Hi,

I was wondering what you mean with lightmap styles. Can you please explain what this feature is supposed to do?

Second, I wanted to ask you if you plan to add ambient occlusion to the map compiler in the future?

I also don't know what I mean with lightmap styles. Can you give a hint?

Nor do I know for what you'll need ambient occlusion in a map compiler. It's a realtime postprocessing algorithm. Can you give me another hint?

Lightmap styles:
http://manual.3dgamestudio.net/forecast.htm


Edit: I think I get it, look here about lightmap styles:
http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Advanced_Lightmapping.shtml

AO: I think he means baked, static AO, not dynamic AO.

Sorry, I thought you were writing the forecast... ;-) So, after reminding you, is the page fogman refered to is that stuff you are intending to add to the compiler?

Yeah, I am looking forward to bake ambient occlusion into my maps. You added radiosity to the map compiler, so, I thought that adding AO to it is not much more difficult than radiosity.

SSAO is indeed a realtime shading algorithm - so, if you won't intend to add AO to the compiler (but that would be a killer feature, just my oppinion), would you please add a SSAO post processing shader to the shader library (another killer feature :-)). The whitepaper from Crytek explains SSAO very well...

Baked AO would be indeed a nice feature since SSAO can not simulate wide range AO when the viewer is close to the geometry.

I plan to add SSAO to my lighting solution I´m currently developing but there are more basic features with higher priority I´ve to add first.

We do not plan baked AO.

As to the lightmap styles, I have now been informed what I meant: Alexej wants to implement a way to store sets of static light settings. So you can switch the style of a static light, f.i. from bright to dark, and the lightmaps are then swapped accordingly.

Too bad.
Is the development effort that high? I thought the dev basis is given since radiosity is already implemented?

AO would be a great feature, because there is no way to implement it by script. And additionally it adds a lot of look to the scene. So this would be a feature request from my side and also a good reason for purchasing A8

The development of this feature shouldn't take too much time, because it's just random tracing of rays - not even bouncing or something complicated involved...

AO would really be a great addition, especially as it would also hide some light bleeding...

Baked AO would be fantastic. Even if we used completely dynamic shadows, baking AO would add a lot to scenes.

Jibb