T3Ed is supporting cubemaps! Introduction & preview.

Beleg Cúthalion on 9/2/2008 at 13:44

Yeah, the first time I left the default settings to get it to work quickly (to show a friend who was in a hurry..by the way...my only friend :weird:), but then I changed the resolution and multisampling which does not affect my own mission or the original ones afaik. Not that I really know what mutlisampling does, but that's how it works for me.

Judith on 9/2/2008 at 14:15

Multisampling is just a way of antialiasing. If you turn this on in T3 you'll notice framerate drops, mostly while you look at the emitters or multiple lights.

Beleg Cúthalion on 9/2/2008 at 22:18

Is the reflection image some kind of light or emitter? From the whole scene this is the angle where you see the least of the lights of the statues, however the framerate drops if I look into it. :erg: But, don't worry, I'll put this on the test before I complain further. :p

Judith on 11/2/2008 at 16:48

Reflection is a cubemap, 6 textures put together on a cube :p That doesn't matter though, because the performance is not decreased by that. It's those lights. There are 4 omni lights there, about 10 vertex lights and no zones. Besides, it's a major rule, NOT to use multisampling while playing T3, never, ever :)

Beleg Cúthalion on 11/2/2008 at 21:10

But it did look a little better in a few scenes! :tsktsk: OK, if you mean so...

Judith on 13/2/2008 at 12:03

Here's an example how you can use a tiny cubemap as a surface definition:

(http://www.sendspace.pl/file/kEo2BmLM/)

Or see it directly:

(http://media.putfile.com/TDS---wet-stone)

The effect is a bit exaggerated, so you can see the difference.

What is most important for us here:

a) No additional performance consumption: this is not an additional specular layer, like in other engines, this is alpha channel of a diffuse texture which was already there from the beginning, but it was all white. We're just altering it :)

b) No tons of additional space needed! While other engines need the specular to be saved in other file, here we just paste it in alpha channel. Diffuse texture size remains the same. You need only a few kilobytes more for very small (64x64) "cubemap specular" definition, which is multi-purpose, because you don't create it per texture, but per surface type: wet stones, wood, shiny metal, etc.

I'm not sure about the demo, but tutorial is coming soon ;)

Flux on 13/2/2008 at 12:47

Now this is really interesting. It looks better than most current engines where the walls scream "Look at me, I can support spec maps!" where in fact it looks like somebody pissed all over the floors.

So, we are slowly realizing that we have true next-gen engine in our hands. (So what if it doesn't support hdri?) Too bad, no coder left around to hex the t3ed, only level designers left. Am I wrong?

Judith, how do you adjust the level of shininess? I.e, metal has more than stone?

Judith on 13/2/2008 at 13:04

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So, we are slowly realizing that we have true next-gen engine in our hands.

Hah, one of my colleagues said, that at first, dissapointed by T3 I tried to make missions for Thief in Oblivion (and failed, I don't like TES :p), now I'm making T3 look like Oblivion :cheeky:

Quote:

(So what if it doesn't support hdri?)

This footage is with bloom turned off, but you can always turn it on, you know ;)

Quote:

Judith, how do you adjust the level of shininess? I.e, metal has more than stone?

The shape of a texture in "specular cubemap" is different. For stones I use rectangular gradient, from grey (RGB=128,128,128) to black. The metal has circular gradient with the same values. Why not from white to black? In order not to lighten the texture and make the surface look too artificial (and shine in the dark, actually).

All will be in a tutorial soon :)