Julzmighty: Just read my response. There are no stencil shadows without "perspective". How to activate shadows and light sources is described in the manual.

I think the problem with our stencil shadows is: Most users use them with the sun as a light source and therefore do not see the expected perspective shadows. The influence of a nearby dynamic light is the only chance to create interesting and realistic perspective stencil shadows in an indoor environment.

they haven't always had perspective with dynamic light sources have they? i was never aware of a change, and from other peoples' discussions i was always under the impression it was always orthographic.

i remember a discussion regarding a video of another game where a little vampire or something was casting a huge shadow on the wall, and the differences between their system and gs's were discussed.

julz

actually, i agree that we need more shader support, meaning some in engine shaders, instead of having to write all of them in dx (which is slower, because it has to compile the shader every frame, meaning it isn't real shader support, just dx) in all honesty it would be great to have normal mapping and bloom and all these older shaders coded into the engine itself, they would be faster that way, and while on the topic, we need a new lighting engine, the lighting isn't all that great.....

however this being said, this engine was at a great price and this forum is very helpful, so you get what you paid for

@JulzMighty: I was the one that brought up that game/scene with the huge shadow on the wall. It was a PSP game called Death Jr. If this kind of huge shadow effect can be achieved without a shader, then that would be best, but I fear this may not be possible.

Quote:

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Quote:

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(...) The influence of a nearby dynamic light is the only chance to create interesting and realistic perspective stencil shadows in an indoor environment.

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Maybe this isn't popular, because only ONE light entity casts such a shadow. If an entity could have more than one stencil shadow and the shadows are faded away depending on the lightsource intensity and distance to it, heck, I would use it more than very often.

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I have some lines in my dynamic light function which will fade the shadow depending on distance from the light. The problem with it is that it will fade EVERY shadow because of the nature of stencil shadows. It also only works with one light only, but Error said there were possible ways to get around this. Search for the thread in Scripting. Here's the code...these two lines go before my dynamic light while loop:

Code:

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my.skill11 = 100*pow(my.minDist,4)/(pow(my.maxDist,2)-pow(my.minDist,2)) + 100*pow(my.minDist,2);
my.skill12 = -100*pow(my.minDist,2)/(pow(my.maxDist,2)-pow(my.minDist,2));

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This line will go somewhere near the end of the while loop:

Code:

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mat_shadow.alpha = my.skill11 / (clamp(vec_dist(my.x,player.x), my.minDist, my.maxDist) * clamp(vec_dist(my.x, player.x),my.minDist,my.maxDist)) + my.skill12;  

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You'll need either a VAR or DEFINE for minDist and maxDist. These are the values that will determine the behavior of the fading. It's a bit tricky, and I don't fully understand it, yet it works find once I get the proper values for a level.

I found an interesting article from Crytek / Siggraph 2007. It describes
shaders and shading, Variance Shadow Maps, Real-Time Ambient Maps,
Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion, different LOD-systems.

I hope this helps to get some ideas for better shadows and shading:

PDF-article from Crytek

The references in this article look very valueable as well.

well for one thing, why can't we use a diffuse map for lighting on our models anyway, or why isn't the light coded to do this anyway? it seems like a6 kept a5's lighting and rendering engine with some minimal improvements. In all honesty before all the shaders and stuff can be added, we need a new rendering engine altogether, as it is the rendering engine is.....ok....but of course i only have a6.5, but even then, the rendering engine is a bit outdated, now an example of my two favorite rendering engines are the serious engine and the unreal engine, unreal being the best, because both are good at making out huge terrains and outdoor environments, i think it's about time to start moving 3dgs in this direction, considering it's popularity has really grown over the years, and way more people are starting to get it, originally it was for casual games, and the engine is perfect for them, but now people are trying good fps', horror games, and other games that require a better render engine.

Actually, i love 3DGS and it's support, if all the bugs were worked out, and the rendering engine was redone along with shaders, and a new lighting engine, it would be one of the best, because of the huge amount of support that you don't get with most engines...

Ok, Manslayer101 how much is the license price on serious engine and any of the unreal engines counting 1,2,3? Waaay more than what gamestudio does and thus they are alot more complex and can of course tackle more punish. =/