Xycaleth

Here's an interesting and useful read for artists interested in using rend2: http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice

For those interested, I have an updated version of the rend2 DLL. Before downloading, please download and install the Visual Studio 2013 Redistributable from http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=40784. Select Download and then select the vcredist_x86.exe file to download. The rend2 DLL can be found here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/874909/rd-rend2_x86.zip

Just had a look at this map. The grass is very shiny:

So a tiny bit more progress today... I've removed all but one of the possible methods used for calculating diffuse/specular so there's less to maintain. The one remaining should be the same one used by UE4, but I still need to double check I haven't broken anything. This includes the image-based lighting which makes use of the cubemaps that I've mentioned in the past. Ghoul2 models weren't making use of the IBL, but now are. I'll try and get a new build for people to play with tomorrow. As far as visuals go, it looks pretty much the same, so this is more of a code update than a visuals change

Try increasing the parallax depth. Also try removing the specular to see how it looks.

Windows 64bit can run 32 bit programs without any problems.

I was thinking more something like this: But probably a bit less cartoony looking.

I'd consider those extras at the moment, but I'm not against having them added at some point. There's still a lot of little problems as you've found that need sorting out first though. One problem with a dynamic sun as well is how do you show the sun is moving in the sky? Skyboxes are static images so there would probably need to be a way to add a procedural sky box which draws the sun and the sky.

At the moment the only rend2 coder is me and I'd gladly use the map to test things. Things are going a bit slowly at the moment as I'm reorganising my life a bit.

That page doesn't list your graphics card or your driver I think the next tab is for video/graphics card?

@@Boothand Which GPU do have, and which driver version are you using? Debugging Luke's face on my Macbook, but it doesn't happen there , but I know it happens on my PC.

Sounds like a good idea to me I'd like to see a mix of indoor and outdoor areas if anyone has time to expand on it so far. And also a variety of different materials like metals, plastics, wood, glass etc.

@@KENNITHH I'm not sure what I should be looking at in those 2 in-game screenshots? They look like they're different guns and what are the red circles showing? Also, I've just realised you might need to do some extra work to get the Ghoul2 models working properly in SoF2 with rend2. JKA's version of Ghoul2 doesn't implement all the features that are required by SoF2.

Ah yes, I forgot about that bug

What size is the texture?

Yeah sorry. I meant when you export it I forgot Gimp differentiates the two.

I've found Gimp saves jpeg images with progressive loading by default. When the jpeg save dialog box shows up, you can find the option to disable it under the Advanced (or Additional?) options drop down.

It should be exactly the same as it was before.

It makes the transparent parts see through? Not sure what kind of answer you're looking for

Epic recently released Unreal Engine 4 to the public. They now charge on a subscription basis of $20/month which gives you full access to the C++ source code as well as all the tools and editors. You have to start paying royalties when you publish your game and make money from it. I don't know how much royalties you have to pay though. Check it out at http://unrealengine.com

Which way looks better, misc_model or misc_model_static? The reason they look different is because misc_models are actually baked into the map itself. When you create a misc_model, the geometry from the MD3 are taken from the file and inserted into the map file. They become part of the map geometry. With misc_model_static, they are essentially the same as regular game-entities. The advantage of this is you reduce the map filesize - the downside is it can potentially increase loading times as you now have to load the map and the model that you wanted to show.

Hey Mace, it's good to see you're still lurking here Firstly, we can't take credit for the current features in rend2. We're actually porting this across from the ioquake3 project which @@eezstreet started off, and now I'm continuing hopefully to completion. Once all the regular JKA stuff works I'm planning to rewrite a fair amount to take it to the next step. JKA itself hasn't really been upgraded. It still only uses a single core - the aim of this is to up the renderer as far as we;re capable of doing. Having said that, I can tell you that the renderer is still very inefficient and currently it's doing too much CPU processing to feed the GPU fast enough (at least on my computer, with an i5 3750k and an AMD Radeon HD 6870). This is something that can be solved without utilising multiple cores though I believe... at some point I might look into using multiple cores but that would require a huge effort. So my aim is to get somewhere near UDK-quality in terms of detail - using models will be preferred over regular brushes as the same models can be instanced/drawn in one go, rather than having to submit multiple draws. Textures, I'm not really sure how you can have more detail other than by making it bigger I'm not sure what gloss/roughness algorithm we're using, I would have to delve into the code to find out. For dynamic shadows, I believe rend2 uses cascaded shadow maps with regular PCF filtering (judging by the weird edge patterns I've seen). The shadows are kind of buggy so they need improvement. I don't think RTW is used by many (any?) games at the moment, so I'd prefer to go with something that's proven to work well. Textures and lightmaps are pretty much the same. Rend2 attempts to pack lightmaps into a texture atlas, but nothing like that happens with regular textures - do games still do this? I plan to add support for .dds textures in the future to provide a fast path for texture loading. I'm still not decided as to what I want to do with lightmaps. Shader models don't really apply to OpenGL but I can tell you that rend2 use features roughly equivalent to those found in DX10. There's still a long way to go, and as you might have seen from the last few pages of the thread there's still a lot of teething issues. Hopefully all of this work will be worth it in the end though Hopefully that answers all of your questions, @@MaceMadunusus!

Don't use a blend func for the specular map stage and see how it is.

How are you adding it to the misc_model/misc_model_static? I'm not sure still. Are you using any other texture maps like parallax or normal maps?

If you use the q3gl2_sun keyword, then the sky will cast real-time shadows. You'll need to set r_sunlightMode 1 and r_depthPress 1, both of which are a bit buggy I'm not sure about shadows from regular lights just yet. Keep in mind it's all very WIP.