Terrain Shadows - is it possible?

This is a baked shadow onto the terrainbitmap:
(but it is static and can not change to different sunpositions)




With the multitexturing shader in the templates, you can
also mix this with different textures in the terrain.

There is currently no option in Wed to bake shadows onto a terrain.

I used to have A5 standard and static lights used to be able to create a gouraud on models, now, A6 does'nt... that totaly sucks! lol

So you are no really talking about shadows, but albedo on terrains:

A5 standard did not have Terrains,

and Models are still affected by albedo and the brightness of
the underlying BSP Block.
For a finer look, read the manual about the materials.

What I was talking about is the gouraud on models and terrains. If I use the sunlight or static lights in A6, it iluminates the entire model or terrain like a cartoon with no gouraud. It lites the entire thing up evenly on all sides, even the sides that are'nt facing the light source.

if it has an action, make a material in the code and put in the action "my.material = theMaterialVonmanMade;"

or you can go to MED and edit its material properties there. search through the manual for "materials". also, i think some variable has to be set to make the sun be treated as a dynamic light.

julz

Here is a little Modelviewer,
just insert your terrain into it at the position
string das_model=<marine_cosh.mdl>;

You might just scale it in cas it is to big.

This way you can test how the material settings affect the terrain.

http://www.coniserver.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/684932/an/0/page/0#Post684932

If you want shadows on terrain just set an entity to have a stencil shadow. Then a dynamic shadow will be displayed on a terrain.

I'm not an expert, but did you export your terrain from MED? If so did you alter the ambience? I did the same this and my entire terrain is too lit up and looks cartoony, until I realised that you can adjust how much the light affects the terrain in MED (A6 as far as I know). Now my terrain has low ambience and is only lit based on the intensity and distance of lights (dynamic or static) and sunlight. I hope this helps.

No, I just made the terrain, added a skin and saved it. I did'nt know that changing the ambiance in MED would make a difference, i'll try that!!! :-D THX!

WOW! It DID work! Thanks for the Tip! My project is gonna have some MEAN graphics when i'm done with it :-D

It's my first day in this forum and I love to stick my nose in everything that has not yet been responded to, if I think that I may have a solution of course, because I had the same problem, but I'm sure you would have figured it out eventually as I did. I'm just a newbie, but I'm glad I could help.

hi, i am cureently trying to get the wiki example
http://www.coniserver.net/wiki/index.php/Terrain_Shadowmapping
to work, but i have no success. i simply get a plain grey map. i'd be grateful if someone could post an example/a step-by-strep guide. thanks in advance.

ahm, damocles: i need exactly what you have, a shadow baker for all objects... any chance you could share it?

DaBro0zar, you might want to check out the shadow map creation utility I uploaded at Acknex resource site Here, sounds like it might be what you need.

Well, I have not yet tried this, but how about you choose the angle of your sunlight over the terrain you created and leave the terrain a flat grey or white. Then switch the camera view from above and export the shadow.

It's just a thought...

thanks a lot josiah.
is there a way to bake model shadows as well? as you can see here,



map ents and blocks are rendered fine, but models aren't. why? i cannot see an ignore_models-line in your trace. this is strange. please help me.

for simple shapes, like this snowy pine tree, i may rebuild it with inv. blocks



but this is not nice for a whole forest nor for more complex shapes.

You will need to set "polygon = on;" for models either by script or in WEDs
properties for the model, or else the bounding box will be rendered and not the
model! And if you forget to do this and then scale your model, the shadow of the
bounding box will be a small dot, since it dosent scale with the model.

Shadows of models with fine lines may be blurred out, so you may want to blur
them by hand in an image editing program. Also getting good results capturing
finer details like fence rails may reqire a higher resolution of your shadowmap.

To bake the shadows would depend on how you are texturing your terrain. If you
use one large texture per terrain, then in an image editor, you could invert
the shadowmap and use it as a mask on a black layer above your terrain layer.
Adjust the transparency of the layer, and then collapse them into a single image.

You could also use the existing ffp shader in the example or, modify it if you
are using a multi texture shader. The example shader tiles skin 1 but not skin 2
(the shadow map).

I have made fantastic results with sewn together terrains that each use just
one large texture that includes the shadowmap, and a detail mapping shader.

Sorry I didnt include better usage notes!

excellent works fine, thanks a lot!

I modified the wiki terrain shader, I multiply the color result with the alpha map and disable alpha blending.

To create the alpha map I wrote a raytracing function that makes 4 traces per alpha-map pixel to get a rough "darkness factor" for the pixel.

The result looks like this, but is a static shadowmap because it takes ~3 minutes for 500.000 c_trace. O:-)