Stages and Softshadows

Posted By: fogman

Stages and Softshadows - 11/05/07 14:04

From http://www.conitec.net/beta/stage.htm

Quote:


An arbitrary number of stages can be linked together for a view rendering chain. For instance, shadow mapping requires a view rendering from a light source into a depth map, followed by a view that renders the shadow map using the depth map as a source map, followed by one or two post processing stages for blurring, and finally by a view that renders the scene combined with the blurred shadow map.





I´m sure that someone has already done some testings with this.
To me it seams that dynamic soft shadows are now much "easier" to do. Has someone the passion to give it a go?
I´m sure that people even want to pay for it (me included).

We don´t want to wait another six month or so until there is a native gamestudio solution. But I may be wrong.

Thanks in advance.
Posted By: Shadow969

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/05/07 14:52

i've tried, but my videocard doesn't support postprocessing of textures larger than 512*512. I'm curious too
Posted By: ventilator

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/05/07 15:52

i haven't worked on it yet because i am not sure when we will get examples from jcl. i didn't want to waste any time if we maybe get a solution soon anyway.
Posted By: Hummel

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/05/07 19:19

Edition 7.07C? From where can I get it?
Posted By: BoH_Havoc

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/06/07 02:32

yay! finally!
It's a pain in the you know what to use all those workarounds in A6 to create real bloom and all the other fancy stuff. I think I finally have to upgrade to A7 just to get this. (well and for view.material ... also makes things a lot more easier and faster to use)

Is A7.07 public? Or is it just for the beta testers out there?

Thx for pointing this out fogman
Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/06/07 02:47

not public yet. i'm waiting for this before i try shadow mapping and SSS because i don't want to make soon-to-be-obsolete post-processing workarounds.

julz
Posted By: fogman

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/06/07 10:22

Just write an email to conitec and you´ll be a beta tester.
But of course you´ll need A7 to do so.

It´s so easy now to link postprocessing effects together, you won´t believe it.
Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/06/07 12:04

Quote:

Just write an email to conitec and you´ll be a beta tester.
But of course you´ll need A7 to do so.

It´s so easy now to link postprocessing effects together, you won´t believe it.


gooooood idea! we'll see how things go, though -- i've been out of action for so long, so i think i'll first allow myself to practice and experiment with non-post-processing shader effects until the public beta. i've dozens of ideas to try out.

it shouldn't be long now, anyway! (crosses fingers)

Quote:

Views can now directly render into cubic environment maps by using a bitmap as a render target that was converted with bmap_to_cubemap before.


ooooh it just gets better and better! this is easily the update i'm anticipating most, just for these post-processing assists.

julz
Posted By: ventilator

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/06/07 16:08

because of zapan's thread i googled variance shadow maps and found this: http://www.punkuser.net/vsm/
i haven't really looked into it yet but probably it wouldn't be that hard to implement. there also seems to be example source code.
Posted By: bstudio

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/07/07 09:50

Looked into the source code and indeed shouldn't be hard to implement in A7. The paper also seems interesting, with a lot of explanation of the algorithm.
Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/07/07 12:49

I hope so. Please do it!

But you have to know that this article and source code only delivers the basics. If you want to make it right then you still need more like mipmapping/anisotropic filtering and potentially a pre-processing blur step. Otherwise you will have ugly blocky shadows.
Besides that it is research code and not optimized for a working game environment.

Nevertheless I am looking forward to see your results.
Posted By: ventilator

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/07/07 13:07

look into the readme.txt. you can also enable blurring and play with other options.

with blurring it's very slow though on my gf6600.
Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/07/07 13:26

Yes. That is right. I confused that with the infos from the composer example and the written text from the article.
Posted By: BoH_Havoc

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/07/07 13:45

Quote:

...and potentially a pre-processing blur step. Otherwise you will have ugly blocky shadows




That's not quite right. The variance shadow algorythm already calculates some kind of blur for the shadowmap (at least that's what it looks like on my end after porting it to A6). However an additional blurring step increases the overall look of course
And as for porting it to 3dgs: Possible, even in A6 and without any plugins (that's if you only want 1 light and no omni light support). Porting it to A7 should actually be fun
Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/07/07 13:53

Yes. You are right. Since it uses the depth and the square of the depth it already does some kind of antialiasing.

My comment is a direct copy from the readme of the fx-composer file. So the developer themselves said it would be better to do those steps afterwards.
Posted By: fogman

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/07/07 14:57

Quote:

Porting it to A7 should actually be fun




That means you´ll do it? That would be fantastic.
I could give you some models, textures or soundeffects in exchange.
Or something else, like my soul.
Posted By: BoH_Havoc

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/07/07 17:33

Quote:

That means you´ll do it? That would be fantastic.




Haha, we'll see ^^ I think it's not really neccesary as wetain already has a variance shadow "plugin" showcasing in sc1 (as mentioned before). If the price isn't too high and multiple lights are supported (as stated), then i think you should go for that plugin.
A thing I might do in the future is pssm enhanced vsm so you can use it as sunlight. But maybe wetain has already implemented this, i don't know.

Sidenote: I don't own A7 atm. I'm planning on buying it in the next days however. And then i'll have some fun with view.mtl and maybe stages if i become a beta tester

PS: In case of porting it to A7: I think your soul would be more than sufficent
Posted By: fogman

Re: Stages and Softshadows - 11/10/07 16:37

I´ve found a very detailed student research project about trapezoidal shadow maps. Unfortunately it´s only in german.
But it contains a complete example implementation.

Maybe it´s interesting for you.

http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~cg/Studienarbeiten/ShadowMappingNicoHempe.pdf
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