Since I created some model levels with shaders I experienced that dynamic (stencil shadows) do not work on shaders.

Because of that I would like to kindly ask if it would be possible in the future to support improved stencil shadows (or even soft shadows) that

- react to dynamic lights (the closest light or even more than one light/shadow)
- draw themselves on top of materials with shaders
- get more transparent with greater distance to the light source

I believe that we could create amazing stuff with shaders and shadows. I think a few static shadows would be fine as well:

- projected textures for static shadows
- another uv-set with texture that can be drawn on top of a material (with a certain blending mode)

I mentioned a second uv-set because of the following reason: I could create a model level with textures that tile several times over my structure. But the shadow map must be applied without any tiling. Because of that it needs another different uv-map. When A6/A7 could blend 2 uv-maps then we could easily use texture baking or the software packet Giles to create static soft shadows on top of every model.

Regards,
Frank

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I experienced that dynamic (stencil shadows) do not work on shaders.

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This shoudn't be the case, as shaders materials have little to with the stencil shadowing system, unless you purposefully disable or mess with the stencil buffer in your material.

Either way your request is redundant, as this has been asked for many times, and JCL has repeatadly stated that such things are eventully planned. I just wouldnt expect them any time soon. Use Sphere instead

Thanks for the response. I will try to find the problem for this.

And yes. I already use Sphere

I also can not confirm a problem with stencil shadows on shader surfaces. I'd need to have a look at that shader.

Stencil shadows already react on dynamic lights - see manual. And models do already have a second UV coordinate set.

Only your wish that shadows should become more transparent in the distance can not be fulfilled with stencil shadows - at least I wouldn't know how to do that. A stencil shadow is 2D and does not carry depth information.

We plan to add a smooth shadow shader to the MtlFX shader library, as an alternative to stencil shadows.

i think he means more sophisticated multipass shadow rendering like doom3 or ogre can do. not just adding a transparent shadow polygon on top of everything like a6 currently does.

but as a first step i would be happy if 3dgs had useable stencil shadows which don't mess up half of the time.

Thanks for the comments. You are right. I had some problems with stencils like you can see below. Some objects show the stencil shadows some other do not as you can see here:



I know that we can use several uv and texture sets per model in the new version. But what I mean is the possibility to have 2 different uv sets for the same polygons that blend into each other (like I would do with a shader and several blending texture stages). First texture / uv set contains colors. The same uv set uses another texture with normalmap. But a third differs. It uses a new uv-set without tiling to paint shadows over all. That should happen after the shaders and material setup. It should simply be blended on top of the material.

This is just an idea. The smooth shadow shader could be another solution.

Thanks again. I try to find the reason for the stencils that disappear in my level.

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I know that we can use several uv and texture sets per model in the new version. But what I mean is the possibility to have 2 different uv sets for the same polygons that blend into each other (like I would do with a shader and several blending texture stages). First texture / uv set contains colors. The same uv set uses another texture with normalmap. But a third differs. It uses a new uv-set without tiling to paint shadows over all. That should happen after the shaders and material setup. It should simply be blended on top of the material.

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I've asked for this features multiple times over the last year or so. The new faster renderer is really nice, but the ability to do lighting this way would be even nicer. It's the main thing i'm missing right now, and if it's not around, it'll force me to use BSP for a my indoor racetracks. Been putting off the indoor tracks dev until last so this could be possibly implemented in the .mdl format before I start on them. This isn't possible with shaders either.

Yes, William. I understand your problem perfectly. But I have new hope now

I remember a statement in this forum that the engine will have a new scene management (an adaptive binary tree). This one is said to be better than bsp and faster than octree. When this one will be an alternative to our good old BSP then it may have static shadows.

And from the future forum we all now that it is planned to use models for static meshes. Both infos combined lead to a system that renders models (probably with static shadows) in the future, much faster than today. And it should be possible to use shaders with this system.

This is only speculation but I see no reason why this should not be possible.

In the beta test, the new renderer is around 10-25% faster(figured i'd not that, incase your not in beta). This is measured on a faster comp, so prolly even more of an improvement for older comps. Don't have any idea when all of this would be final though, or if the new renderer is in an early stage, but if a second set of coordinates were possible now, all lighting can be done using 3ds Max, or any other texture baking/lightmapping program.

Mabye JCL can confirm if indeed there will be some standard lightmapping on models within the engine, once the new rendering kernel/scene managment is released. He's gone on holiday right now though. I sure hope so though, would make it even easier than doing within Max.

P.S - Nice screens, though was wondering, why the need for static shadows when using Sphere?

I dont think he wants static shadows in Sphere.. anyway, Sphere is very limiting in what kind of levels you can build, becasue of the visible light limits, and the fact that there is no real scene management. I was waiting for Octree to be implemented in A6, but it so far not here yet (as far as I know, havent looked at betas in a while...0 Maybe for Sphere 3.0 I will do my own Octree system, and occlusion culling