Tiens on 9/12/2012 at 12:54
[CENTER]AMBIENT VERTEX LIGHTS and non-transparent STATIC MESHES:[/CENTER]Let me put your attention to one more interesting visual effect - the way, how Ambient Vertex Lights illuminates Static Meshes covered with non-transparent textures. It creates an illusion, that the texture is shining by itself. I know, that
Judith had a few posts about it somewhere, but any useful information has already been buried under tons of flooding and the search gave me nothing. Sorry for re-posting, but I think, this info worth it, because people still asking me about it.
As far as I remember,
Judith was the first one, who used this trick in his mission. The result was stunning:
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Inline Image:
http://darkfate.ru/view/simple/files/fan-missions/thief3/cabal/heart_of_the_deal/screenshots/screen001.jpg[/CENTER]
I also copied this idea for my own fountains:
[CENTER]
Inline Image:
http://darkfate.ru/view/details/files/projects/cabal/screenshots/CABAL_FF_003.jpg[/CENTER]
HOW TO MAKE IT:Special feature of Ambient Vertex Light is, that it doesn't really matter, where exactly the light source is placed, relative to the position of the static mesh. The light will illuminate the mesh evenly anyway. In other words, you can place the light INSIDE the mesh, and you'll get this:
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Inline Image:
http://i50.tinypic.com/2zp6qv8.jpg[/CENTER]
To turn this effect on, just go to the light source's properties and set
Lighting - Flesh Light Type = FL_AmbientVertex. Also, if you want to illuminate only your mesh and nothing else around, set
Lighting - Light Shape - Light Radius to some very small amount: 10 or 16 or something like that, depending on the size of your static mesh. Example:
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Inline Image:
http://i47.tinypic.com/34j2mgg.jpg[/CENTER]
Judith on 12/12/2012 at 18:44
Good catch Tiens, I'm not sure if anyone has ever written the tutorial for that before.
I think I used this effect for the first time in the cubemap reflection demo (
http://youtu.be/q52q1Z8RjMk) God, the camera movement is awful in this one... ;)
I guess it could be useful in other circumstances, e.g. some subtle lightning can bring player's attention to gameplay-important objects that are placed in a complete darkness and might be too hard to spot otherwise.
Good thing about this light is that it's really cheap in terms of performance. AFAIR it's not dynamic like omni or spot lights, it won't generate any realtime shadows and it doesn't eat up your CPU & GPU processing power that much. It only looks weird on BSP and large surfaces without any divisions or tesselation.
Beleg Cúthalion on 13/12/2012 at 09:04
Still, str8g8 used them to carefully illuminate certain areas of the architecture (and I think you can find that in OMs as well). It's a good way to avoid greyish tint or other lighting issues that make the scenery appear less vivid and attractive.
Tiens on 14/12/2012 at 07:46
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
Still,
str8g8 used them to carefully illuminate certain areas of the architecture...
, you don't get the right idea. Almost everyone used this type of light for illuminating areas, but missions before
Judith's one (even OMs) didn't show any "shining mesh", that was made this way. That's why I wanted to emphasize the meaning of this pretty decorative trick.
Beleg Cúthalion on 14/12/2012 at 09:06
Yeah, I know that, I was just referring to Judith's ideas about general illumination aspects. Especially I cannot remember having weird effects on BSP or larger SMs, but who knows...
