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Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 8:11 am
by FuzzYspo0N
The model was modelled in maya, and tweaked a little in max,

the renders are from 3dsmax, just for quick lighting sake.

Ill keep showing the mapping as i go.

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 8:51 am
by dlangdev
wow, they sure look good.

in my case, i'm currently lightmapping a sample scene in blender.

so far, i've got seven 512x512 texture files uv mapped already, and i don't know if this is the way to go.

with lightmapping, every polygon is reflecting light at varying intensities. does that mean more textures? i guess so...

Image

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 9:31 am
by dlangdev
and this is what it looks like when inside irredit.

i still couldn't believe this model took seven 512x512 tga textures, though.

maybe there's a better way of doing this.

Image

Image

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:25 am
by FuzzYspo0N
Well, i dont like TGA as much as other better compressed textures.

If you want to make good lightmaps, texture your entire scene first, and it wont really look good. Then, you add lights wherever the lights are, and render a lightmap at a good quality, which you blend with the textured map to make it look lit in game. Im sure you understand that cos its basic , but take a look at this guys : He has been discussing some stuff with me about lightmapping :)

http://www.cybergooch.com/tutorials/pag ... _rfom1.htm

For my game, in the other shots where you see the well lit texturing, its nothing really, its simple diffuse. this makes the textures quality look really good, and ONTOP of the diffuse, i will do lightmapping, as well as dynamic lighting for shadows. this creates a much larger sense of realism then just diffuse+specular (which i wont add yet) and diffuse+lightmap.

There are some great tutorials on UVW wrapping, which i have learnt from. So thats pretty much basic to find out about.

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:47 am
by dlangdev
thanks for posting the link, i just finished reading the article.

i think i have an idea about the dynamics of textures and lighting. what i did right was generating the shadows first, like what was shown above. i've got the textures stored somewhere else, there is another step i need to do in gimp or photoshop that will blend the two textures into one.

also noticed they have their own tools developed in-house. in irrlicht's case, irredit has lightmapping, though the source is not available. it would be nice to have lightmapper built on top of irrlicht lib, along with a scene editor. that's another cool tool as well.

that (lightmapper tool) would be demo #80 for me, though. i'm still working on demo #8 at the moment. long road ahead for me. i still need to write a lot of demos before i consider myself yellow belt, as i'm still white belt (n00b).

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 12:12 pm
by FuzzYspo0N
i've got the textures stored somewhere else, there is another step i need to do in gimp or photoshop that will blend the two textures into one.
thats not how they do it, or how its done in irredit, or any other place iknow of. U apply the texture layer 1 in irredit with your diffuse, and texture layer 2 with the light map. look near the end of his post at the lightmap textures. Then u apply the second texture with the lightmap_add_m4 or m2 depepnding what u like, this simulates the lighting on the textures. but its 2 pictures.

I will write a small demo app for light mapping, so watch this space.

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:18 pm
by dlangdev
with regard to methodology, i mostly ignore what is current practice as i'm more into learning the methods, documenting them as i go along. later on, once i have a collection of these methods, i'll be able to form a conclusion after tabulating them on a board.

the one you mentioned sounds cool, definitely wait for it.

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 3:32 pm
by Ico
You should still avoid using only one texture with a blended shadow-/lightmap as that requires far more memory and render time.

Imagine a wall. You can use a 256x256 pixel texture that's tiled and still get a very nice image. Then you just blend a 512x512 (or even smaller) light map on the wall to show shadows.

If you want to use one texture layer only you either use a very huge texture (avoiding tiling; you can't do it due to the shadow(s)) or your wall texture becomes VERY blocky.

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 8:25 pm
by dlangdev
this is what i'm referring to allocating a texture file entirely to support this effect, notice the grimy tile surface, it lends more to realism at the expense of texture size and count.

this will bloat texture memory and clog the pipeline, a heavy price to pay. that's why i'm still looking for better solutions.

with that, i stumbled on wang tiling, but the thing is, it's too early for use.

Image

about the blockiness, yes you are so right there. i've seen it and will definitely put that in the documentation.

about the tga format, i use that for development, and then switch to low-jpeg later down the flow.

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 11:02 pm
by FuzzYspo0N
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... p?p=142213

Take a look there dlangdev. I will improve it later when i have time. For now its simple.

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 5:56 am
by dejai
Hello FuzzySpo0N,
I was having a look at the map it looks really nice, you must have quite a good artist! Now I just have a couple of questions, What Physics engine are you using? What Network Engine are you Using? And what License do you plan to release the game under.

Now i may just have missed the information, I am sorry if that happened. But I think the project looks really great, I love it how it seems you have used shaders on some of the shots, yet it is really just great quality textures. Who made the textures by the way?

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 7:44 am
by FuzzYspo0N
i agree the artist is great.,he is a friend of mine here in south africa.

the physics in the video or the shots is newton.im deciding between newton and bullet im checking the two with my game,deciding which is better for the game we are making. the sourceforge project has been created,im just adding the team members and fleshing out the details.

networking, is being written and implemented by myself and by varmint.

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 7:50 am
by FuzzYspo0N
sorry for double post.my phone doesnt allow lotsa words.
im busy writing the server in php and varmint is helping me get it done. um, oh and we writing it with sockets,no helper libraries.
and the textures i made myself using photos,paintshop pro,and 3dsmax. these ones werent even high quality compared to the newer ones..

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 7:55 am
by FuzzYspo0N
the team :

varmint : general,networking,actor classes

blindside:shadows and effects,helpin wit physics.

RevertheX : art,conceptual ideas

myself : general, everything else. its mainly that these awesome guys are helping me learn more of what i kno,and are helping me release this sooner.i cud have carried on alone but decided its better to have a team :)

oh and its open source zlib licence,same as irrlicht

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:52 pm
by xfreakk
what did you use for networking. And where did you learn the concepts you empoyed for the multiplayer. Or did you just learn through trial and error :).
I currently am using raknet.