When are we going to get proper softshadows like in Half-Life 2 or something like that. It would even be ok if you could give access to the shadow buffer then people could code their own shadow solutions.

isn't there already a softshadow code on one of the Aum Magazines?

Yes there is but it does not bend around corners like proper stencil shadows. And I'm not interested in using Sphere either. Some of us like our level blocks too much

yes but stencil shadows is pretty slow i think. And i think i can't really help by this I'm not really familiar with programming.

i thought projected shadows were the way to go for this. stencil shadows aren't a huge issue in terms of speed, but they are as sharp as shadows get. you'll need projected shadows (which half-life2 uses, im pretty sure), but they'll probably be slow on level geometry. i'm no shader guru however, and i'm sure there would be some way for conitec to give a6 some native support that won't suffer as much from the shortcomings of mixing level blocks and shaders.

my thoughts that hl2's shadows are projected are based on the fact that if the model's bounding box gets too close to a wall the edges of the shadow bend up to a point closer to the light source than the actual model (implying that the shadows are projected from another position) and that the shadows are quite pixelated if you look carefully. please correct me if i'm wrong.

any thoughts, conitec?

JulzMighty

I thought that the shadows in Half Life 2 were only softened (and softened quite poorly) stencil shadows?

Did you know:
you can make your own stencil shadow code, since it is only projected on one plane at a time, not multiple surfaces, using models no less. Simply using an all black skin+ transparent/alpha, angle the model and squash it to the plane.
Somewhat difficult, but once achieved, a shader could easily soften it, and there would be no limit to the number of shadows you wanted from multiple light sources, or multiple surfaces.This idea came to me back when churning out garbage with A5 stadard, that did not support stencil shadows.

that could work but they aren't actually stencil shadows, as stencil shadows bend around corners and are visible on any polygon in its way that is set to receive shadows.
still, did you get it to work? it would be nice to see.

JulzMighty

@vung I think someone tried this approch at some point. The main problem is that you get a poor result (as your limited to the number of vertexes in the model you are using) and it's not exactly fast...

EDIT: I think how the shadows are handled in sphear would be the way to go in gamestudio or even in a game like Halo the shadows look quite nice! and it uses no shaders!