Also you could bake the AO / LM into an second UV Layer...

Managed to build a relatively fast (as fast a the hexagonal filter of same size) separable disc shaped filter.
I put a small demo together showing the hex and disc filter in action:


Demo Download

The different kernels of the filter passes:


It requires one more pass with one more sample than the hex version to blur out the resulting pattern, but the hex filter requires one additional RT.

This is sort of a Bokeh filter, right? This is soooooo cool!!! I wonder if it possible to have a larger blur?

Actually, Bokeh is just the result of blurring image parts with high brightness contrast using the right kind of filter kernel (f.i. disc or hex, gaussian wont work->too soft).
HDR DoF is the usual application. Building larger kernels isn´t such a prob with the hex filter since it has linear complexity. Adding additional passes with the right sampling offsets can give you quite a large radius.
But I´m not sure in how far this works well for the disk kernel.
A common technique is to render sprites to achieve the bokeh effect where it is necessary. This way you can have quite large, arbitrarily formed results.

I wondered, because corresponding to your original image (the 2px particles), there is no blurry mish-mash like with regular gauss- or box-blurs. I'm just asking, because in the long run I'm looking for better and faster alternative to blur my SSAO images, the better if the kernel is dynamically sizeable

I think I have a run at the moment; instead of playing Skyrim I coded a contour tracing and region segmentation algorithm in Lite-C. Even though I didn't fought against dragons and took some Skoma, it was quiet fun, too:



The changing color in the contour image indicates the order of contour points, stored in a linked list. It can handle degenerated cases, too (1px lines).

If you weight all samples equally for your box-blur, you will achieve the bokeh effect too...but quads are usually not perceived as aesthetic as hexagons or discs for this case.

What applications do you have in mind for your shown algorithm?

@Hummel: That`s amazing. (Very nice particle effect, too)

Finally exported a first version of my new level to Gamestudio. Still a WIP. Some sprite trees in the background have to be replaced, normal mapping on the stones is missing and the water needs some color adjustments and a better coastmap.

+ HDR / no PSSM



+ HDR / no PSSM



+ HDR / + PSSM



+ HDR / + PSSM



+ HDR / + PSSM (Problems with grass )



no HDR / no PSSM

@Rondidon :
you are becoming a great level designer and creator
HDR + PPSM looks great !
The trees shadows are done from where ? it is shadow on trees, texture projector or some other shader ?

The trees are split into two different meshes. The leaves are animated and use an alpha test material and the trunks are the standard gouraud-shaded "mat_model" material with a custom ambient lighting formula. There`s nothing special about it . For the future I`m planning to use some normalmapping.


Thanks a lot. I`m glad you like it.

I am going to extraxt pixels from a map that belong to harbour areas and auto-generate meshes for it. After getting to know these pixels, the next logical step to take is to get to know how many regions the binary image has and what contours each region has. Then, I'll filter the contours and place walls at the water-sides of the harbour areas and generate meshes for the floor parts.



This looks really cool, is this a portfolio project or work for a client?