pretty easy to just make like to edge divide/cut in opposited edges of floor....connect those pairs...and now cut the new resulting edges with two cuts more each...connect em so to make a quad.... select that quad....right click....detach....bang, that's a new object. render to texture will achieve it as new object. I guess render to texture works averagely well with simple rooms, but I'd rather prefer to manually do the channel 3 UVs by hand, maybe also using auto flatten or box mapping, but with the control of my self of being able to scale up some stuff, down some other.... besides, max 6 has a verrry nice Pack UVs, where, like in flatten, spacing value setting is...CRUCIAL...as well as normalize on...fill holes not necessarily, it depends...those values often depend on the scale of the mesh, sadly, I mean the real 3d scale, if I am not wrong...beware I'm explaining all from memory...and I while since my last job...though I'm eager to grab that max 7 trial, gotta keep up to date, and man they made changes... No pdf tells me the whole story... )

I'm no expert in render to texture, but I guess making ur UVs is a must with complex scenes...for the typical game level , maybe it's good to go , and saves from a lot of hours...(the auto mode)

I mean, chunk as an object that floor part as I told u, and in render to texture, set fixed to 512 chunks (don't make irregular chunks: ie, make some tooo small object in 3d scale...only if it's a crazily mesh-detailed object with lots of thin pipes(a pain for lightmapping, trust me, hehe) ...or way too large areas and pretend that a shadow will have good definition with just a 512 map (ur case) even with curved projected shadows... )

Did I explained well?...I'm terrible explaining....

BTW, it' surprised me u said the tga is seen no jaggies...please , put a screenshot, well, the lightmap tga where the circle is...wanna see what happens there, as dunno a thing bout irrlicht and dunno if it can be doing something weird, but I highly doubt it... I'm more on my above theory...


BTW2 ...True that a HUGE gaussian blur can disguise the thingie...probaly something like that is done by deled editor lite, with its small 16x16 maps...but...u probably dont want to escape so much from reality and do accurate shadows (totally possible the way I explained u )

DECONSTRUCTOR...more than useful for more than one situation...speacially great for chunking a very large floor....uv coords and tiling textures are preserved....

http://plugins.angstraum.at/

[vermeer]

oh, and ot but referring to that tekken like or the other jappanesse name style of game...whatever. I love *all* those games, mainly as being an 3d animator(among other things) for the passion of dynamic motion by itself, I specially like see games and stuff bout that matter....probably too much Bruce Lee films in my old small town cinema, some centuries ago, in my childhood....

So...Go for it! It'd be nice to see one project of this also in Irrlicht

[vermeer]

multi Objects Unwrap 1.31b

a script that allows multiple objects unwraping, for max 6 and 7. There in game category at scriptspot...

Something possible in Ultimate Unwrap since allways, lol...as it can treat objects like groups...and the OBJ max importer plugins, will allow u to import as "multiple" so new objects are there.... While if u import as single, or delete the groups in Unwrap3d, bang, single object in seconds once in max...
100x100 flexibility...

Not related to ur actual issue, but useful.
Actually, not a single connection with ur problem, lol...just I checked that the deconstructor url was the right one and saw this one...