Soft Shadows

Posted By: xoNoid

Soft Shadows - 05/12/06 16:29

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.
Posted By: Damarus

Re: Soft Shadows - 05/12/06 17:00

isn't there already a softshadow code on one of the Aum Magazines?
Posted By: xoNoid

Re: Soft Shadows - 05/12/06 18:04

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
Posted By: Damarus

Re: Soft Shadows - 05/16/06 14:13

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.
Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Soft Shadows - 05/29/06 07:47

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
Posted By: xoNoid

Re: Soft Shadows - 05/29/06 10:44

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

Re: Soft Shadows - 05/29/06 23:29

Quote:

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


i've never seen these problems occur with stencil shadows. also, stencil shadows are independent of the textures they are cast on (that's why in games like Riddick on XBox the shadows are sharper than the wall/floor textures behind them). this makes it difficult and maybe impossible to do softening effects on the stencil shadow whilst maintaining scale and perspective. i'm sure an effect could be written to blur the shadows on-screen but like i just said it would be very difficult to take perspective and distance into account to make them look realistic.

i'm no expert on stencil shadows and especially not shaders so that's just what i thought based on different things i've seen and heard.

JulzMighty
Posted By: yung

Re: Soft Shadows - 06/01/06 07:31

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.
Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Soft Shadows - 06/02/06 06:04

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
Posted By: xoNoid

Re: Soft Shadows - 06/02/06 17:35

@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!
Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: Soft Shadows - 06/02/06 17:54

That fake shaow method by squashing meshes is extremely bad. Results are poor visually and are extremely slow.
Posted By: Straight_Heart

Re: Soft Shadows - 06/04/06 04:51

We shouldnt have to be faking things like softshadows by now.

Its annoying to see that an unneeded upgrade to C lite is being activly worked on instead of a decent shadow system that is not 4 years behind the indie scene. This is not a not a knock on A6, but if anyone tells you otherwise, they are lying.

Softshadows should have been implemented 2 years ago at least.
Posted By: xoNoid

Re: Soft Shadows - 06/07/06 19:46

agreed (except one year ago )
Posted By: JibbSmart

Re: Soft Shadows - 06/08/06 04:18

like i said before, i'm sure its just shaders. here's one technique from GameDev.net, which i'm sure could be done in 3dgamestudio with a shader, but i'm not in the know-how and i don't have a high enough edition so someone else will have to do it

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2193.asp

this is for a fixed light source. i guess if you want half-life 2 style shadows (which are directional) you'd obviously have to tweak it a bit. ask someone in the shader forum if you are really interested. would be nice to have native support but it would probably just be a shader (i guess) built in that you can turn on/off.

Julz
Posted By: mk_1

Re: Soft Shadows - 06/08/06 16:49

Actually it's a pro feature only since you need a render target. Maybe they'll hardcode it in the engine but it shouldn't be that difficult.
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