I just purchased a Wacom Intuos3 6x8 graphics tablet, and I anxiously await it's arrival sometime this week. I should be here by Thursday or Friday. I also purchased ArtRage 2 which is compatible with the tablet, and it's basically the "poor man's" Project Dogwaffle." I'll eventually get PD Pro 4.1, too but me Grimlock will upgrade to A7 Pro before I do that. I just about have all that I need to begin creating the physical backgrounds and layers for my 2.75D levels.
I've gained an interest in shaders here lately, but I'm more interested in 2.0 only since there is more standardization than with the old 1.x versions. I'm not quite sure how I'd apply these to this 2.75D style, but I'm interested in:
01. A toon shader so that my characters have a certain look about them. I'm not sure if I still want to stick with this look or keep it the way it is without it.
02. A projection shader for cool shadows effects
03. Per pixel lighting and dynamic shadowmapping for an environment with full dynamic shadows and proper cool, Noir lighting effects.
Take a look at this Alan Wake tech demo clip. The interior part with the cool lighting with the fan and ceiling lights is what I'm interested in. There's also an Unreal3 lighting demo (I think it's Unreal3) that showcases the kind of atmospheric lighting effects I'm interested in. I'll post it when I find it:
I'm also in need of a way to place shadows on either invisible surfaces or none flaged ones (preferably invisible). jcl says it's possible. Here's my request thread and jcl's "how-to" quote from another thread:
- Shadows on invisible models should be possible by using nontransparent models with an FFP effect that renders only into the z buffer, but nothing to the screen buffer. I haven't tried it, though.
Lastly, I'm toying with the idea of throwing out full realtime 3D characters all together and featuring ALL 2D sprite based characters. They would still be based on my 3D characters I've been paying for, of course. I'd have to render out ALOT of different variants of the main character so he will look right under certain lighting conditions. If he's near a dynamic light, then he has to be lit right. If he's not standing near near light, he can just be "normal" with no highlighting. I'd stick with engine ambient methods to take care of his global shading. This kind of technique would be best served for a point and click gameplay style, so LarryLaffer, if you're reading this, you'd better get to work on those enhancements to Intense Pathfinding........or else. LOL. j/k
My User Contributions master list - my initial post links are down but scroll down page to find list to active links
