I am urgin for shadows improovements since I got 3dgs, but it is always on HIGH-priority in forecast. This great looking shadows have almost every good engine and for their users it is natural to have images like this. Law maker for example have very simple system, just place a light and you have a different type of shadows to all objects. There is no need to use all those tools to acheeve simple things like GOOD shadows. No plugins, no third party programs, just import model and fantastic shadow is already there even in production stage, without compiling.

What I like is that ventilator's tool adds to the 'have' while you already again add to the 'wish'. Did you program already with Lawmaker and such? I mean, actually, not theoretically. I didn't, but I have a code with my game from my Gnometech written with c-script. You have a game with c-script, but you don't have any working game script with Lawmaker, do you?

This is a thread about something that has been achieved, not something on a wish list. 'To be, or not to be' - and that makes the difference - as you know very well, too.

ok, a thread about the actual state of 3dgs. the screenshots posted even rely on a 3rd party plugin that does not belong to the 3dgs toolset from the start on. it's like the pretty sphere2 screenshots: the use of these enhancements is limited to users with experience, knowledge and patience, and has nothing to do with the 3dgs out-of-the-box functionality that it's always praised for.
now tell me about "being".

Please dont get DEX wrong. He uses A6 and is willing to upgrade to A7. He likes the speed-improvements.

But we all like good light and shadows as well
And the lightmapper of A7 is still experimental and has some issues.

Because of that I follow the development of ventilators plugin very carefully. I like this approach, I appreciate his great work and would like to play with it in the future.

What I am wondering is: performance of scene-management (indoor and outdoor) and the possibility to combine normalmapping with this plugin.
If this is available then I will make the next demo room to promote this tool-set from the bottom of my heart

Wetain also showed a few times how good this works with shader and even real-time lighting.

Could somebody please create a bundle of those different plugins, shaders, scripts and codes? I provide a demo and even a how-to-use-tutorial and ventilator can sell it to the public.

If that is not available then I have to strongly agree with DEX and Broozar: It is not quite easy to collect and use all these different plugins, scripts, shaders and tools.

Yes. I strongly agree with you Ambassador. I also think (maybe a bit naiv but I try at least ) that it should be a simple per-pixel multiplication with the shadowmap on top of the normal-/specular-shaded pixel.

But the problem remains. I do not have it available and I am not sure if I can solve it. So I have to buy tools without being sure that it works in the end how I like it to work.

But it must be possible like Wetain showed lately.

There are some mistakes and it is possibly bad written, but this was my try to explain how to add a shadowmap to a normalmapping shader. It can be very easy adopted to work with ventilators plugin.

http://www.coniserver.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/784064/an/0/page/4#Post784064 (There is also an english translation on my blog!)


About the topic: Those screenshots are looking great and are showing how important shadows can be. Even though it is all static, I like it a lot

@broozer

Im tired of hearing this, almost every new game comes out with some form of baked lightmapping, it is much better looking then dynamic shadowmapping which is only used on a need to use basis. Even here: http://www.cybergooch.com/tutorials/pages/lighting_rfom1.htm you see resistance fall of man uses baked lighting, because much more detail and atmosphere could be captured with it. Or is Resistance Fall of Man using behind technology standards? Because if so I'm completely confused and should probably should drop out of the gaming industry. But until someone can convince me otherwise people need to stop whining and crying about lightmapping, its an effective, efficient, easy on the machine, way to add lots of detail, were moving lighting is not required.

i like the screenshots a lot! thanks for posting them.

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I also think (maybe a bit naiv but I try at least ) that it should be a simple per-pixel multiplication with the shadowmap on top of the normal-/specular-shaded pixel.

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yes, it's that simple. i think the result won't be 100% realistic (but what is in games? ) since you would need to know which shadow belongs to which light to do correct specularity for example but this shouldn't be a big deal. you also have the same problem with dynamic shadows (like the current stencil shadows) if they just get overlaid after the whole scene got rendered already.

@lostclimate: hell, i do not condemn baking shadows. you didn't get my point. so again, in slowmo:
1. a standard acknex render looks like this: http://www.churness.com/axys/NoLightMap.jpg so this is "our 3dgs state of technology". wow.
2. vent created a plugin. it is a plugin like matt's sphere engine: it tries to add features to a6 (in other words, kill the inconveniences) by sacrificing ease of use (you need a bunch of additional programs and customise piles of code to work with it) and speed (>sphere).
3. everyone says "aaaah" when they see David's pictures. don't forget: standard acknex looks like the screen posted in 1.) what you like is a) the light and shadow rendering done in gile[s] (not 3dgs) and b) vent's plugin (not 3dgs). the scene wouldn't look close as good as it's now.
nevertheless, David has done a nice work in setting up the scene, choosing colors, textures, building the environment etc.
4. acknex is not even capable of using this 10 year old shadow baking technology at a decent level, or tell me why David couldn't light his scene with a6 onboard-tools. i do not want to talk about dynamic shadows.
5. why should shadowmapping be bad? even doom3 uses it http://seiryu.cside.to/3dfps/Doom3/doom3-shadow01.jpg
6. what makes me sad is that, even if you wanted to, you simply could let the tga-transparent textured tree throw a dynamic shadow on the ground. and, in fact, without the plugin, you couldn't even use a static one.

all in all: a work around, like vent's plugin, is barely an engine feature. i like vent's plugin as well. but it cannot console me that this should be a built-in easy to use standard engine feature. not the work of an external program and a hobby(? excuse me if it's wrong) programmer.

oh, and:

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... completely confused and should probably should drop out of the gaming industry.

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you are part of the game industy? are you really? or are you only someone who wants to be? show us your products then...