Post-processing effects test (SSAO/HDR/Bloom)

[myconid]

It also works in-game, though lightning of the terrain flickers back and forth several times a second (normal, darker, normal, darker etc.) If I disable GLSL, there is no flickering. If I enable GLSL with the unpatched master branch, I also experience flickering. (Conclusion: Flickering not due to your changes, but due to a problem in the GLSL support, hardware or software.)

Nice, thanks for testing!

Yeah, that's a known issue with the shadowmap (I used to get it too until I "fixed" it by accident, at least on my PC). The cause is a mystery. I had a quick look at the shadowmap code and nothing stands out as wrong.. so clearly we'll need a more serious debugging session sooner or later.

Need. Video.

I posted

in another thread a few days back. I'd say it's improved a little since, though you get the basic idea.

Maybe one day we could add a relief mapping material for some sweet-looking terrain features. This scene has a triangle count of 2:

That should be possible with steep parallax, I could even add the "fake" self-shadows. I wonder how slow it would be on my comp...

[Shield Bearer]

Maybe one day we could add a relief mapping material for some sweet-looking terrain features. This scene has a triangle count of 2:

I thought it was water! If we could get that kind of effect for the the seas/oceans then it would rock!

[wraitii]

The problem with making too wavy oceans is that you must have realistic waves (on the shores or on cliffs), which is a pain.

I've got to say, when Alpha 10 got released, I was fairly confident the final game would be pretty close from a graphical standpoint. Now myconid has decided to revamp everything up (the tree moving is a nice touch, really) and the GUI is being redesigned completely...

Based on the video, it looked like all trees moved at the same rate (in a very uniform wave effectà... Have you planned to offset some, or perhaps implement a "wind" factor?

Edited June 23, 2012 by wraitii

[myconid]

Based on the video, it looked like all trees moved at the same rate (in a very uniform wave effectà... Have you planned to offset some, or perhaps implement a "wind" factor?

Yup, it's already been addressed.

I finally had a chance to work on the terrain materials. Not finished yet, though most of the big changes are in place. You can check out the terrainmapping branch, if you're curious, but stay away from the fixed renderpath because it's broken. https://github.com/m.../terrainmapping

Terrain types are no longer created by just putting textures in art/textures/terrain/types. The image files are still located at that path, however there is now an extra art/terrains directory that contains terrain xml files, which are very similar to actor files. They look kind of like this:

<terrain>
  <tag>alpine_cliff</tag>
  <textures>
	<texture name="baseTex" file="alpine_cliff.dds"/>
	<texture name="normTex" file="alpine_cliff_norm.png"/>
	<texture name="specTex" file="alpine_cliff_spec.png"/>
  </textures>
  <material>terrain_norm_spec.xml</material>
  <props groups="forestfloor" mmap="100 50 25" angle="12.0" size="64.0"/>
</terrain>

The "terrains.xml" files are kept, but they modify the xml files, not the image files.

The result doesn't look too different from the tests I did way back, though it's much improved under the hood.

[Gen.Kenobi]

Woah!

It's great! Now we must come up with different tilled high-res textures, the normal maps and spec one can work better - I can see that they are in a very small resolution right now.

[zoot]

It works

[myconid]

Woah!

It's great! Now we must come up with different tilled high-res textures, the normal maps and spec one can work better - I can see that they are in a very small resolution right now.

The texture/norm/spec maps are 512x512. That's not too bad considering terrain is not even meant to be looked at up close... Still, 1024x1024 would be a huge improvement, and I think it's what most games would use these days.

It works

Awesome!

I've just pushed the map etc I've been playing with (pic below). It's a map named "test" in Atlas (or "unnamed" in the game).

Btw, I tried turning anti-aliasing on and...

I really wish the game had better-looking cliffs and a skybox...

Edited June 23, 2012 by myconid

[zoot]

I seem to be missing the snow texture itself:

[myconid]

Whoops, for committing I should have referenced the dds not the png. Try it now.

[zoot]

I wouldn't know how to enable anti-aliasing, though

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Anti-aliasing is probably set in your manufacturer's graphics card settings program.

[myconid]

I force AA on through AMD's control panel app. Don't know if there's something similar for intel cards.

Uh-oh...! Why are there no shadows in that pic? This couldn't possibly be the fault of my changes, I think.

And also the sky reflection. Is the game turning stuff off if it's running slowly, maybe?

Edited June 23, 2012 by myconid

[zoot]

Shadows and water reflections are disabled by default when I run the game, also prior to patching it, so I assume this is down to my poor hardware.

By the way, I guess self-shadowing can't be done with shadow mapping? It seems to detract quite a bit from the visual fidelity:

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I think the reflective water and shadows are disabled by default when the game detects certain GPUs. I think Philip added that at one time.

[edit]

Actually, it's probably an availability check for certain features, not a check on the GPUs themselves.

[myconid]

Shadows and water reflections are disabled by default when I run the game, also prior to patching it, so I assume this is down to my poor hardware.

I think the reflective water and shadows are disabled by default when the game detects certain GPUs. I think Philip added that at one time.

Ah, good.

By the way, I guess self-shadowing can't be done with shadow mapping? It seems to detract quite a bit from the visual fidelity:

Sure can, it's just that the model ambient colour is a little too bright in that map. I think I should stick to coding and leave stuff like that up to the map designers.

[zoot]

Oh, yeah, that's probably it.

[zoot]

Can we mitigate texture stretching with something like triplanar mapping?

[myconid]

Can we mitigate texture stretching with something like triplanar mapping?

Sure, looks simple enough!

[Pureon]

Sure, looks simple enough!

Seriously?

[WhiteTreePaladin]

That terrain stretching has been a sore point for a long time. Would be great to have it fixed.

[myconid]

Seriously?

Haha, no I was just kidding.

Or was I?

[zoot]

Definitely looks better, but have you tried tweaking the 'blending range'? In GPU Gems, they seem to obtain rather epic results with a range of 'roughly 10 to 20 degrees'.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Probably best to use cliff textures in such examples and optimize the solution to fit those textures best. I've always hated the terrain stretching too, though.

[Gen.Kenobi]

This is simply brilliant!

You guys rocks!

[Sonarpulse]

Probably best to use cliff textures in such examples and optimize the solution to fit those textures best. I've always hated the terrain stretching too, though.

Cliff textures and "multi-planer" can be combined for super basic "biomes"

That would a normal ground type:

<terrain>
  <tag>alpine_cliff</tag>
  <textures>
	<texture name="baseTex" file="alpine_cliff.dds"/>
	<texture name="normTex" file="alpine_cliff_norm.png"/>
	<texture name="specTex" file="alpine_cliff_spec.png"/>
  </textures>
  <material>terrain_norm_spec.xml</material>
  <props groups="forestfloor" mmap="100 50 25" angle="12.0" size="64.0"/>
</terrain>

Then a biome would select different versions of the above based on the angles things faced. You could do things like

IF 75-90 degrees (polar angle of normal)
THEN clifrock
Else If 180-270 degrees (azimuthal angle)
	 THEN snow grass mix
	 ELSE snow

This would sort of blur the distinction between manual and generated maps, making both tasks easier. Of course, if map-makers didn't like the way something looked, they could override with a forced normal ground type too.

azimuthal angle, and polar angle

Edited June 24, 2012 by Sonarpulse