Interesting Shadows

[Madox58]

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n12/privateer_2006/Shadows.jpg

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n12/privateer_2006/Dynamic_Shadows.jpg
;)

[Sag75]

so, in GWX3.0 we will see shadows?? :o



:up:

[Contact]

Looks good, I knew there is something missing in the game, but could not tell what :)

Not putting lots of hopes to see this included in GWX 3, but there's 30% probability that I'm wrong :lol:

[onelifecrisis]

:o

Are they dynamic?

[UberTorpedo]

Waahhooooo!!! :D:D:D

:rock::rock::rock::rock:

[Task Force]

These look veary good privateer and crew.:up:

[piri_reis]

:o

Are they dynamic?

Seems like they are!! :huh: :rock:

[Madox58]

:o

Are they dynamic?

Yes.
They are Dynamic Shadows.
They're currently enabled on my SH3 1.4 test install.

[onelifecrisis]

:o

Are they dynamic?

Yes.
They are Dynamic Shadows.
They're currently enabled on my SH3 1.4 test install.

:o :o :o

GIMME
GIMME GIMME GIMME
NOW!
GIMME NOW!
I WANT IT NOW!

[Alex]

:hmm: :smug: !

[Madox58]

:o

Are they dynamic?

Yes.
They are Dynamic Shadows.
They're currently enabled on my SH3 1.4 test install.

:o :o :o

GIMME
GIMME GIMME GIMME
NOW!
GIMME NOW!
I WANT IT NOW!

PM sent.
:up:

[Sag75]

..intercepted! :ping:

:|\\

[Madox58]

Dynamic Shadows are nothing new for SH3.
They were in version 1.0
And are still in version 1.4
Not sure which patch disabled them.

They need alot of work.
Best person I can think of to look at this with me?
onelifecrisis
:rock:

[onelifecrisis]

I'm all over it!
http://static.bethsoft.com/bgs/style_emoticons/default/toughninja.gif





















http://static.bethsoft.com/bgs/style_emoticons/default/comp26.gif

[Kpt. Lehmann]

I'm all over it!
http://static.bethsoft.com/bgs/style_emoticons/default/toughninja.gif



That ROXX!!!

Looks like OLC is on a MISSION again! :rock: :arrgh!:

[richardphat]

No wonder why he always comes out after with good stuff............:shifty:

[Madox58]

To put this into perspective..................

Version 1.0 of SH3 had dynamic shadows.
I never played that version to see them.
As a fact?

I was messing around and got them working last nite!!
So NO!
They will not be in GWX 3.0

Had I done this 2 weeks ago?
They would still not be in 3.0

For very simple reasons.

1.
Stock units look mostly OK as they were built with DS in mind.

2.
They need ALOT of work when it comes to the player Subs and Crew.

3.
Nearly all the units built by others are messed up as far as shadow objects.
Anyone wonder what the SHD_whatever.obj does?
I can show you now!!

4.
It has not been tested as to FPS impact at this point.
(I only stumbled on this last nite!!)


So.
What I am doing is working with OLC for a possible FUTURE release.
This may mean disableing shadows for some units
and adjusting others.
I just figured this out last nite, OLC just now has the info.
Time Maties, Time will tell!
:up:

[Wolfehunter]

May I suggest for now just work on the players sub first. If I understand your post above correctly. This would be a great start.:rock:

[Madox58]

There is a mountain of work to look at.
The Dynamic Shadows were disabled
long before modders got the hang of the files.

Now that They can be enabled?
We need to figure out what to do to adjust and fix things.

I have no doubt Modders can do this!
But it's an all or nothing deal once enabled!

We have 1 whole day into this!!
Time is needed.

[Anvart]

...
They need ALOT of work when it comes to the player Subs and Crew.
...

Yeah ...
Disgusting effect on crew faces and bodies has forced me to disable Dynamic Shadows still in 1 version ...
May be ... reason in BumpMap controller ...

...
4.
It has not been tested as to FPS impact at this point.
...
:hmm:
In simple scenes (as an observer) i have not noticed serious decrease in FPS ...

[Hitman]

Aye, I remember in one of the early versions of SH3 having activated them in the ini file by marking Dynamicshadows=Yes but they looked horrible and in lime green colour :hmm: Completely forgot about them later, but once I tried again it did not work so I thought may be it was a matter of my new video card.

Missing shadows is one of those subtle things you don't notice at first glance in SH3, but they add so much to realism/inmersion in any 3D game that once you compare the game with and without them you would never be able to return to the no-shadows version.

I take it you woul dneed to rework ALL objetcs and object parts to enable them correctly? A huge amount of work, not sure if worth it if the GWX team moves fully into GWX for SH4.

[Madox58]

The Shadows stuff had to be put aside for a short time.

But now that time is free to work on them?
I'm ready to go!
When OLC gets home?
He's ready to.

I have the utmost faith that the old issues can be solved.
One reason they were never solved was that they were disabled
before the modders really understood the files and such.

I have enabled them in 2 ways.

Now some will say "Tell us how"
Others will say "You're withholding information!"

All I can say is,
NO.
Damned straight I am!

And all for a reason!
So get over it and let us work on this!
:lol:

I'll get a nice video out in the next few days.
:up:

[rik007]

All I can hope is that one of the two alternative methods is easy to implement. I'm very curious to see the results.

[IFRT-WHUFC]

Just wondering if there was any news on the progress of the shadows?

thanks
Rick

[bigboywooly]

Just wondering if there was any news on the progress of the shadows?

thanks
Rick

Privateer had a major system failure which meant complete reinstall

[LordNeuro"Serbia"]

Hope the system failure did not cause u loose importent data. Theat man have a treshure in his comp. Hope he will get in work soon.

[magicsub2]

ah........so thats what is missing from sh3, god dammit ubi gave us an unfinished game!

[TheDarkWraith]

I saw this and took a huge interest in it since it seems it's possible to have shadows. As I have not been able to duplicate Privateer's results (yet) I have though come up with another type of shadow - a shadow on the object's side that doesn't have direct sunlight on it and partial shading from obscured light. In the fist screenie below you'll see the left side of the VIIb at sunset. You can tell that everything is lit normally due to the sunlight (though there is some partial shading on the 88mm gun base - mouse arrow):
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/non_shadow_side_88mm.jpg

now when I go to the other side notice how the base of the 88mm gun is black (where the mouse arrow is) and some other items of the 88mm gun - it's shadowed! Nothing else is shadowed because I was only focusing a couple of the items of the 88mm to see if it was feasible or not. Now I will dig deeper into this. For you nay sayers, look at the entire gun. Notice how other parts aren't black and look at the side of the Turm - it's not black.
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shadowed_side_88mm.jpg

it's unbelievably simple once you've seen and know how it works. You need a light source at the top of your root tree (DynamicShadow controller) that shines the light (ambient light) to make the shadow. The child nodes of this root node (containing the light source) have to contain an SHD_xxx node AND that SHD_xxxx node has to have a DynamicShadowCast controller attached to it to make shadows. Simple (although it took me 10 hours today to just figure this out!) Unlike some others I believe in sharing information that I find. The more heads looking into this the better IMO (I thought the attitude had changed around here - I see nothing ever changes as always).

[Task Force]

Veary nice finds privateer/Racerboy.:yeah:

[rascal101]

I'm very interested in this please keep investigating and keep us informed, also curious if any one knows how to improve glare, ie when light hits a metal surfacew there is a reflected glare, would be more pronounced on wet surfaces. does any one think this can be improved or modded?

[TheDarkWraith]

I'm very interested in this please keep investigating and keep us informed, also curious if any one knows how to improve glare, ie when light hits a metal surfacew there is a reflected glare, would be more pronounced on wet surfaces. does any one think this can be improved or modded?

play with the specular. If you're going for a desired effect for one particular item then you'll need to create a new 2/0 node for it.

Well I took what I found above and applied it to the hull and turm of the VIIb and it's very interesting what came about from it. The shading of light is very pronounced and profound - I like it! :D And it hasn't even been tweaked yet, this was just slapped together to see how it would appear in game.

left side:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/7b_shd_left.jpg

camera moved over to right side:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/7b_shd_right.jpg

okay played enough today. I'm tired :yawn:
Maybe Privateer will let us know what he did and we can get some very interesting effects. If not, in time I'll figure it out.

[Anvart]

RB, your pics ... "Ìíîãî øóìà èç íè÷åãî" ...
Speech about shadow, not illumination ...

[TheDarkWraith]

RB, your pics ... "Ìíîãî øóìà èç íè÷åãî" ...
Speech about shadow, not illumination ...

Hey Anvart, I have no clue what you said let alone do I really care. But let me pose this question to you....why not work with me on this? I know you're good with hex editing as I am. Oh, and this should put your whatever you said above to rest....
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadow_left.jpg

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadow_right.jpg

By replacing the light source from ambient to sunlight I was able to have the object cast shadows onto itself. Now I just have to have it project those shadows onto other objects.....

[Reece]

Now I just have to have it project those shadows onto other objects.....Is that all!!:D
BTW, G'day.:salute:

[Uber Gruber]

Brillianty stuff RacerBoy and a big thumbs up to your open attitude, its a refreshing thing to have.

Say NO to fuddy duddy modders, say YES to Glasnost!

:yeah:

[Weiss Pinguin]

Wow, looking forward to this, hopefully my rig can take it. :arrgh!:

[TheDarkWraith]

You might be waiting awhile. I understand how to make it work on the 88mm gun but I don't fully understand why it works. Also I have not been able to make it cast those shadows onto other objects.
I've been trying to make other objects cast shadows onto themselves and haven't had much luck yet :-?
So today's project is picking the 88mm completely apart, node by node, playing node isolation and node hiding to try and fully understand why it works on the 88mm.
I've been hoping Privateer might chime in since it appears he's obviously figured out how to cast shadows onto other objects. Maybe even Anvart might take an interest and dive into the files with his hex editor and discover something?
The 88mm casting shadows onto itself didn't even make my laptop (2.0 GHz 8600 GeGorce) flinch. It doesn't appear to use much processing power to make them. The shadow is basically a reflection but instead of on water it's on the object.
Time to get busy.

[tater]

It can't be as trivial as setting UseObjectVisibility = False to "True" in the DynamicShadowCast controller, right?

I lack the will to stick a SH3 gun on something to try it (as simple as that is, I'm feeling lazy right now).

[TheDarkWraith]

It can't be as trivial as setting UseObjectVisibility = False to "True" in the DynamicShadowCast controller, right?

I lack the will to stick a SH3 gun on something to try it (as simple as that is, I'm feeling lazy right now).

I'm hoping to discover what the UseObjectVisibility actually does (and how to use it). Currently I have them all disabled (0x00) to make the shadows on the 88mm. I tried setting that to true (0x01) which killed the shadow (now the question is why?)

[Jaeger]

Brillianty stuff RacerBoy and a big thumbs up to your open attitude, its a refreshing thing to have.

Say NO to fuddy duddy modders, say YES to Glasnost!

:yeah:

absolutely correct. :rock: i hope privateer will read this and enjoy the process for the best result. more brains working on the same prob can find more ways...

[TheDarkWraith]

this is like a living document of my tearing the 88mm deckgun apart in the GUNS_SUB.dat file:

well here's observation #1: before I went to bed last night shadows were working on the 88mm. I wake up this morning and shadows don't work :eek: :timeout: After pulling my hair out for a couple of hours I walked away from the computer and thought about what I did right before I went to bed. Then it occured to me that I deleted a file from the \SilentHunterIII directory.....that file was SH3Controllers.ACT and renamed the backup copy of it to it's original name. Why does this matter? Here's why:

SH3 version 1's SH3Controllers.ACT file is 148kb. SH3 version 1.4b's SH3Controllers.ACT file is 144kb. When you look at both using a hex editor you see that the DynamicShadows render controller was removed from the 1.4b version. So step #1 in getting shadows to work is you have to use SH3 1.0's SH3Controllers.ACT file. :|\\

observation #2: I was thinking that a WaterReflection controller might need to be attached to them to make it work (since the 88mm had some WaterReflection controllers in it and in the 3D world you make 'projections' of the object to cast shadows of it and the WaterReflection is a type of projection) but no. I removed all the WaterReflection controllers and still got wonderful shadows:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadows.jpg

you can see the wheels and the knobs of the wheels being reflected along with the harnesses on the 88mm itself :D I'll keep picking it apart.

observation #3: where the DynamicShadow light source is placed matters. Placing it at the root node (one with no 3D model ID and no parent ID) will not produce shadows. It has to be placed on a node with a 3D model AND a parent ID. I tried adding a dummy node to the root so that the dummy node had a parent ID to see if it would work - nope. It appears it needs a 3D model with the light source. Now whether it will work on a node with a 3D model ID and no parent ID is something to try. The light source comes from the \data\scene.DAT file.

From SH3 v1.0 SH3Controllers.ACT file:
DynamicShadow.......DynamicShadow Render Controller. The entire sub hierarchy will receive shadow from all objects with DynamicShadowCast user data (NOT DRAWLIST & FREE) in this sub hierarchy. d..lG...G..`G...G...G..NG..Light...object..Paralle l light which will cast shadow... ... a...E...E...E...c..HG..BG..<G...\DynamicShadow.cpp

I'm thinking 'NOT FREE' means no parent ID and/or no 3D model ID. 'NOT DRAWLIST' has me stumped.

observation #4: the node the DynamicShadow light source is attached to DOES NOT need an SHD_ node attached to it. Ok, this makes sense now. Trying to attach the DynamicShadow light source to the root node with no 3D model will have it trying to projects shadows onto nothing. Once I moved it to the beginning node with a 3D model in the 88mm gun (the base or copil) then it had a place to cast shadows onto (the base or copil and the hierarchy under it). An SHD node was not needed for this base (or copil) because this is where the shadows are being projected onto (the entire hierarchy of copil). Well that puts observation #3 partially to rest.

observation #5: using different light sources produces different effects or none at all. Using ambient light gives blocky, black shadows (of different shades depending on light) over the entire object surface (you can't tell what's being shadowed), using sunlight for the light source gives the results above in the screenie, using sun_reflection as the light source gives no shadows. Have to try making my own light source and figure out how this works.

observation #6: everything under copil that is wanting to be shadowed has to have (appears as of now) an SHD type node with a DynamicShadowCast controller attached to that SHD node. Time to tear this apart and see how it works.
as I suspected it works. Removed the SHD_88mm_UDeck_Gun_High_Base node (along with it's DynamicShadowCast node) and here's what I got (just the shadowing from the main gun body):
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadows_2.jpg

From SH3 v1.0 SH3Controllers.ACT file:
DynamicShadowCast...DynamicShadowCast User Data.....UseObjectVisibility.Use the object visibility for shadow.... ....b...E...E...E...b..HG..BG..<G...T...b...b...E...E.. c..`c...F...F..e:\ubi_projects\silenthunter_root\s ilenthunter3\src\sh3controllers\DynamicShadow

now to determine the different combinations (if any besides the known) that will bring back the missing shadows that I removed. Time to play.

Gave 88mm_UDeck_Gun_High_Base node:
- just SHD node - buzzer
- just DynamicShadowCast with UseObjectVisibility set to 0x0 - buzzer
- just DynamicShadowCast with UseObjectVisibility set to 0x1 - buzzer
- SHD node and DynamicShadowCast node with UseObjectVisibility set to 0x0 - buzzer
- SHD node and DynamicShadowCast node with UseObjectVisibility set to 0x1 - buzzer
- SHD node with DynamicShadowCast node attached to it with UseObjectVisibility set to 0x1 - buzzer
- SHD node with DynamicShadowCast node attached to it with UseObjectVisibility set to 0x0 - ding ding winner!! (as I expected)

now to try and make another gun cast shadows onto itself. 20mm single looks like a good one...

[robbythesub]

Hi Guys

Great to know that you are working on such a necessary and refreshing update- just to say that I very much appreciate your efforts and will watch this very closely!

Good luck :arrgh!:

[UberTorpedo]

Racerboy

Privateer stated (back in post 13) that they were still in version 1.4 but that there were "other" problems involved??:doh:
I hope somebody can make it work :up:
This would be spectacular!

Dynamic Shadows are nothing new for SH3.
They were in version 1.0
And are still in version 1.4
Not sure which patch disabled them.


cheers

[TheDarkWraith]

that is a correct statement, DynamicShadows are in 1.4b BUT they are disabled because they removed DynamicShadows from the SH3Controllers.ACT file (the controllers file) in 1.4b. There are other reasons they are disabled (like missing light sources for one). From my post ealier I lost my shadows when I used the 1.4b SH3Controllers.ACT file.
Now I have not been able to duplicate Privateer's casting shadows onto other objects. Maybe he has found something else here than I have.

[TheDarkWraith]

ok I added what was missing to the 88mm deckgun to get good looking shadows. I'm not finished with ensuring it's totally correct (SHD nodes need all their 3D models verified for one) but here's a working example for you all to view and see how it looks on your computer (SH3 v1.0 SH3Controllers.ACT included in it):

http://rapidshare.com/files/199386580/SHD_testing.7z.html

just unzip to MODS folder. Enable 'SHD_testing' and then run the single mission 'SHD_testing'. Let me know what you think so far.

Note: all reflections have been stripped out of this one for the 88mm. I needed a base to work from.

Rapidshare says only 10 people get to download this. Get it while it's hot :DL

[UberTorpedo]

EXECELLENTE!:yeah:

I recommend everyone try this mission. Watching it in rolling seas is exquisite.:smug:
Go for it racerboy:up:

cheers

http://i442.photobucket.com/albums/qq145/UberTorpedo/racerboy88.jpg

[TheDarkWraith]

EXECELLENTE!:yeah:

I recommend everyone try this mission. Watching it in rolling seas is exquisite.:smug:
Go for it racerboy:up:

I'm glad to know it works on someone else's rig other than mine. That makes me feel good. Now I just have to figure out how to make it cast those shadows onto other objects :damn:

On a lighter note I was able to duplicate this onto the 20mm Single UFlak. This tells me my thinking from some posts back is correct when I took the 88mm apart! I didn't do all of the 20mm just a quick part to see if it would work.

The more I look at how this is done and the more I think about it, Privateer must have hard-coded these guns to the ships to make it cast shadows onto the ship (other than using the cfg# nodes). Hmm, something I'll have to try to see if it even works.
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/20mmSingle_shadow.jpg

[rascal101]

This potential mod seems to be going very well, I notice the shadows for the gun but what about the crew - can this also be modded too?

EXECELLENTE!:yeah:

I recommend everyone try this mission. Watching it in rolling seas is exquisite.:smug:
Go for it racerboy:up:

I'm glad to know it works on someone else's rig other than mine. That makes me feel good. Now I just have to figure out how to make it cast those shadows onto other objects :damn:

On a lighter note I was able to duplicate this onto the 20mm Single UFlak. This tells me my thinking from some posts back is correct when I took the 88mm apart! I didn't do all of the 20mm just a quick part to see if it would work.

The more I look at how this is done and the more I think about it, Privateer must have hard-coded these guns to the ships to make it cast shadows onto the ship (other than using the cfg# nodes). Hmm, something I'll have to try to see if it even works.
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/20mmSingle_shadow.jpg

[Kar]

This mod brings at least 100% more atmosphere to the game !! :rock:
I wish that this will be applied on whole sub and crew.

http://www.smrzicebest.wz.cz/11.jpg
http://www.smrzicebest.wz.cz/10.jpg
http://www.smrzicebest.wz.cz/9.jpg

[Weiss Pinguin]

Personally I wouldn't mind if it was just on the ship, or maybe just the crew. Too many objects and I fear my machine will have a brainfart when I try this mod. :O:

[Anvart]

RB, your pics ... "Много шума из ничего" ...
Speech about shadow, not illumination ...

Hey Anvart, I have no clue what you said let alone do I really care. But let me pose this question to you....why not work with me on this? I know you're good with hex editing as I am. Oh, and this should put your whatever you said above to rest....
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadow_left.jpg

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadow_right.jpg

By replacing the light source from ambient to sunlight I was able to have the object cast shadows onto itself. Now I just have to have it project those shadows onto other objects.....
OK. Now i see ...
I do not see necessity of my participation in this work (SH3 and SH4 are not interesting for me for a long time) ...
You will make all well and correctly, i think ...
Good luck.

[Anvart]

Brillianty stuff RacerBoy and a big thumbs up to your open attitude, its a refreshing thing to have.

Say NO to fuddy duddy modders, say YES to Glasnost!

:yeah:

absolutely correct. :rock: i hope privateer will read this and enjoy the process for the best result. more brains working on the same prob can find more ways...
I do not think so ...
Huge pleasure and cafe for modder to make all own head and hands ...

[Anvart]

...
observation #4: the node the DynamicShadow light source is attached to DOES NOT need an SHD_ node attached to it.
...

The shadow model (as well as reflective model) is the simplified model ... and it is necessary that FPS did not decrease strongly ...

[Anvart]

Just wondering if there was any news on the progress of the shadows?

thanks
Rick

Privateer had a major system failure which meant complete reinstall
I sympathise with him ...
One month ago i too have casually removed my folder "..\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005" both all my projects and executed codes by theme SH 3...4 "íàêðûëèñü ìåäíûì òàçîì" (russian slang) ... :har:

[Awful Smutje]

Just wondering if there was any news on the progress of the shadows?

thanks
Rick
Privateer had a major system failure which meant complete reinstall I sympathise with him ...
One month ago i too have casually removed my folder "..\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005" both all my projects and executed codes by theme SH 3...4 "íàêðûëèñü ìåäíûì òàçîì" (russian slang) ... :har:


I don't know, if there is something like this for Vista, but you can use Microsoft's "TweakUI" of the "Powertoys for Windows XP" to move your "My Documents" folder to another partition. After a system crash and reinstall of Windows, just reinstall powertoys and change the "My Documents" folder to the directory on the other partition. This saved many hairs on my head... ;)

[TheDarkWraith]

Brillianty stuff RacerBoy and a big thumbs up to your open attitude, its a refreshing thing to have.

Say NO to fuddy duddy modders, say YES to Glasnost!

:yeah:

absolutely correct. :rock: i hope privateer will read this and enjoy the process for the best result. more brains working on the same prob can find more ways...
I do not think so ...
Huge pleasure and cafe for modder to make all own head and hands ...


Anvart,

What you are referring to is 'god complex' or 'the peter principle'. I work with those kind of people day after day and they piss me off to no end. I either try to constantly put them in their place or make their life a living hell.
Yes, there is a certain recognition and personal pride that comes with being the first to discover something. But when you let that go to your head then you have issues.
I made a discovery, I shared it with everyone in hopes someone will see something I've missed or overlooked. I'd get more pleasure seeing a discovery grow and being used by others than just trying to figure it out myself. So Anvart anything you can find on this please share. This would bring much more immersion to the game. And who knows, maybe we can find a way to cast shadows onto the water......wouldn't that be cool?

[ReallyDedPoet]

Yes, there is a certain recognition and personal pride that comes with being the first to discover something. But when you let that go to your head then you have issues.
I made a discovery, I shared it with everyone in hopes someone will see something I've missed or overlooked. I'd get more pleasure seeing a discovery grow and being used by others than just trying to figure it out myself. So Anvart anything you can find on this please share. This would bring much more immersion to the game. And who knows, maybe we can find a way to cast shadows onto the water......wouldn't that be cool?

Nice words there RB :yep:

[bigboywooly]

Brillianty stuff RacerBoy and a big thumbs up to your open attitude, its a refreshing thing to have.

Say NO to fuddy duddy modders, say YES to Glasnost!

:yeah:
absolutely correct. :rock: i hope privateer will read this and enjoy the process for the best result. more brains working on the same prob can find more ways...

He might read it but wont respond
Dont think Privateer is a member here any more

[A6Intruder]

Brillianty stuff RacerBoy and a big thumbs up to your open attitude, its a refreshing thing to have.

Say NO to fuddy duddy modders, say YES to Glasnost!

:yeah:
absolutely correct. :rock: i hope privateer will read this and enjoy the process for the best result. more brains working on the same prob can find more ways...

He might read it but wont respond
Dont think Privateer is a member here any more

I could not belive that!! Why? Did i miss something? I hope he will return like Racerboy did. PLEASE There are not enough talented modders of his skill here.:wah:
Best regards

[flakmonkey]

This could add a whole new level of immersion, just imagine stalking a convoy at sunset, long shadows stretching out over the sea, this could be verrrry cool indeed.

Sadly i couldnt download RBs little test file so i opted for my own little quick and dirty option (just pasting the original sh3controllers file into my 1.4b/gwx3 installation), its got me all exited to see just what folks who know what theyre doing can acheive with this, keep up the excellent work:salute:

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/tris1066/SH3Img19-2-2009_174755_737.jpg
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/tris1066/SH3Img19-2-2009_174830_348.jpg

[Awful Smutje]

This could add a whole new level of immersion, just imagine stalking a convoy at sunset, long shadows stretching out over the sea, this could be verrrry cool indeed.

Sadly i couldnt download RBs little test file so i opted for my own little quick and dirty option (just pasting the original sh3controllers file into my 1.4b/gwx3 installation), its got me all exited to see just what folks who know what theyre doing can acheive with this, keep up the excellent work:salute:


You just pasted the old sh3controllers.act and the shadows are on your whole u-boat? Wasn't this the problem of Racerboy, that the shadows won't cast on another object, excluded itself? If it's easy like this, thats going to be a whole step in the right direction!

[flakmonkey]

This could add a whole new level of immersion, just imagine stalking a convoy at sunset, long shadows stretching out over the sea, this could be verrrry cool indeed.

Sadly i couldnt download RBs little test file so i opted for my own little quick and dirty option (just pasting the original sh3controllers file into my 1.4b/gwx3 installation), its got me all exited to see just what folks who know what theyre doing can acheive with this, keep up the excellent work:salute:


You just pasted the old sh3controllers.act and the shadows are on your whole u-boat? Wasn't this the problem of Racerboy, that the shadows won't cast on another object, excluded itself? If it's easy like this, thats going to be a whole step in the right direction!

well, yes and no, with this method i get all the same problems people had when enabling shadows in v1.0. namely multicolor graphical glitches on bridge crew and certain parts like the conning tower not accepting or casting shadows at all.

RB is doing it properly, although if you just want to see what it looks like you can use my lazy ass method.

1. on a v1.0 sh3 disc locate data11.cab
2. open it and find file called sh3controllers.act extract it to desktop
3. open your sh3 directory and find your current version of sh3controllers.act and rename/move it (keep it safe)
4. paste the v1.0 controllers file into its place
5. In the sh3 folder in your documents open main.cfg and set dynamicshadows to yes
6. set main.cfg you just edited to read only or sh3 will remove any changes youve made

now run sh3 and youre done.

(+for goodness sake dont loose your 1.4b version of sh3controllers.act)

[TheDarkWraith]

This could add a whole new level of immersion, just imagine stalking a convoy at sunset, long shadows stretching out over the sea, this could be verrrry cool indeed.

Sadly i couldnt download RBs little test file so i opted for my own little quick and dirty option (just pasting the original sh3controllers file into my 1.4b/gwx3 installation), its got me all exited to see just what folks who know what theyre doing can acheive with this, keep up the excellent work:salute:


You just pasted the old sh3controllers.act and the shadows are on your whole u-boat? Wasn't this the problem of Racerboy, that the shadows won't cast on another object, excluded itself? If it's easy like this, thats going to be a whole step in the right direction!

well, yes and no, with this method i get all the same problems people had when enabling shadows in v1.0. namely multicolor graphical glitches on bridge crew and certain parts like the conning tower not accepting or casting shadows at all.

RB is doing it properly, although if you just want to see what it looks like you can use my lazy ass method.

1. on a v1.0 sh3 disc locate data11.cab
2. open it and find file called sh3controllers.act extract it to desktop
3. open your sh3 directory and find your current version of sh3controllers.act and rename/move it (keep it safe)
4. paste the v1.0 controllers file into its place
5. In the sh3 folder in your documents open main.cfg and set dynamicshadows to yes
6. set main.cfg you just edited to read only or sh3 will remove any changes youve made

now run sh3 and youre done.

(+for goodness sake dont loose your 1.4b version of sh3controllers.act)

Dude you rock! THIS is why I post my findings....in the hopes that someone else will find something else that I was overlooking....:rock: :rock: I have to try what FlakMonkey said above! :D

[TheDarkWraith]

ok, I was not able to duplicate FlakMonkey's results.
Are you running SH3 1.4b or some other version? I have my 88mm gun shadows but can't get the sub to cast shadows on itself. What sub were you using in the screenie and of what version of the game? Please tell me someone can duplicate FlakMonkey's results......

[flakmonkey]

Sub was a viic (1941) in a single mission, im running v1.4b with gwx3 installed.

Ive just been back and retested it with a couple of other subs and found that some just dont cast/receive shadows at all, i guess that has something to do with SHD_ nodes etc (waaay over my head)

It could be your sh3 disc, are you sure its v1.0 as a lot of discs are prepatched to 1.4b, give me a second and i`ll upload my v1.0 sh3controllers file somewhere.

[flakmonkey]

http://www.savefile.com/files/2010012

Its a jsgme ready version of the original v1.0 sh3controllers file, for anyone without an original unpatched sh3 disc
+ just for good measure it also changes the main.cfg in your sh3 root directory (c:/program files/sh3 or wherever yours is), im not sure if sh3 even reads this version of the file since you also have one in documents/sh3/cfg

[TheDarkWraith]

FlakMonkey I owe you a beer! :D For the past 2 days I've been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why I can't cast those shadows onto other objects. You provided the missing link - the main.cfg - more importantly the correct location! I was modifying the \data\Cfg one which was doing NOTHING (sometimes the most obvious of things are the hardest to find). So even though my setup said DynamicShadows were DISABLED I was able to create them on the 88mm gun just not cast them onto others. By changing the main.cfg file as you mentioned in \MyDocuments, well, let this speak for itself:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shadows.jpg

Teamwork.....see, we all win.

I took this screenie using:
my modified GUNS_SUB.DAT file
SH3 1.4b (using the SH3 1.0 SH3Controllers.ACT and a modified SH3.EXE)

My SH3 disc was v1.0 and SH3Controllers.ACT from it is dated 2/26/2005 3:30pm. Yes, the SHD_ nodes are WAY, WAY messed up on just about everything. There is LOTS of work to be done. Now I have to see if I can get those shadows to cast onto the water....First though, let's fix the shadows on the VIIb in SH3 1.4b

ok boys, now the fun really begins......:rock: :|\\

EDIT: wow, these are cool now that it works. I do see some problems though.
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shadows2_e.jpg

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shadows3_e.jpg

[TheDarkWraith]

okay here's an update on how this shadows thing work:

- You have to use SH3 v1.0 SH3Controllers.ACT in \SilentHunterIII
- You have to edit your \MyDocuments\SH3\Cfg\Main.cfg file and set DynamicShadows=Yes and set it to read-only (Big, big thanks to FlakMonkey for this one)

Now just doing this will enable shadows on those objects that are correctly setup. There are a fair amount of stock objects that will cast shadows :DL

Now for the technical jargon on how it works:

- if the base object (sub, ship, etc.) has a DynamicShadows render controller attached to it and the light source is correct (sunlight) then EVERYTHING that is attached to it will cast shadows onto itself and others if:
---- the above is done
---- there is an SHD_ node attached to either the object itself you're wanting shadows for or it's parent (or it's parent, so on and so forth). It's easiest to place the SHD node as a child of the object you're wanting shadows of.
---- this SHD_ node's visibility needs to be set to 0x0 (I said needs not has to)
---- this SHD_ node HAS to have a DynamicShadowCast render controller attached to it (as a child) with UseObjectVisibility set to 0 (not quite sure how this UseObjectVisibility property works yet but trust me, I'll be playing with it)

that's what I know so far. More investigating to do.

[flakmonkey]

Looking good:rock:
I think ive found my favourite thing to do with shadows so far, use sh3 commander to allow 3d view upto 1024x then sit back with external view and crank up the tc, its pointless but fun, its like watching one of those great bits of timelapse footage you see in nature documentaries etc...

+ cool pics, i guess if you can enable proper shadow casting from the subs hull then the 88mm shadows would be obscured by the shadow of the hull itself and everything would look just fine.

[rascal101]

Just to clarify before fiddling with any config files myself - can you guys tell me / us if you are intending to release this as a fully fledged mod to be installed via JSME - or would you advise the rest of us to follow your advise re your latest edits to the config and other files.

If the latter - could you set out a simple step by step instruction so those if us with less expertise can follow and install this.

I am assuming this will work with GWX3.0 etc Hoping you can confirm

Rascal

PS RACERBOY - any interest in working on lighting, surface glare and reflection - my experience at sea is that commercial ships are painted in gloss paint as is more impervious to rust - is intersting that all painted surfaces on all ships in SH3 have a matt finish so they dont look right - any thoughts

[TheDarkWraith]

Just to clarify before fiddling with any config files myself - can you guys tell me / us if you are intending to release this as a fully fledged mod to be installed via JSME - or would you advise the rest of us to follow your advise re your latest edits to the config and other files.

If the latter - could you set out a simple step by step instruction so those if us with less expertise can follow and install this.

I am assuming this will work with GWX3.0 etc Hoping you can confirm

Rascal

PS RACERBOY - any interest in working on lighting, surface glare and reflection - my experience at sea is that commercial ships are painted in gloss paint as is more impervious to rust - is intersting that all painted surfaces on all ships in SH3 have a matt finish so they dont look right - any thoughts

Specular and glossiness in SH3 are what you are wanting to play with. The specular strength will determine the 'sharpness' of the specular.

If you follow what I posted just a few posts back and follow what FlakMonkey said and use the SH3Controllers.ACT file FlakMonkey has posted you can start having shadows now (for those objects correctly setup)!

VIIb Turm shadows coming along nicely:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turmVIIb_shadows.jpg

You all be sure to thank Privateer for this. Since he decided to hold back his findings from everyone except one (which pissed me off royally) that was the drive I needed to figure this out. I do thank him for at least showing it was possible and that he had found a way to make it work (which until he says we'll never know how he did it). I wouldn't have ever given shadows another go if otherwise. What happened to you Privateer? That's not the person I knew at one time.

EDIT: got the periscopes shadowing BUT there's a backface problem with Turm shadows. The 3D model used for Turm shadows needs it's backfaces 'filled'. Does anyone know how to add backfaces using Wings3D or Misfit3Dmodeller?? See below the problem with the open Turm shadow:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/peri_shadows.jpg

I'll work on trying to resolve the flourescent colors with the watchmen. It's a lighting problem caused by the DynamicShadow light source.

In the mean time here's another demo. This playable demo gives all the features in the above screenie. Same thing, extract to MODS folder, run the single mission 'SHD_testing'
Alright now rapidshare is pissing me off....it's says only 10 people can download this again...what gives?
http://rapidshare.com/files/200195234/SHD_testing.zip.html

[IFRT-WHUFC]

No sooner i added the original SH3Controller.act file my watch crew glowed but they did have shadows within the watch tower on the uzu and railings! I've seen all the DynamicShadowCast Falsa/True function never could figure it out! I'm now hopeing this will go in a massive positive direction!

Good luck & great work so far!!
Rick.

[IFRT-WHUFC]

Just to clarify before fiddling with any config files myself - can you guys tell me / us if you are intending to release this as a fully fledged mod to be installed via JSME - or would you advise the rest of us to follow your advise re your latest edits to the config and other files.

If the latter - could you set out a simple step by step instruction so those if us with less expertise can follow and install this.

I am assuming this will work with GWX3.0 etc Hoping you can confirm

Rascal

PS RACERBOY - any interest in working on lighting, surface glare and reflection - my experience at sea is that commercial ships are painted in gloss paint as is more impervious to rust - is intersting that all painted surfaces on all ships in SH3 have a matt finish so they dont look right - any thoughts

Specular and glossiness in SH3 are what you are wanting to play with. The specular strength will determine the 'sharpness' of the specular.

If you follow what I posted just a few posts back and follow what FlakMonkey said and use the SH3Controllers.ACT file FlakMonkey has posted you can start having shadows now (for those objects correctly setup)!

VIIb Turm shadows coming along nicely:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turmVIIb_shadows.jpg

You all be sure to thank Privateer for this. Since he decided to hold back his findings from everyone except one (which pissed me off royally) that was the drive I needed to figure this out. I do thank him for at least showing it was possible and that he had found a way to make it work (which until he says we'll never know how he did it). I wouldn't have ever given shadows another go if otherwise. What happened to you Privateer? That's not the person I knew at one time.

EDIT: got the periscopes shadowing BUT there's a backface problem with Turm shadows. The 3D model used for Turm shadows needs it's backfaces 'filled'. Does anyone know how to add backfaces using Wings3D or Misfit3Dmodeller?? See below the problem with the open Turm shadow:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/peri_shadows.jpg

I'll work on trying to resolve the flourescent colors with the watchmen. It's a lighting problem caused by the DynamicShadow light source.

In the mean time here's another demo. This playable demo gives all the features in the above screenie. Same thing, extract to MODS folder, run the single mission 'SHD_testing'
Alright now rapidshare is pissing me off....it's says only 10 people can download this again...what gives?
http://rapidshare.com/files/200195234/SHD_testing.zip.html

That pic' looks great to me, the light source should be the sunlight and both periscopes are casting a shadow in the same direction!

Great Work as Usual RB!!

[TheDarkWraith]

That pic' looks great to me, the light source should be the sunlight and both periscopes are casting a shadow in the same direction!

Great Work as Usual RB!!

Ensure you thank FlakMonkey also. It was he who provided the missing link to casting the shadows onto other objects :yep:
I'm a perfectionist and those screenies with the open Turm problem bug the crap out of me. It needs to be fixed but I'm not that skilled with 3D modelling programs. Hopefully someone out there knows how to fill backfaces. If you don't know what I mean by backfaces:
- in 3D world, like DirectX, the order in which the vertices of a triangle are drawn matter. There is a clockwise and counter-clockwise direction that the vertices can be defined. Depending on the cull mode specified, vertices drawn one direction will be visible if pointing at the camera and not visible if pointing away from camera (these are backfacing triangles). Default cullmode in DirectX is counter-clockwise. Since I can't disable culling in SH3 I have to add another 'layer' on top of those backfacing triangles that has the vertices in the opposite direction the backfacing ones are so that they are rendered and visible thus curing the problem above.
Another solution is to write some code into Apollo that will do this for me (by adding another subset to the 3D model). I'm going to go the lazy route and hope someone can tell me how to do it with Wings3D or Misfit3DModeller.

In case you missed it, the VIIb sub itself gives off shadows in the demo:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/deck_shadows.jpg

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/deck_shadows2.jpg

[skwasjer]

Erm, RB, there's dozens of objects in the game with only a single plane, like airplane props, flags, railings, trees, glass, wires, chains etc. So how do you think they are rendered? Right, with cull none... (aka 2-sided).

Every material has the option to specify culling (ccw vs none to be exact). Time to download S3D me thinks...

[TheDarkWraith]

Erm, RB, there's dozens of objects in the game with only a single plane, like airplane props, flags, railings, trees, glass, wires, chains etc. So how do you think they are rendered? Right, with cull none... (aka 2-sided).

Every material has the option to specify culling (ccw vs none to be exact). Time to download S3D me thinks...

You are correct about the 2-sided BUT that doesn't seem to apply when it comes to shadows. It doesn't take that into account. I specify two-sided and it still gets culled. I even tried the map from a ship (subset #3) which gave the texturing for the handrails (which is 2-sided) and that didn't even work. It simply ignores 2-sided when doing shadows. I'm forced to fill the backfaces.

[flakmonkey]

Im assuming that the turm shadows are cast from whatever 3d object is within SHD_xxxx.obj (or something like that) inside the turm.dat file.

If this is the case then why not just duplicate the turm model and invert its surface normals within a 3d app, meaning youll have 2 turm models occupying the same space in a single .obj file but one with outward facing normals and one with inward facing ones.

Ok its not perfect and will double the polycount for the shadow casting model but i see no reason why it wont work.

Having done a couple of models for sh3 in the past i found this was the easiest way to get a "double sided" surface. + i really wish id known about s3d back then!

[TheDarkWraith]

Im assuming that the turm shadows are cast from whatever 3d object is within SHD_xxxx.obj (or something like that) inside the turm.dat file.

If this is the case then why not just duplicate the turm model and invert its surface normals within a 3d app, meaning youll have 2 turm models occupying the same space in a single .obj file but one with outward facing normals and one with inward facing ones.

Ok its not perfect and will double the polycount for the shadow casting model but i see no reason why it wont work.

Having done a couple of models for sh3 in the past i found this was the easiest way to get a "double sided" surface. + i really wish id known about s3d back then!

I will try that and let you know how it works. Thanks :yeah:

EDIT: beautiful idea FlakMonkey. These Turm shadows are believable and looking good. I'll need to add the interior Turm to it tomorrow to get the correct shadow but we have a solution!
in this one the shadow has a nice straight solid edge on the back of the Turm just like it should be considering the sun is shining from the upper left corner of the screenie:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turm_reflecs.jpg

and here the sun is aft and just to the left of the Turm. Note the solid shadow:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turm_reflecs2.jpg

[tonschk]

:woot: :yeah: This is Beautyful Wonderful Awesome Amazing :yeah: :woot: Congratulations Racerboy :up:

[rascal101]

Well now the plot thickens - I tried this following the steps as written - and I too got shadows! YAY! - but - we're not out of the, shadows yet - look closely at the screenies below see the emerald green flash on the guy left hand middle on the conning tower, and the dark pink smudge on the back of the guy opposite, that's actually a mirror image of someones binoculars, the guy opposite him perhaps - but the shadow in this case is flashing disco colours

For some funny reason this thing does work - but only kind of - I got great shadows all over the sub where I'd expect to find them, round the gun, also the gaurd wires etc - but I also got this weird ranbow flashing around crew faces, hands and binoculars

The rest of the sub looks ok except at certain angles, mostly from behind and above - the side of the conning tower becomes transparent and you can see though it to the side of the sub in the water.

In port I went to take a look see how other objects were affected - again overall some nice shadows - but on closer inspection some solid serfaces are now renedered transparent, some transparent are now solid. etc and there is some flashing.

I think we are on the right track but worry that if we are using a file from the first release of the game it is trying to render surfaces that have been altered in sucessive mods - while for the most part it does what its supposed to do, it kind of falls away on some small details ie like crew hands, binoculars etc

Over to you - the experts - this is the first time I've actually got in there and fiddled with stuff, is great but this needs some more work I think

Rascal

Just to clarify before fiddling with any config files myself - can you guys tell me / us if you are intending to release this as a fully fledged mod to be installed via JSME - or would you advise the rest of us to follow your advise re your latest edits to the config and other files.

If the latter - could you set out a simple step by step instruction so those if us with less expertise can follow and install this.

I am assuming this will work with GWX3.0 etc Hoping you can confirm

Rascal

PS RACERBOY - any interest in working on lighting, surface glare and reflection - my experience at sea is that commercial ships are painted in gloss paint as is more impervious to rust - is intersting that all painted surfaces on all ships in SH3 have a matt finish so they dont look right - any thoughts

Specular and glossiness in SH3 are what you are wanting to play with. The specular strength will determine the 'sharpness' of the specular.

If you follow what I posted just a few posts back and follow what FlakMonkey said and use the SH3Controllers.ACT file FlakMonkey has posted you can start having shadows now (for those objects correctly setup)!

VIIb Turm shadows coming along nicely:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turmVIIb_shadows.jpg

You all be sure to thank Privateer for this. Since he decided to hold back his findings from everyone except one (which pissed me off royally) that was the drive I needed to figure this out. I do thank him for at least showing it was possible and that he had found a way to make it work (which until he says we'll never know how he did it). I wouldn't have ever given shadows another go if otherwise. What happened to you Privateer? That's not the person I knew at one time.

EDIT: got the periscopes shadowing BUT there's a backface problem with Turm shadows. The 3D model used for Turm shadows needs it's backfaces 'filled'. Does anyone know how to add backfaces using Wings3D or Misfit3Dmodeller?? See below the problem with the open Turm shadow:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/peri_shadows.jpg

I'll work on trying to resolve the flourescent colors with the watchmen. It's a lighting problem caused by the DynamicShadow light source.

In the mean time here's another demo. This playable demo gives all the features in the above screenie. Same thing, extract to MODS folder, run the single mission 'SHD_testing'
Alright now rapidshare is pissing me off....it's says only 10 people can download this again...what gives?
http://rapidshare.com/files/200195234/SHD_testing.zip.html

That pic' looks great to me, the light source should be the sunlight and both periscopes are casting a shadow in the same direction!

Great Work as Usual RB!!

[JScones]

Dont think Privateer is a member here any more
Don't tell me he had a "silly little twit fit" and left "in a pout"??? :hmmm:

:rotfl:

On topic though, it's amazing how little things like shadows really make a difference.

And it's great to see the advantages of open development in action. Nice work RB and Flakmonkey (and anyone else that's contributed). :yeah:

Looks like there is still a bit of work to do (crew shadows and the like), but it's looking nice so far.

[flakmonkey]

A couple of interesting things ive noticed while playing around with these shadows,

first, ive been on a quick trip to the museum and it seems that pretty much all stock surface units are already perfectly set up for shadows, sadly almost none of the usermade ships/subs work correctly with dynamic shadows.
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/tris1066/stockunit1.jpg
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/tris1066/stockunit2.jpg
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/tris1066/stockunit3.jpg

Second, the sh3 devs obviously did put some thought into their shadow system as there is a nice fade in/out with distance, so even in convoys you should still get a reasonable framerate as only those ships within a certain range will be shadowed (looks to be around 500m).

rascal101: most of the errors you mention are known about and are there because dynamic shadows were never fully implemented by the original devs, this is why RB is going through 1 object at a time starting with the viib player sub, pretty much picking up where the devs left off.
You do seem to have a few new bugs i cant recreate though, this transparency and flashing on surfaces you mention, maybe its just a quirk of your particular gfx card??
+ive looked around the harbours too and there seem to be no shadows on the harbourkit objects at all (transparent or otherwise) excpet those cast by docked ships so im unsure what could be causing the problems you experienced.
Its still early days, ive no doubt all this will be sorted in time.

[rascal101]

Thanks to you hat you should bother to reply to my small efforts - I recon this is going to be licked but by you guys with way more experience than me - Personally I hope you will release it as a fully fledged mod installable via JSME - when its ready of course - nice and encouraging shots of the merchant fleet


A couple of interesting things ive noticed while playing around with these shadows,

first, ive been on a quick trip to the museum and it seems that pretty much all stock surface units are already perfectly set up for shadows, sadly almost none of the usermade ships/subs work correctly with dynamic shadows.
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/tris1066/stockunit1.jpg
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/tris1066/stockunit2.jpg
http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/tris1066/stockunit3.jpg

Second, the sh3 devs obviously did put some thought into their shadow system as there is a nice fade in/out with distance, so even in convoys you should still get a reasonable framerate as only those ships within a certain range will be shadowed (looks to be around 500m).

rascal101: most of the errors you mention are known about and are there because dynamic shadows were never fully implemented by the original devs, this is why RB is going through 1 object at a time starting with the viib player sub, pretty much picking up where the devs left off.
You do seem to have a few new bugs i cant recreate though, this transparency and flashing on surfaces you mention, maybe its just a quirk of your particular gfx card??
+ive looked around the harbours too and there seem to be no shadows on the harbourkit objects at all (transparent or otherwise) excpet those cast by docked ships so im unsure what could be causing the problems you experienced.
Its still early days, ive no doubt all this will be sorted in time.

[rascal101]

Hi Racerboy - thanks for the tip I shall leave you guys to work on the shadows while I go mess with gloss - one thing - and without wishing to appear a bit dense - can you tell me where to look for

'Specular and glossiness in SH3 are what you are wanting to play with. The specular strength will determine the 'sharpness' of the specular'


Just to clarify before fiddling with any config files myself - can you guys tell me / us if you are intending to release this as a fully fledged mod to be installed via JSME - or would you advise the rest of us to follow your advise re your latest edits to the config and other files.

If the latter - could you set out a simple step by step instruction so those if us with less expertise can follow and install this.

I am assuming this will work with GWX3.0 etc Hoping you can confirm

Rascal

PS RACERBOY - any interest in working on lighting, surface glare and reflection - my experience at sea is that commercial ships are painted in gloss paint as is more impervious to rust - is intersting that all painted surfaces on all ships in SH3 have a matt finish so they dont look right - any thoughts

Specular and glossiness in SH3 are what you are wanting to play with. The specular strength will determine the 'sharpness' of the specular.

If you follow what I posted just a few posts back and follow what FlakMonkey said and use the SH3Controllers.ACT file FlakMonkey has posted you can start having shadows now (for those objects correctly setup)!

VIIb Turm shadows coming along nicely:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turmVIIb_shadows.jpg

You all be sure to thank Privateer for this. Since he decided to hold back his findings from everyone except one (which pissed me off royally) that was the drive I needed to figure this out. I do thank him for at least showing it was possible and that he had found a way to make it work (which until he says we'll never know how he did it). I wouldn't have ever given shadows another go if otherwise. What happened to you Privateer? That's not the person I knew at one time.

EDIT: got the periscopes shadowing BUT there's a backface problem with Turm shadows. The 3D model used for Turm shadows needs it's backfaces 'filled'. Does anyone know how to add backfaces using Wings3D or Misfit3Dmodeller?? See below the problem with the open Turm shadow:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/peri_shadows.jpg

I'll work on trying to resolve the flourescent colors with the watchmen. It's a lighting problem caused by the DynamicShadow light source.

In the mean time here's another demo. This playable demo gives all the features in the above screenie. Same thing, extract to MODS folder, run the single mission 'SHD_testing'
Alright now rapidshare is pissing me off....it's says only 10 people can download this again...what gives?
http://rapidshare.com/files/200195234/SHD_testing.zip.html

[IFRT-WHUFC]

So if you create a backface for the crew models will this fix the bug with lights shining through heads?

Rick

[rascal101]

Another thing I noticed when I returned to normal and switched off dynamic shadows thinking it better to wait until a proper mod is released - I discovered my smoke effects have gone astray now I get white smoke in large square blocks -

Have decided to do a clean install - yet again - will await for proper mod

Rascal

[TheDarkWraith]

Well now the plot thickens - I tried this following the steps as written - and I too got shadows! YAY! - but - we're not out of the, shadows yet - look closely at the screenies below see the emerald green flash on the guy left hand middle on the conning tower, and the dark pink smudge on the back of the guy opposite, that's actually a mirror image of someones binoculars, the guy opposite him perhaps - but the shadow in this case is flashing disco colours

Yes this is a problem caused by the light source used to make the shadows. It is interacting with the ConfigureBumpMap controller used on the watchmen. I'll be looking into this today.

For some funny reason this thing does work - but only kind of - I got great shadows all over the sub where I'd expect to find them, round the gun, also the gaurd wires etc - but I also got this weird ranbow flashing around crew faces, hands and binoculars

Same as above

The rest of the sub looks ok except at certain angles, mostly from behind and above - the side of the conning tower becomes transparent and you can see though it to the side of the sub in the water.

Backface culling problem. I'm having to fill backfaces on many objects to get rid of this 'see through'.

In port I went to take a look see how other objects were affected - again overall some nice shadows - but on closer inspection some solid serfaces are now renedered transparent, some transparent are now solid. etc and there is some flashing.

Backface culling problem. Fill backfaces and solid objects stay solid.

I think we are on the right track but worry that if we are using a file from the first release of the game it is trying to render surfaces that have been altered in sucessive mods - while for the most part it does what its supposed to do, it kind of falls away on some small details ie like crew hands, binoculars etc

SH3Controllers.ACT v1.0 compares almost identical to 1.4b version except for missing the shadows part.

see above in yellow.

[skwasjer]

By the looks of it, the problem is not so much culling directly, but the fact that the engine switches between render modes (first render object the to main surface using material specified zbuffer mode, then render to stencil buffer (for shadows) using zbuffer write disabled), but afterwards the device state is not reset correctly, meaning the next object in the render pipeline now gets drawn with zbuffer write disabled, making it act as if inverted/flipped/incorrectly clipped (whatever you want to call it). It looks like this anyway, but I could be wrong.

Therefor I suspect that if you find a way around this (iow. push all shadow related stuff down the render queue) the problem will most likely be gone, without the need for backfaces. Adding backfaces to all models adds unneccesary overhead... Perhaps the ordering of chunks may make a difference, like moving all SHD type stuff down the 'index' list, after the last actual visual object. Another solution could be disconnecting all SHD chunks and building their own dedicated tree after the root node of the DAT, basically a clone. There could be problems here though with animations and other controllers that interact with the positioning of the object, and likely more difficult to maintain but hey... just an idea.

PS: I'd like to add that using a 1.0 controller library is not recommended and a disclaimer should note that bugs could be introduced that possible have been fixed by Ubi in subsequent patches. This particular ACT-file is responsible for many different controller, 50+ of them. Something to keep in mind.

[TheDarkWraith]

Good idea. I'll try moving all the SHD related items towards the end of the file and see what happens :up:

Edit: didn't work. I was hopeful. This really bugs me. If you look at these screenshots you'll see the problem I'm having now. All I did was enable interior Turm shadows from the demo posted. You'll see great interior shadows BUT it totally screws up the shadows cast onto the sub by the Turm:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shad_probs2.jpg

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shad_probs3.jpg

And here's the problem enabling these interior shadows creates:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shad_probs1.jpg

Filling in the backfaces of the interior Turm has no effect whereas filling in the backfaces of the Turm gave the great Turm shadow. I tried merging the interior Turm into the Turm (using every combination of backface filling between Turm and interior Turm) to no avail. I'm starting to see why they disabled the shadows in 1.4b now.
My crew saw their shadows and became spooked and deserted the sub.

Took out all the ConfigureBumpMap controllers in the Turm and the crew still had psychadelic colors on them. So it's something to do with the actual crew used as the watchstanders interacting with the shadow light source.

[TheDarkWraith]

ok, got the problem figured out. No wonder why the devs took the dynamic shadows out. They are a pain to setup correctly :down:

here shows the shadows in the interior of the Turm and the shadow cast on the hull of sub (it's not broken!)
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turm_shads.jpg

and check out this beautiful Turm shadow with the railing and all showing
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turm_shads2.jpg

Now to add my flags and pennants to it and see if they are shadowed (by all accounts they should be). I just might have to start playing SH3 again....

[Jaeger]

threads like this one are the most amazing pieces in this forum. a good title could be "pros at work". i like following the process of ideas find their way to nice results. please keep up the transparent way of working on your solutions. i remember the "behind the public" work of other modding groups. this public way shown here is the most and effectful way to find and develop new ideas. very nice!

next step could be to think about our restricitve modding etiquette... less rights for the developer. like in a real open source licence... just my 50 cents... (if someone wants to discuss this, please dont disturbe this thread, open a new one...)

greetz, Jaeger

[tonschk]

:yeah: Well done Racerboy , those Dynamic Shadows look Amazing :woot:

The Dynamyc Shadows increase the inmersion factor

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/T342026nov202007206.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/s34176_pc_3.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/T342026nov202007205.jpg

[rascal101]

HI TO YOU AND ABSOLUTLY CORRECT - NOW IF YOU WOULD JUST BE SO KIND AS TO TELL US WHAT GAME THESE SCREENIES ARE FROM - CERTAINLY NONE THAT I'M AWARE OF THEY LOOK GREAT

RASCAL

:yeah: Well done Racerboy , those Dynamic Shadows look Amazing :woot:

The Dynamyc Shadows increase the inmersion factor

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/T342026nov202007206.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/s34176_pc_3.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/T342026nov202007205.jpg

[kenijaru]

HI TO YOU AND ABSOLUTLY CORRECT - NOW IF YOU WOULD JUST BE SO KIND AS TO TELL US WHAT GAME THESE SCREENIES ARE FROM - CERTAINLY NONE THAT I'M AWARE OF THEY LOOK GREAT

RASCAL

i think it's Tiger vs T-34 (or something like that) a tanksim released last year.
--------

these dynamic shadows turn SH3 into a whole new game (regarding graphics)

[tonschk]

T-34 vs. Tiger

[rascal101]

Hi Racerboy looking very good almost licked the problems I notice your still getting the flashing round hands and binoculars - do you think that can be fixed or is it something we're just going to have to live with - One thing check if your fiddling with shadows has knocked out smoke or particles.

OK Now I Have a Problem

Folowing my own experiments with Dynamic Shadows switched on I have now returned to normal until this mod is worked out, I simply dont have the technical experience to offer anything useful - Ok so I returned all the relevent files to where they should go but then I had a New Problem

White Smoke in Square Blocks - This never happened before

So I thought what the hell and did a complete uninstall and re-install - then I go back into the game and - still got my smoke issue Have a fairly good NVDIA card and dual core machine and plenty of RAM so I have plenty grunt so whats happened to my smoke

Here is a list of my activated mods via JSGME - perhaps I have something in there that's clashing or not installed in the correct place or order any advise-

American_Ore_Freighter_1.0
No Morse code
GWX 3 St Naz and Schluese and other units
GWX - Alternative Flotillas
GWX - Merged Campaign
GWX - Open Hatch Mod
GWX - No Medals on Crew
GWX - 16km Atmosphere
GWX - Integrated Orders
GWX - Enhanced Damage Effects
GWX - Late War Sensors Snorkel Antennas
MANOS ENVIRONMENT PRO
SRM02 - Option for GWX Enhanced Damage Effects
Rbs1_SH4_Effects_GWX_30_71
LifeBoats&Debris_v4
Optional
Waterstream+Exhaust KombiMod V1.0
Torpedo damage Final ver2.0
Start at Sea_V1.0
WideScreen_SH3_V1






ok, got the problem figured out. No wonder why the devs took the dynamic shadows out. They are a pain to setup correctly :down:

here shows the shadows in the interior of the Turm and the shadow cast on the hull of sub (it's not broken!)
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turm_shads.jpg

and check out this beautiful Turm shadow with the railing and all showing
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/turm_shads2.jpg

Now to add my flags and pennants to it and see if they are shadowed (by all accounts they should be). I just might have to start playing SH3 again....

[rascal101]

Jesus thats anoying - I missed that completely and now I suppose I will never be able to find a retail copy - I checked the website but there doesnt seem to be much info on where it might be available any ideas


T-34 vs. Tiger

[TheDarkWraith]

First the screenie:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/flags.jpg

The wavings flags are dynamically shadowed (the shadow moves like the flag does)! I added the rotating attenea and it's dynamically shadowed also :rock: You can see the pennants shadowed just above in the shadowing on the side of the sub. Wow. :o
Now I just have to fix the Turm water reflection (it's using an ugly low poly count model). I'm going to have it reflect the Turm AND the interior of the Turm in high detail. After that I should have another playable demo ready here in a couple of hours.
EDIT: almost forgot adding FlakMonkey's twisty periscope thingies also.

[tater]

Any FR impact with large numbers of units?

[Freiwillige]

Try looking under the full title "WWII battletanks T-34 vs Tiger" It was just released in 2008 so I doubt it should be hard to find.

I looked eagerly forward to this sim but found that reveiws were less than glorious.
Complaints of T-34's being able to knock out tigers from the front at amazing distances ETC. Alot of Tiger commanders were furious that the game designers made the t-34 as leathel as a tiger. It sounds like history was thrown out for play balance. But that might have been adressed with the European release. I will say that it does look phenominal

Another one you might want to look into is "Steel Fuhry 1942" That is another new Tank sim on the eastern front and it gets good reveiws. And it looks just as good but no Tigers or Panthers:down: as there were non in 1942 so all you get as a German is the Panzer IV F1 I beleive.

[UberTorpedo]

This is fascinating. These screen shots stunning.:D

[kenijaru]

*starts bouncing up and down on chair* i need more dynamic shadows...
it would be really sweet if the shadows were also cast into the water, but even without that tiny detail... this is mind blowing.

[TheDarkWraith]

ok the newest playable demo is available. I've loaded this baby with many of my mods including one I just made. I want to know if there's any strange behavior or problems with all of these mods enabled at once. I couldn't find any problems but the more eyes on it the better.

Note: This is experimental in the sense that it uses the SH3 v1.0 SH3Controllers.ACT file

This has been done for the SH3 1.4b VIIb sub and Turm7b_1_hd only:
- shadows enabled (crew still has psychadelic colors and shadows aren't perfect yet but getting better every time - still looking for the fix for the crew)
- Flags and pennants (remember press 'x' to raise the pennants - these have reflections and shadows)
- sub exhaust
- periscope spray (go to periscope depth and then external cam out to see effect - try varying speeds also to see the effect change). There is one bug with this currently and you'll see it when you dive and surface with periscopes raised.
- Reflections added that were missing (in high detail)
- Reflections tweaked to look much better
- Reflections using low poly models have been changed out with high detail ones
- Turm reflection is high detail - it shows the turm AND the interior of the turm in the reflection
- FlakMonkey's twisty periscope thingies added
- Rotating antennea added (along with it's reflection and shadow)

there is no water reflection for the 88mm gun. I will add that tomorrow. Shadows for the flack guns have not been completed yet either. Not sure is water reflections are working for flack guns - I'll look into that tomorrow as well.

Enjoy and let me know what errors you find! :up:

I've uploaded it to my filefront account so there is no download limit:
http://postdownload.filefront.com/13334645//55a182bcb7bfc70e8c3904404bd90ffd716faf50feb5a5cad7 efe5dc9441f532b95d821f368879f7

unzip to mods folder. Enable via JSGME. Run the single mission 'SHD_testing'.
Note: this is a fully playable sub and can be used in your game. I included all files needed to run it in any game, not just the demo.

Note2: you have to have your \MyDocuments\SH3\Cfg setup correctly. FlakMonkey explains how to do it here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=1050472&postcount=62. SH3Controllers v1.0 is included in my download already.

Now if you're curious as to how I got the shadows to behave and work so far it has to do with the way the shadows are laid out in the hierarchy of the object AND some new backface filled 3D models of existing objects. First, SHD_ nodes are NOT needed. They are used when you want to render a shadow of the object using a lower (or higher) poly count object. I was able to attach DynamicShadowCast controllers onto visible objects and set the UseObjectVisibility to 0x1 and have them cast shadows. This was done on the flags and pennants. The light source for the shadows is coming from the parent node of the Turm - in this case the VIIb sub. The Turm is using an SHD_ node because I had to make a new 3D model for it due to backface culling (filled the backfaces). The Turm interior is currently using an SHD_ node but I will try attaching a DynamicShadowCast controller directly to it and set the UseObjectVisibility to 0x1 tomorrow and see what the results are (it should work). For shadows not to interfere with each other they ALL must be 'cast' onto ONE object. A screenshot from Apollo will show what I mean:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shd_verification.jpg

Turm7b_1_High is the root node and it contains a child node, Turm7b_1_coning7b_High. There are many nodes attached to Turm7b_1_coning7b_High but specifically ALL the SHD_ nodes are attached to it. What you don't see is the objects that I connected DynamicShadowCast render controllers to. Those have a parent ID of Turm7b_1_coning7b_High so that their shadows are 'cast' to the same place everything else is. The reason the object is white in the screenshot is because I enabled viewing of all the SHD_ nodes used to verify they were in the correct place - the SHD_ nodes were overlaid onto their respective object. Apollo said everything was good to go and, well, you see it in action.

And before anyone complains about the flags, tough, get over it, I make things the way I want to make them. If you don't like it then learn how to do what I do.

:|\\

[Reece]

I had to give it a try, all seems to go ok except for the crew!:yep:
My guys have just returned from a week spent at a gay nightclub::03:
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h244/Reecehk/Shadowenabled.jpg
Edit: Sorry RB, have only the act file installed with the shadows enabled, your doing a good job!!:up:

[MH]

This is great stuff.
If you could just make caustc effect and reflections to work above water level.....:D

[magicsub2]

eew, gay nightclub, what was bernard doing there??!!!!!!!:o :o

this is mind blowing stuff! cant wait for the full version! it looks just like sh4! will ships have shadows too?

[urfisch]

this is gorgeous! im stunned...never recognized the missing shadwos...but now, i will miss them everytime i play the game...i didnt read the whole 6 pages...is there a beta?

[LordNeuro"Serbia"]

U r making wery good job. Thx too all envolved in thise project.:yeah: Thise is just gr8:O:. I hope u will make all work as u pland. Keep up the fantastic job:up:.
Sorry for noth being of more help, but i dont even know how too tray a demo mission , not too talk about same twiking and ather stuff.
And 1 more qvestion abouth the eagle and u flags RB, any chance u work somthing on theat.
The eagle i m talking about is thise on pic
http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u101/vonswe/NY1.jpg
It would be graet too have it with u flags.:rock:

[Anvart]

Just wondering if there was any news on the progress of the shadows?

thanks
Rick
Privateer had a major system failure which meant complete reinstall I sympathise with him ...
One month ago i too have casually removed my folder "..\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005" both all my projects and executed codes by theme SH 3...4 "накрылись медным тазом" (russian slang) ... :har:


I don't know, if there is something like this for Vista, but you can use Microsoft's "TweakUI" of the "Powertoys for Windows XP" to move your "My Documents" folder to another partition. After a system crash and reinstall of Windows, just reinstall powertoys and change the "My Documents" folder to the directory on the other partition. This saved many hairs on my head... ;)
Thanks for tip, Awful Smutje ...
But i do it (always) ... but by Windows feature ...
... i have q:\My Documents\ ... :D

[Anvart]

...
Anvart,

What you are referring to is 'god complex' or 'the peter principle'. I work with those kind of people day after day and they piss me off to no end. I either try to constantly put them in their place or make their life a living hell.
Yes, there is a certain recognition and personal pride that comes with being the first to discover something. But when you let that go to your head then you have issues.
I made a discovery, I shared it with everyone in hopes someone will see something I've missed or overlooked. I'd get more pleasure seeing a discovery grow and being used by others than just trying to figure it out myself. So Anvart anything you can find on this please share. This would bring much more immersion to the game. And who knows, maybe we can find a way to cast shadows onto the water......wouldn't that be cool?
Again you speak not about that (not in a theme) ...
You not the God (god complex) that on bad English to define who i and that i,
and the more so to understand other people ...
and do not mix business and a hobby ...
Do not represent the philanthropist from itself ...
it's usual requirement for attention ... self-affirmation among people at forum ...
All people different and that that you speak this your opinion ...

P.S.
and "interception" of threads at authors ... it's (mildly saying) not beautiful ...

[TheDarkWraith]

Little green men have taken control of my UBoat :eek:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/little_green_men.jpg

I did find what controls the lighting of the crew so it's a step in the right direction...

[kenijaru]

^ dear god... you can see through their heads!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and they have lovely shade of "radioactive green".
That wouldn't be a photo of U-235 would it? (get the joke? get it?... i cooked my brains coming up with it )


Again you speak not about that (not in a theme) ...
You not the God (god complex :)) that on bad English to define who i and that i
and the more so to understand other people ...
and do not mix business and a hobby ...
Do not represent the philanthropist from itself ...
All people different and that that you speak this your opinion ...


I didn't completely understood what you said....
*but*, i can tell you that the quest for personal glory rather than common welfare (or in this case... shadows) has more than once avoided an enterprise to be concluded with the degree of success it *could* have achieved if there was more of "us" and less of "I".
so this :shucks: (<- that's a crown right?) is not cool, specially on an open community like this one.

Ken.

[TheDarkWraith]

I didn't completely understood what you said....
*but*, i can tell you that the quest for personal glory rather than common welfare (or in this case... shadows) has more than once avoided an enterprise to be concluded with the degree of success it *could* have achieved if there was more of "us" and less of "I".
so this :shucks: (<- that's a crown right?) is not cool, specially on an open community like this one.

yep, this shadows work will be transparent. I keep posting findings and information as I find/learn. I'm not like others who let it go to their head so this will remain an open source project as far as I'm concerned. No more to be said about it.

EDIT: this is not looking good. I stripped the crew's body down to nothing (not literally) to see if I could get rid of these pyschadelic colors. Results:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/crew_problem.jpg

anywhere there's a shadow cast on a crew member these pyschadelic colors are shown. It's a problem with enabling shadows. Looks like something that we're going to have to live with to have shadows. I can deal with it as this is a minor annoyance. I'll put it on my list of come back tos. Now the question is do crew on other ships have this problem? I don't play the game anymore so you all will have to tell me this.
Now let's see if we can get the crew to cast shadows.....

EDIT2: Crew shadows look good...
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/crew_shd_problems_1.jpg

BUT, as I feared, they interfere with the shadows cast by the Turm. Since the crew's shadows are not 'cast' onto the same object they interfere with the Turm shadows. Looks like no shadows for crew unless I can find another way. Below you can see how the shadows from the crew have introduced 'light' into the Turm shadow on the sub.
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/crew_shd_problems_2.jpg

[flakmonkey]

I didn't completely understood what you said....
*but*, i can tell you that the quest for personal glory rather than common welfare (or in this case... shadows) has more than once avoided an enterprise to be concluded with the degree of success it *could* have achieved if there was more of "us" and less of "I".
so this :shucks: (<- that's a crown right?) is not cool, specially on an open community like this one.

yep, this shadows work will be transparent. I keep posting findings and information as I find/learn. I'm not like others who let it go to their head so this will remain an open source project as far as I'm concerned. No more to be said about it.

EDIT: this is not looking good. I stripped the crew's body down to nothing (not literally) to see if I could get rid of these pyschadelic colors. Results:


anywhere there's a shadow cast on a crew member these pyschadelic colors are shown. It's a problem with enabling shadows. Looks like something that we're going to have to live with to have shadows. I can deal with it as this is a minor annoyance. I'll put it on my list of come back tos. Now the question is do crew on other ships have this problem? I don't play the game anymore so you all will have to tell me this.
Now let's see if we can get the crew to cast shadows.....

Is it possible to turn crew shadows off altogether, surely thats a better option than disco crew??

[TheDarkWraith]

Is it possible to turn crew shadows off altogether, surely thats a better option than disco crew??

The crew doesn't have any shadows....it's the shadows that are cast onto the crew by other objects that are causing the disco crew. You can't turn off shadow casting onto an object (at least I haven't figured out how if it's even possible - well you can by removing the light source but then all shadows are gone). Watch the crew's binoculars. Once the binocular's cast a shadow onto the crew member you get a nice psychadelic binocular imprint on them. The Flak gun is another good one - if it casts a shadow onto a crew member you see that psychadellic shadow on the crewmember of the Flak gun. I'm not giving up hope but I'm going to put it to the side for now and maybe as I dig deeper into this I'll discover something that can cure this. You never know.

[flakmonkey]

Is it possible to turn crew shadows off altogether, surely thats a better option than disco crew??

The crew doesn't have any shadows....it's the shadows that are cast onto the crew by other objects that are causing the disco crew. You can't turn off shadow casting onto an object (at least I haven't figured out how if it's even possible - well you can by removing the light source but then all shadows are gone). Watch the crew's binoculars. Once the binocular's cast a shadow onto the crew member you get a nice psychadelic binocular imprint on them. The Flak gun is another good one - if it casts a shadow onto a crew member you see that psychadellic shadow on the crewmember of the Flak gun. I'm not giving up hope but I'm going to put it to the side for now and maybe as I dig deeper into this I'll discover something that can cure this. You never know.

Guess i need to learn to love disco again!
http://msn.mess.be/data/media/47/DiscoBoogie.gif

[tater]

Question: If the crew belonged to another ship, but were none the less on the sub, would shadows be cast on them?

Might it be possible to have all the crew positions be daughters of a dummy that is someplace the shadows do not get cast on?

Make a dummy for the sub as a whole. The actual sub model (current model) is then a daughter. A sibling to the sub model is a dummy with all the crew stuff. The shadows are set for just the "real" sub.

If that makes sense.

[Jimbuna]

So if I can catch up here.....have you managed to get an object to cast a shadow on another object and the only stumbling block is the crew colours?

[TheDarkWraith]

So if I can catch up here.....have you managed to get an object to cast a shadow on another object and the only stumbling block is the crew colours?

that would be correct.

[LordNeuro"Serbia"]

Maybe u can cancel the crew shadows and the color will work fine. After all missing the crew shadows and ahve all athers dont sound theat bad. I main we dont have any shadows now. So having all shadows and not the crew 1 is a big step for sh.:yeah:

[tonschk]

Hello , I installed via JSGME the SHD_testing and also enabled ( before I uninstalled All other mods ) , I check with subs VIIB,VIIC,VIIC41,VIIC42,IXB,IXC,IXD2 , none was with dynamic shadows , no dynamic shadows

[TheDarkWraith]

Hello , I installed via JSGME the SHD_testing and also enabled ( before I uninstalled All other mods ) , I check with subs VIIB,VIIC,VIIC41,VIIC42,IXB,IXC,IXD2 , none was with dynamic shadows , no dynamic shadows

did you set up your \MyDocuments\SH3\Cfg correctly?

[skwasjer]

RB, have you tried disabling the normal map for crew?

[tonschk]

Hello, can you help me please , even if I installed and enabled the SHD_testing , I cannot find this mod inside the SH3 game files , I am not sure where are
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dynamicshadows3.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dynamicshadows.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dynamicshadows1.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dynamicshadows2.jpg

[Anvart]

RB, have you tried disabling the normal map for crew?
Yes, i wrote about ... BumpMap controller (with bumpmap.tga) may be reason ... i think ... :DL

[IFRT-WHUFC]

Hello, can you help me please , even if I installed and enabled the SHD_testing , I cannot find this mod inside the SH3 game files , I am not sure where are
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dynamicshadows3.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dynamicshadows.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dynamicshadows1.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dynamicshadows2.jpg

SHD_testing is a single mission! run the game and click on single missions it should then be in the list

ok
Rick

[TheDarkWraith]

RB, have you tried disabling the normal map for crew?

explain what you're talking about. I think I know what you're asking me but just want to be sure. I saw that there was a selfillumni controller attached to the 2/0 nodes in the crew's body and I tried removing those but didn't have any effect.

[TheDarkWraith]

Hello, can you help me please , even if I installed and enabled the SHD_testing , I cannot find this mod inside the SH3 game files , I am not sure where are

look here:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/single_missions.jpg

[skwasjer]

RB, have you tried disabling the normal map for crew?

explain what you're talking about. I think I know what you're asking me but just want to be sure. I saw that there was a selfillumni controller attached to the 2/0 nodes in the crew's body and I tried removing those but didn't have any effect.
Either you have to remove the uv-data (uv map 2), not sure if the game stops rendering bump map then, or otherwise you can try substitute the normal map texture with a flat map (probably RGB=128,255,128). In the latter case, the result should be no 'height' alteration so light is not bend depending on light source, which seems to be the problem.

[NGT]

7b by Wolfehunters, OLCE 1.7, Venatore's Elite U-boat Uniform - Black (made darker by me). The "disco colour" disappears 85% with black colour uniform, much better than strip the crew's body down to nothing (see post 113)....but the faces...

Funny binoculars shadows: we can see them, but not the (ghost) sailor.

Very impressive job. :rock:

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/2834/sh3shad1.jpg

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/4924/sh3shad2.jpg

[TheDarkWraith]

7b by Wolfehunters, OLCE 1.7, Venatore's Elite U-boat Uniform - Black (made darker by me). The "disco colour" disappears 85% with black colour uniform, much better than strip the crew's body down to nothing (see post 113)....but the faces...

Funny binoculars shadows: we can see them, but not the (ghost) sailor.

Very impressive job. :rock:

Excellent information on the black uniforms there :up: I can take away the binocular shadow, it's one I forgot to take out when I had enabled the crew shadows. What is that top flag of and where did you find it?
Have you checked out the water reflections? Look at the Turm water reflection from different angles...I'll bet you'll see something you haven't seen before...:03:
The shadows aren't perfect but getting better. You can see some solid 'tube' shadows across the deck in front of the Turm in your screenshots. I think those are being caused by the 88mm.

[tonschk]

Unfortunately in my game have not Dynamic Shadows yet ( I have SH3 patch 1.4b ) , the weaving of the flags is a very nice touch :DL

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/akp-2.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/agr.jpg

[TheDarkWraith]

Looks like a lot of people are having trouble setting up the main.cfg file. So here's a step-by-step way to do it:

Go to \My Documents\SH3\data\cfg. In there there's a file main.cfg. Edit the file using Notepad.exe. Edit the [Video] section to look like this:

[VIDEO]
Resolution=1024 x 800
DynamicShadows=Yes
FullScreen=Yes
Synchronized=Yes
ParticleDensity=100.000000
TextureResolutionHigh=Yes

Save the file. Now right click on main.cfg and select Properties. Click on Read-Only then click ok.
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/main_cfg.jpg

Run game.

[tonschk]

Hello, can you help me please , even if I installed and enabled the SHD_testing , I cannot find this mod inside the SH3 game files , I am not sure where are





SHD_testing is a single mission! run the game and click on single missions it should then be in the list

ok
Rick


Thank you very much for the help , I will go now to check " Dynamic Shadows = yes " , I remember a long time ago I think I already say " Yes " to Dynamic Shadows , but I need to check again that detail , I will tell you in a moment

[tonschk]

Thank you very much, :yeah: My Dynamic Shadows was =No ,therefore I change to yes , later clicked properties ,thick the " Only read " and OK , I go now to check if are already Dynamic Shadows in the game , I will tell you in a moment

[tonschk]

:woot: :up: There is a BIG increase of the inmersion factor due to this Dynamic Shadows , thank you a Lot for the help :salute: :yeah: :woot:

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/dqi.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/fop.jpg

[UberTorpedo]

http://i442.photobucket.com/albums/qq145/UberTorpedo/fascinating.jpg

[NGT]

Excellent information on the black uniforms there :up: I can take away the binocular shadow, it's one I forgot to take out when I had enabled the crew shadows. What is that top flag of and where did you find it?
.................................................. .................................................. ..............................
.................................................. .................................................. ..............................

You can see some solid 'tube' shadows across the deck in front of the Turm in your screenshots. I think those are being caused by the 88mm.

Hi,
The top flag is my flag, strange mixture of East Roman Empire (Byzantion) and occidental culture, like me. . . :-?

The "tube" shadows come from 88 mm.

[TheDarkWraith]

diverted off the VIIb to the harbors for a bit. Got shadows working on the lighthouse but as expected it won't cast that shadow onto others. Just like the sub won't cast that shadow onto the water, the harbor objects only cast shadows onto themselves.

lighthouse non-shadowed:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/lighthouse_not_shadowed.jpg

lighthouse shadowed:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/lighthouse_shadowed.jpg

I'll take the shadowed version any day as it looks way more realistic.

[LordNeuro"Serbia"]

I see thise is going too bee a wery nice addon. Keep the gr8 job RB. Sorry for not posting the pictures yet but RL is killing me. I will post the soo is posibole. Thx 1 more time for u work. Cheers:up:

[TheDarkWraith]

I see thise is going too bee a wery nice addon. Keep the gr8 job RB. Sorry for not posting the pictures yet but RL is killing me. I will post the soo is posibole. Thx 1 more time for u work. Cheers:up:

it has the possibility but it is plagued with problems. I edited 87 harbor objects to give them shadows. Some appear to be casting those shadows onto the ground, others not. You can see the shadow of a building behind the behind you're looking at. The shadows that do cast on the ground are 'rippling' like water - in fact they are following the waves. All the harbor objects inherit from object 0x0 which is bad news for shadows. They all need a solid base object to cast those shadows onto. The trick is going to be whether the game will let me assign a global base object to all of them and still render each individual harbor object.

These are from Brest:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/brest1.jpg

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/brest2.jpg

[Kar]

Can you add shadows to the harbour personal ?

[tonschk]

Hello , this Dynamic Shadows are very beautyful and increase a lot the realism of this SH3 game ,Racerboy can you tell me please if I can learn to manage and tweak the files of SH3 ( with a tool like S3D ) to help to get rid of the few bugs of this Dynamic Shadows Mod ? , without Dynamic Shadows the game is lifeless , thank you very very much


Originally Posted by Hitman : Missing shadows is one of those subtle things you don't notice at first glance in SH3, but they add so much to realism/inmersion in any 3D game that once you compare the game with and without them you would NEVER be able to return to the no-shadows game version .






http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/mafia2.jpg

[magicsub2]

what game is that?

[flakmonkey]

what game is that?

Mafia II

[TheDarkWraith]

Hello , this Dynamic Shadows are very beautyful and increase a lot the realism of this SH3 game ,Racerboy can you tell me please if I can learn to manage and tweak the files of SH3 ( with a tool like S3D ) to help to get rid of the few bugs of this Dynamic Shadows Mod ?

if you know the files and the file structure and aren't afraid of the hex editor then yes. Using S3D - not sure (since I don't use S3D I'm not a good source of information on this). I bet it doesn't understand some of the nodes used.

[tonschk]

Hello , thank you very much for improving so much this SH3 game :up: , please can you tell me which is the first step I must do to start the process to learn how to mod and tweak the code/files of SH3 and therefore improve the effect of Dynamic Shadows in SH3, may be there is another tool other than S3D ,please bear in mind I have almost no idea about code , thank you very very much for your help

[tater]

S3D understands pretty much everything, and if it doesn't, that doesn't prevent you from using them, either.

S3D is very very easy to learn, it has a first-rate UI. Really, I've bought programs without a UI as well thought out as S3D's.

You can open one dat with something you want, select it and "copy," then move the cursor into the list where you want it to be, then "paste." Obviously, you'll need to then make sure it has a new, random ID, and the parent is set right if required.

I haven't messed with the SH3 shadow controllers at all, but you can usually right click, add a new node (say a 10/-1), then add a daughter to it, and you have a pull down list of all the possible controllers. Add the one you want, and done. Note that it's been a while since I used the "current" version available for DL, 0.94. If 0.94 doesn't allow some of what I said just now, the next (final) release will pretty soon (it's being beaten up in testing so no one makes any broken mods with it).


tater

[tonschk]

:DL Thank you for the answer Tater :yeah: ,The Shadows for me are very important ,I must study carefully this process ( at the moment I have no idea what is a node )

[tater]

For simplicity, open a dat (or whatever) in S3D, and the text list on the left are the "nodes." There are difference types that you will see when you select them.

S3D is really pretty self-explanatory. Select something, and it tells you what it is for most of the time (in plain english). Make sure to work on a COPY of the file, you don't want to much about with originals, work on a copy so you can be comfortable breaking stuff :)

It opens SH3 files (I've not looked at many since I don't have SH3) just fine as long as they are well-authored since it requires compliant code. Apparently the SH3/4 games are more sloppy about what they will display WRT to the devs own standards (meaning that the game might run imperfect code without crashing, while S3D wants "dev perfect" code as a starting point). Skwas could enlighten you more, but that's my understanding.

[TheDarkWraith]

The Shadows for me are very important ,I must study carefully this process ( at the moment I have no idea what is a node )

if you follow what I have posted in this thread you can start enabling shadows on other objects. The more help on this the better as it's a monumental task of getting everything sorted out and working correctly. The harbors I'm still working on trying to get them to cast shadows onto other objects.
Herein lies the problem with the harbors: they (devs) made a 'harbor kit' file that contains everything needed to 'build' harbors. Now to make a harbor you create clones of those objects in the kit file placing them where they should be. This saves on code overhead as you instantiate objects from a master object. Problem is these kit objects don't have a solid reference to a base node..they inherit from 0x0. In order for the shadows to cast onto other objects all the 'shadowing' objects need to cast those shadows onto a base object. 0x0 is not a valid base object to accumulate all the shadow information onto. Furthermore, the harbor itself is a StaticObject type which also seems to be screwing with the shadows :damn:

[tonschk]

Thank you so much for the help and the explanation :DL , I go now to download S3D and start to learn how to use , do you think is helpful to buy a book that explain how to code and modify the files of a game , I went to a book store and there were many many books about game code , I think were different books using and working with some different code tool programs ( none was S3D ) I dont know which one to buy , thank you for the help

[TheDarkWraith]

Thank you so much for the help and the explanation :DL , I go now to download S3D and start to learn how to use , do you think is helpful to buy a book that explain how to code and modify the files of a game , I went to a book store and there were many many books about game code , I think were different books using and working with some different code tool programs ( none was S3D ) I dont know which one to buy , thank you for the help

nothing you can buy is going to tell you how the SH3/SH4 files are laid out and how to read them. This is something you have to learn from others or by trial and error. I read everything I could find on DirectX9.0c and it hasn't done really anything to help me with the files. It has helped me to understand why the game renders objects the way it does sometimes though.
If you really want to learn the files then I suggest not using 'tools'. Learn the files via a hex editor and it will help you tremendously.

[Task Force]

So how do you enable shadows? (if its already been posted, direct me to the post)

Thanks. TF.:up:

[tonschk]

The first step in do what is explained in the post 133
The second step is to download the single mission ( experimental ) SH_D testing ...
http://postdownload.filefront.com/13334645//55a182bcb7bfc70e8c3904404bd90ffd716faf50feb5a5cad7 efe5dc9441f532b95d821f368879f7


This Dynamic Shadows are not perfect " yet "

[tonschk]

Unfortunately the Dynamic Shadows have another bug , the Dynamic Shadows disappeared almost immediately when the sub submerges




http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/fgrk.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/shad.jpg

[TheDarkWraith]

Unfortunately the Dynamic Shadows have another bug , the Dynamic Shadows disappeared almost immediately when the sub submerges

I think you meant don't disappear when the sub submerges. That's a good bug. Time to call Orkin.

[tonschk]

Hello , this two screenshots were very very hard to take , the Dynamic Shadows vanished " almost " immediately after the sub submerges ,

[TheDarkWraith]

the shadows disappearing after the uboat submerges would be a good thing I think. Since the sunlight is not directly acting on the surfaces anymore but rather being scattered by the water. If the shadows did stay after it submerged then that would be a bad bug to try and tame.

[tonschk]

The Shadows above the water are not " Exact " the same like the shadows Under the water , but there " are " shadows under the water


http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/P8C1_clip_image013.jpg

[TheDarkWraith]

The Shadows above the water are not " Exact " the same like the shadows Under the water , but there " are " shadows under the water


http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/P8C1_clip_image013.jpg

It brings me great joy to see someone else who loves math also. I'm a former Nuclear Engineer so I love stuff like this! :D

[Graf Paper]

Privateer, the ground-breaking work you have done on self-shadowing is a fantastic revelation, to say the least.

Racerboy, your efforts to rally the community in making this idea a fully realized mod is revolutionary, in more ways than one.

Imagine how this mod idea might progress if you could work together.

This feud between the two of you is ultimately doing more harm to the SH3 modding community. How much has been lost already due to competition and clashing egos among the modders? What wonders could have been made a part of this game that we will never know?

Privateer, I know you have your reasons but can't the two of you at least respect each other as two wizards that have already given so much to this community?

This is not so much for Racerboy as it is for us, the fans of this game and those who love the work that has been done with such brilliance to make SH3 a rich and enduring experience far beyond the expectations of its creators.

The open sharing of knowledge is what made the SH3 modding community live and grow. I remember those early posts where new discoveries were shared with enthusiasm and the early mods were a collaborative effort of the members, each modder building upon the work of others.

Perhaps you all worry too much about your work being stolen. If that's the case then you all ought to go start up your own company, make a game, then hire a platoon of lawyers to enforce your copyrights with fascist zeal.

You can't create work that is intended to be free to all and then try to lock it away in a veil of secrecy and social threats in an effort to "protect" your work. When that is the accepted norm, the truly great days are gone and the community withers away to nothing.

I've seen it happen too many times and it's happening here now. We would actually be better off if all of you left us in peace rather than to destroy what is left with your battles of pride and ego.

Ubisoft gave us a gift by allowing a mod community to thrive on their copyrighted work. Freely you have been given, freely you should give. If any of you can't accept that, then go away.

[TheDarkWraith]

I think I've been pretty open about my discoveries on this. Have I not? If not, please provide examples of how I haven't.

[Graf Paper]

Those statements are not pointed at any one specific individual, Racerboy. It is for all of those who have been choking the life out of this community by jealously guarding their secrets.

I admire your willingness to share and get everyone involved. That's how communities are built and kept healthy. Please do not ever stop doing that. :up:

However, I think that you may never make peace with privateer and it would be best to simply pretend he doesn't exist and get on with the good work.

[IFRT-WHUFC]

Privateer, the ground-breaking work you have done on self-shadowing is a fantastic revelation, to say the least.

Racerboy, your efforts to rally the community in making this idea a fully realized mod is revolutionary, in more ways than one.

Imagine how this mod idea might progress if you could work together.

This feud between the two of you is ultimately doing more harm to the SH3 modding community. How much has been lost already due to competition and clashing egos among the modders? What wonders could have been made a part of this game that we will never know?

Privateer, I know you have your reasons but can't the two of you at least respect each other as two wizards that have already given so much to this community?

This is not so much for Racerboy as it is for us, the fans of this game and those who love the work that has been done with such brilliance to make SH3 a rich and enduring experience far beyond the expectations of its creators.

The open sharing of knowledge is what made the SH3 modding community live and grow. I remember those early posts where new discoveries were shared with enthusiasm and the early mods were a collaborative effort of the members, each modder building upon the work of others.

Perhaps you all worry too much about your work being stolen. If that's the case then you all ought to go start up your own company, make a game, then hire a platoon of lawyers to enforce your copyrights with fascist zeal.

You can't create work that is intended to be free to all and then try to lock it away in a veil of secrecy and social threats in an effort to "protect" your work. When that is the accepted norm, the truly great days are gone and the community withers away to nothing.

I've seen it happen too many times and it's happening here now. We would actually be better off if all of you left us in peace rather than to destroy what is left with your battles of pride and ego.

Ubisoft gave us a gift by allowing a mod community to thrive on their copyrighted work. Freely you have been given, freely you should give. If any of you can't accept that, then go away.

These are words of a very wise man! Well said Graf!:up:

[ReallyDedPoet]

I have seen enough of this, in the Brig Privateer, I'll pass this onto Neal, he can further deal with it how he sees fit.

Thread closed for repairs, It will re-open in the morning or if another Mod here sees fit before then ( I am going
to get some sleep ).

Bottom line folks, if you have differences, work it our via PM\email, no need to air out your dirty laundry here, SUBSIM
deserves better. If you have nothing positive to add than don't post.

Thanks to you all for your cooperaton. Now back on track and topic.

[TheDarkWraith]

Unfortunately the Dynamic Shadows have another bug , the Dynamic Shadows disappeared almost immediately when the sub submerges




http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/fgrk.jpg
http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/shad.jpg

now this is rather interesting. I tried the 'bug' out to see what it would do on my setup. The results were different from tonschk's. I was only able to get about 1-3 feet under the water before my shadows disappeared:

88mm shadowed:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadow_underwater1.jpg

still shadowed under water (1-3 feet):
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadow_underwater2.jpg

now gone:
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/88mm_shadow_underwater3.jpg

so now I have to ask what changed? What mods were you using when you took those screenshots tonschk?

[tonschk]

Hello :DL , this two screenshots with Dynamic Shadows were very difficult to take because 94% of the time when the sub was already under the water the Dynamic Shadows have a strong tendency to disappear , the game was without mods , just your Dynamic Shadows experimental Single mission added


When the sub go under the water is only possible to see dynamic shadows from a few points of view 5-6% , and just for a couple of seconds

[Graf Paper]

Maybe the controlling node needs one of those "IsVisibleUnderwater=1" lines tacked on to it?

[TheDarkWraith]

Maybe the controlling node needs one of those "IsVisibleUnderwater=1" lines tacked on to it?

that controller forces either the visibility to be only under water or only above water, not both when attached to a 4/100 node. If that were attached to where the light source is (which is the sub) then the sub wouldn't be visible above water.

Ok, maybe someone can help me decipher this node. It comes from scene.dat:

000015C2 04 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 4E 00 00 00 8C 67 23 6B ........N....g#k
000015D2 0B 41 81 5B 74 89 D3 32 EC 01 20 65 00 00 00 00 .A.[t..2.. e....
000015E2 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 49 C3 BE 92 36 1E 41 07 28 .......I...6.A.(
000015F2 A0 C0 00 00 00 00 DA 0F C9 3F DC 35 7A 3F 00 00 .........?.5z?..
00001602 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 ................
00001612 00 00 00 D7 EF FF 66 66 66 3F 08 00 00 00 00 00 ......fff?......
00001622 00 00 11 00 00 00 8C 67 23 6B 0B 41 81 5B 53 75 .......g#k.A.[Su
00001632 6E 4C 69 67 68 74 00 nLight.

04 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 - Type 4/2 node
4E 00 00 00 - Size
8C 67 23 6B 0B 41 81 5B - ID
74 89 D3 32 EC 01 20 65 - Parent ID (Type 4/100 named Sky)
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - I'm assuming this is 3D model ID like in Type 4/100 nodes
00 - unknown (same as in Type 4/100's?)
01 - visibility
01 49 C3 BE 92 36 1E 41 07 28 A0 C0 00 00 00 00 DA 0F C9 3F DC 35 7A 3F - x,y,z position and pitch, yaw, roll rotations
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - number of maps (0) and map IDs
00 00 00 00 - End of record marker
01 00 00 00 - ??
00 D7 EF FF - appears to be the BGR (blue, green, red) color of the light. The leading 00 might be the Alpha component but not sure.
66 66 66 3F - it's a float value that I'm not sure what it's for.

The remaining type 8/0 node just gives a name to the Type 4/2 node (which is Sunlight).

this is the light source that is making the shadows (Sunlight). It is a Type 4/2 (light node?) and I'm able to decipher all the above except for those with ?? and in my explanations.

It's interesting to note that the 'light' has a position and rotations. This perplexes me.

[tonschk]

I guess the existence of Dynamic Shadows must have been tied with the deep at which the sub is moving

[TheDarkWraith]

I guess the existence of Dynamic Shadows must have been tied with the deep at which the sub is moving

actually it might have to do with the rotations defined in the Type 4/2 Sunlight node. It would be interesting for someone to try changing those rotation values and posting what the results are.

[Graf Paper]

I'm exploring as I go here so forgive me if this rambles all over the place.

Since it is underwater, wouldn't this be considered Ambient Light instead? That is also a 4/2 type with all values set to zero and color is RGB 100,100,100. Once the sub goes past a certain depth, the ambient light kicks in, thus eliminating shadows?

The Sun itself is a 4/100 type with a Z-depth translation of -6.52500343.
Sunlight is a 4/2 type and has a Z-depth translation of -5.004886.

Light can have three source types. 0 - Ambient, 1 - Direct, 2 - Omni.

Alter the bounding spheres for Sunlight so the sun "penetrates" deeper into the water?

On the other hand the EnvData node (10/-1 type) has lighting settings for Underwater (6/0 type), particularly the Uplight subsection that deals with light behavior near the surface. Downlight controls lighting at deep depths and near the ocean floor.

The Fresnel Coefficient for Underwater is currently set to 3.0.

Settings for Uplight are ARGB 0, 116, 252, 207 and an Intensity of 0.4.

Perhaps increasing the Intensity in Uplight to a higher value will allow the light to cast shadows deeper within the Uplight region?

One very definite piece of information I can confirm for you, Racerboy...

00 D7 EF FF - appears to be the BGR (blue, green, red) color of the light. The leading 00 might be the Alpha component but not sure.
Those two leading zeros are indeed the alpha. :03:

[tonschk]

are you asking to Change the values where you have typed " unknown " or where is a question mark ?

[TheDarkWraith]

Light can have three source types. 0 - Ambient, 1 - Direct, 2 - Omni.

On the other hand the EnvData node (10/-1 type) has lighting settings for Underwater (6/0 type), particularly the Uplight subsection that deals with light behavior near the surface. Downlight controls lighting at deep depths and near the ocean floor.

The Fresnel Coefficient for Underwater is currently set to 3.0.

Settings for Uplight are ARGB 0, 116, 252, 207 and an Intensity of 0.4.

Perhaps increasing the Intensity in Uplight to a higher value will allow the light to cast shadows deeper within the Uplight region?

well I think you just figured out what the 0x01000000 is in the Type 4/2 node.
0 - ambient
1 - direct
2 - omni (?)

I know that when I used the ambient light at first when working on the shadows it gave strange black 'blobs' of shadowing only on the unit...which makes since because ambient light has no direction thus can't cast shadows. 'Sunlight' is a 0x1, which if the theory proves right on our assumptions, would be direct lighting and since direct lighting has direction this explains why shadows are cast with it and it explains it having position and direction. How did you come up with 2 (omni)? I know there's an omni-directional light in DirectX (point light) but how are you associating 2 with omni?

Why don't you play with the uplight and all and post what you find :yep:

[TheDarkWraith]

are you asking to Change the values where you have typed " unknown " or where is a question mark ?

play with these values (make a backup of your scene.dat first!):

01 49 C3 BE 92 36 1E 41 07 28 A0 C0 00 00 00 00 DA 0F C9 3F DC 35 7A 3F - x,y,z position and pitch, yaw, roll rotations for the sunlight and see what you find out.

Also experiment with this:
66 66 66 3F - it's a float value that I'm not sure what it's for. See what you can come up with :yep:

I think Graf Paper figured out what the 01000000 - ?? was.

[Graf Paper]

All that gobbledygook of "00 FF 3A D7" might as well be Pinyin pictograms for all it means to me. That's why I so dearly wish Apollo was finished or at least available!

This is the best I can offer, using Silent 3ditor.

For Sunlight (4/2) we have these values:
File offset: 0x000015c2

Translation - X: -0.381416351 Y: 9.888323 Z: -5.004886
Rotation - X: 0.0 Y: 1.57079625 Z: 0.9773843

Type: 1 - Direct
Color: 255, 239, 215
Intensity: 0.9
Unknown: 0.0 (I think this may be diffusion but skwas does not know, value usually associated only with omi-directional lighting)

Within the Parent is an 8/0 type simply called Sunlight. but no values are associated with it.

I belive that the light type "2 - Omnidirectional" is used for objects such as star shells, where they are supposed to emit light in all directions.

That's all for now. I'll play with some of these values and report back with findings, if any are useful. Right now, the real-world projects the wife has planned for me today must take precedence. Spring cleaning and all that goes with it...(Honey, I think the couch would look better over there...no, maybe over there instead.) :roll:

[TheDarkWraith]

Translation - X: -0.381416351 Y: 9.888323 Z: -5.004886
Rotation - X: 0.0 Y: 1.57079625 Z: 0.9773843

Those are these values in hex:
01 49 C3 BE 92 36 1E 41 07 28 A0 C0 00 00 00 00 DA 0F C9 3F DC 35 7A 3F (every 4 bytes is something. Starting from left to right - x,y,z,pitch,yaw,roll)

Type: 1 - Direct (he's assuming that 0x1 is direct lighting. The assumption seems correct though)
Color: 255, 239, 215 (00 D7 EF FF in hex)
Intensity: 0.9 (66 66 66 3F in hex)
Unknown: 0.0 (I think this may be diffusion but skwas does not know, value usually associated only with omi-directional lighting) (he's associating this with some float value in the node. I think his unknown is the EOR marker after the 3D model ID. There's no other place left to grab a float value in the node.)

Within the Parent is an 8/0 type simply called Sunlight. but no values are associated with it. (that would be correct. After a Type 4/100 or Type 4/2 there's always a Type 8/0 node that gives it a 'name' or alias as I call it)

That's all for now. I'll play with some of these values and report back with findings, if any are useful. Right now, the real-world projects the wife has planned for me today must take precedence. Spring cleaning and all that goes with it...(Honey, I think the couch would look better over there...no, maybe over there instead.) :roll:

See above in yellow. Please do play with some of those values and report back findings :yep:

[Graf Paper]

I certainly shall, good sir! :salute:

Before I forget...

I want to give you my deepest thanks for sharing this with all of us but especially I want you to know you have my deepest gratitude for giving me a place to start and the direction I needed. That is all I have ever asked of anyone when I have said I wanted to learn how to mod this game.

You are a rare and precious sort, Racerboy...someone who gives. Promise to keep that beacon shining to point the way and I shall try to follow.

Maybe we'll all learn together, this way. :)


(Time to go move couches, dust, vacuum the rug, and hang pictures. The wife is giving me the evil-wife eye. lol)

[tonschk]

I must download and install the new version of " Released: S3D - Silent 3ditor (v0.9.4) ' I have the older version ( I have never used S3D before in my life)

[skwasjer]

The light node has been supported by S3D for over a year (since jan 2008 in fact). There was confusion over the last float value (not just by me but by many others) but I've found the first float is Attenuation and the second is range and obviously only applies to Omni lights. (I;ve posted this in my online changelog of the WIP-build). Omni lights need a range, because they don't cast light infinitely like ambient/directional. The reason it's called 'unknown' still in current public build is that I only recently did some tests and analyzed the SH4 shaders... Before that I assumed it was another color value, which it wasn't, so I changed it to unknown so I could look into it at a later date.

Btw, omni lights are used throughout the interiors and have a label 'Omni_1', etc... Not too hard to figure out that a value of -2- is a point light.

Of course, you wouldn't need to figure this out if you would at least give S3D a go just once... :-? you might even be able to contribute to it (like others have, ie. Anvart, ref, privateer, sergbuto and other old skool hex users)... I don't care if you are not interested in it for production work, just reuse the knowledge. It's there for everyone to see.

[TheDarkWraith]

thanks for the info :up: It made sense that 0 was Ambient, 1 was Directional but wasn't sure about the 2 as I've never seen that value used before (but then again I never poked my head into the sub interior files either).
So, just to clarify, for the omni lights that last float value is actually the atten factor and not the intensity like for ambient and directional?

[skwasjer]

The first float (intensity) becomes attenuation (gradual loss of intensity), and the 2nd float (the last 4 bytes) is 'Range' in game units. In the ambient/directional scenario this has no meaning and no data is stored at all... (in this case the chunk is 4 bytes shorter)

[edit]
Here's the structure:

public class Light
{
LightType _type;
Color _color; // ABGR
float _attenuation;
float _range; // Not stored when _type != 2 (Omni);

.. excluded property accessors..
}

public enum LightType
{
Ambient,
Direct,
Omni
}

[TheDarkWraith]

The first float (intensity) becomes attenuation (gradual loss of intensity), and the 2nd float (the last 4 bytes) is 'Range' in game units. In the ambient/directional scenario this has no meaning and no data is stored at all... (in this case the chunk is 4 bytes shorter)

:salute: thanks for that :yeah:

[Nisgeis]

Racerboy can you tell me please if I can learn to manage and tweak the files of SH3 ( with a tool like S3D ) to help to get rid of the few bugs of this Dynamic Shadows Mod ? If you know the files and the file structure and aren't afraid of the hex editor then yes. Using S3D - not sure (since I don't use S3D I'm not a good source of information on this). I bet it doesn't understand some of the nodes used.
If you don't use S3D, then you should, it will increase your productivity. With S3D you don't need to waste any time finding out what a particular value is, as it is read and indexed for you and displayed in a readily available format. S3D is very well worth a download. It is to hex editting, what the word processor was to the typewriter.

EDIT: Rattyness removed.

[TheDarkWraith]

harbor update: not looking good so far. The problem is still trying to get objects to cast shadows onto other objects without all the waviness due to water interaction. I can get objects to cast shadows onto themselves but it really messes up the harbor as you can see the shadows of another object through the one you're viewing plus the latter problem. The ultimate root problem is this:

with the subs, ships, guns, etc. you define a light source and place it at the tree root. Take for instance the VIIb sub. The light source is attached right at the VIIb's root node (which has parent ID of 0x0) which is NSS_Uboat7b. Now everything that is attached to this receives 'shadow' light. All you have to do to have objects attached to it to cast shadows is attach DynamicShadowCast controllers to those objects. Now the harbor doesn't want to play. I place the light source at the tree root (using Brest currently so it's Brest_harbor_Dummy) and no shadows (nowhere, not even on the objects themselves). I create a base node off of Brest_harbor_Dummy and attach the light source there - same thing. I add a 'shadow' light source to each individual object (in the harbor kit file) and now they cast shadows on themselves but the aforementioned problem above occurs.
I've even tried stripping away the StaticObject controller to no avail. :damn:
Since the harbor objects are clones I created a real lighthouse in the harbor to see if I could get shadows from it or have it cast shadows on itself. Same problem. If I give this lighthouse it's own lightsource it will cast shadows onto itself with beginning aforementioned problems.

[Graf Paper]

Break time from spring cleaning so I thought I'd pop in and see what's what.

So it looks like I was near to the mark about that value being some sort of diffusion for point lights to limit their range to a defined sphere. Thanks for that info to confirm an educated guess on my part, skwas.

I figured the u-boat interior lights, harbor buildings' exterior lights, and other similar such lighting were type 2. It's just that star shells were the best example that came to mind first because they dramatically illustrate the effect of omni-directional light.

I just wonder how the type 1 directional light of searchlights is attenuated (assuming it's not some weird implementation of type 2 light). :hmmm:

Regardless of how anyone prefers to work, it is their free choice to use whatever tools they feel comfortable with. Racerboy obviously likes the more fine-grained control that hexing allows him to have.

I also would not say his remarks were to be taken as disparaging S3D or skwas' methods when designing S3D. Rather, I think it is borne more out of a desire not to "prejudice" his own discoveries by tainting his ideas about what the data signifies. Thus his commentary of my information gleaned through S3D was more disclaimer than refutation.

Of course, I may be wrong but let's give anyone the benefit of the doubt because we've all been misunderstood a time or two in our lives. Simple text on a screen compounds this exponentially.

I do not possess the olympian hex and assembler skills of either Racerboy or skwas. As a mere mortal, I am content to use the tools made by those who know better and trust in their judgement as it is honed by years of working with this code.

I especially love the model viewer that has so well illustrated how the environmental lighting is actually a bounded sphere that defines a source by using the x,y,z coordinates in relation to the sphere surface.

Translation (rotation) of the sunlight is still pure withcraft to me. Does it have something to do with an orthogonal projection to determine the angle of incidence when striking a surface?

Yet again I thank you, skwas, for giving me the tool I needed that allows me to contribute to our marvelous community!


In regards to the harbor...

I know from observation that land does not actually exist, per se. It seems that land is defined more as a two-dimensional plane that "floats" in the water. Yes, even the sea floor is done this way as you can actually look under it and see..more water! I believe the SH3 "world" is actually a hollow sphere of water with a value of 500 meters depth or thickness. Perhaps the harbor shadows are somehow being rooted in the "real" foundation of the harbor, which is the water that is in turn the root node everything else rests upon.

This is all conjecture on my part, based upon observations when the camera did strange things, like falling through the ocean floor or finding its way under solid land to reveal that the land was a hollow shell. I hope this might spark some ideas.

I hope that perhaps you and skwas can work together on this and find an answer, RB! :up:

Break time is over. Mrs. Paper is calling me back to work.

[TheDarkWraith]

I just wonder how the type 1 directional light of searchlights is attenuated (assuming it's not some weird implementation of type 2 light). :hmmm:

wpn_Searchlight.wpn_Searchlight Render Controller...beam....Visual beam object.

Visual beam object is usually the type:

SearchLightEffect...SH3 SearchLightEffect Render Controller. Works only on water surface....Angle...Cone angle, in degrees..Light color.Light range (meters)....Atenuation..Light intensity = 1 / (A + B*<distance>)....A...A factor....B...B factor....HaloSize....Halo size (fraction from camera X size).....0....7...7...7......(9.."9...9...\SearchLightEffect.cpp

look in \data\Library\Search_Lights.dat to see examples.

[skwasjer]

I just wonder how the type 1 directional light of searchlights is attenuated (assuming it's not some weird implementation of type 2 light). :hmmm:

It's not. The directional light type is a light that is cast in one direction. The amount of light on all areas is equal and does not 'fall off', it's also not a cone shape, and is not related to the position of the source or the width of a beam. This is commonly used for ie. the sun (as it's so far away). Basically, only the rotation (orientation), intensity and color are meaningfull here. This type of light should as such not be confused with 'spot lights' that are cone shaped and fall off/diffuse the farther you get away from them.

Lights like a search light are implemented differently. They use a special controller, a cone shaped model or a model with several intersected flat planes (depends on what effect you want), with semi-transparent texture (fall off is done using alpha channel and controller settings), and special shader that brightens up the spot when you look directly into it. I don't remember the actual implementation from the top of my head but I don't recall it using a 'light node 4/2' either.

[TheDarkWraith]

Which one looks most realistic:
#1
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shadow_mixing1.jpg

or #2
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee4/tazmaniandevilrider/shadow_mixing2.jpg

#1 is shadows using only Sunlight as the light source. Notice how the gun shadow appears on the side of the hull (wrong). From where the sun was there was no way this could happen in real life because the deck of the VIIb would be blocking that shadow from reaching the side of the hull. Also the gun shadow appears on the deck and stops before ever going 'over the side' which further proves my point.

#2 is shadows from Sunlight light source mixed with shadows from ambient light source.

This effect was only done to the VIIb's hull. I figured out a way to mix shadows without corrupting them. This could possibly be used to mix in an omni-directional light (since it has fall-off) to model light attenuation the deeper you go under water. Now whether we can add an omni light and whether it will work underwater is the next question...:hmmm:

[tonschk]

I my opinion both screenshots have a couple of shadows mistakes , the number one screenshot looks a bit better but the gun have two shadows and the conning tower dont cast Dynamic shadows on itself

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/shadow_mixing1nnn.jpg

[emaluzer]

If an enemy ship spots your sub or a lighthouse light hits your sub are there shadows?

[TheDarkWraith]

If an enemy ship spots your sub or a lighthouse light hits your sub are there shadows?

that is an interesting question! I have not looked into it. I will do some testing and find out :yep:

[LordNeuro"Serbia"]

Is there any shadows of athers ships on the water and them self. If a harbor shadows dont work i think we cann live with ships and sub shadows. After all 90 % of time u r at see. Keep doing wery good job RB. I hope there is going too bee same relise soon on thise subject , theat u cann use in a carer mod.:up:

[TheDarkWraith]

Is there any shadows of athers ships on the water and them self. If a harbor shadows dont work i think we cann live with ships and sub shadows. After all 90 % of time u r at see. Keep doing wery good job RB. I hope there is going too bee same relise soon on thise subject , theat u cann use in a carer mod.:up:

if you use the v1.0 SH3Controllers.ACT and follow what FlakMonkey posted then the ships that are already correctly setup will cast shadows. There are quite a few stock units that will cast shadows.

[Graf Paper]

I managed to do a little testing last night. I only altered the intensity settings for Sunlight and Ambient to 1.0 and 1.7, respectively, and using version 2 of the Shadows test mod.

There were no noticeable changes in appearance from your screenshots, Racerboy. Shadows do look very good but there are still no shadows cast underwater.

I'll try playing with the Translation and Rotation settings next.

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/g/GrafPaper/162618/sfkakjlqbw.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/g/GrafPaper/162618/hovrskogow.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/g/GrafPaper/162618/jrtljwujkg.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/g/GrafPaper/162618/whqtalusmt.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/g/GrafPaper/162618/mtzhrgjnao.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/g/GrafPaper/162618/cflnfhnxyl.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/g/GrafPaper/162618/bbnaozotzm.jpg

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/g/GrafPaper/162618/idvkahzxbu.jpg

The deckgun shadowing looks especially nice, in my opinion.

Keep up the good work, RB!

[CapZap1970]

IMHO, Nbr 1, but it's very hard to say. Anyway, I thing it's a great job you are doing!! :up:
CapZap

[TheDarkWraith]

I managed to do a little testing last night. I only altered the intensity settings for Sunlight and Ambient to 1.0 and 1.7, respectively, and using version 2 of the Shadows test mod.

There were no noticeable changes in appearance from your screenshots, Racerboy. Shadows do look very good but there are still no shadows cast underwater.

I'll try playing with the Translation and Rotation settings next.

well then the question to ask is where is this 'Sunlight' used actually in game? If we can find a place where it is used then playing with the settings would give us better feedback to try and understand what a particular change does. Catch my drift?
I think you'll see some kind of change playing with the position/rotation settings though. I'll see if I can't find where this 'sunlight' is actually used in game.

[Graf Paper]

I also noticed a setting in the Env node called SunlightUnderwaterAngle (or something close to that). The current value is set to 15.

I'm wondering if by altering this value it would allow shadows to be cast underwater?

My thinking is this value may only allow direct light to "filter" through the water at a certain maximum angle and this has the effect of killing shadows. 15 degrees is certainly shallow when you consider that directly overhead is 0 degrees and the horizon is 90 degrees, according to the orientation of the world coordinates.

I'll give it a shot while you dig around in the guts of the code, RB. Sure wish I knew more about hex and assembly to help you out better.

[tonschk]

The 15 degrees you are talking about are this ?

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/P8C1_clip_image013h.jpg

[Graf Paper]

That's correct, tonschk.

I'm also looking at a sub-node called "Uplight" that controls light properties in shallow depths ( "Downlight" controls lighting at deep depths and the ocean bottom ).

I think a combination of these settings in Env and in Sunlight are the answer. It will just take a while to find the right balance in the values to get the desired effect.

I just hope someone can figure out why the crew looks like they've been painted with radioactive waste after replacing the 1.4b SH3Controllers.act file with the 1.0 version.:ping:

[TheDarkWraith]

Graf Paper you might be onto something. I didn't get a chance to look at anything yet and won't be able to until early next week. Got called out of town for work.

[IFRT-WHUFC]

I also noticed a setting in the Env node called SunlightUnderwaterAngle (or something close to that). The current value is set to 15.

I'm wondering if by altering this value it would allow shadows to be cast underwater?

My thinking is this value may only allow direct light to "filter" through the water at a certain maximum angle and this has the effect of killing shadows. 15 degrees is certainly shallow when you consider that directly overhead is 0 degrees and the horizon is 90 degrees, according to the orientation of the world coordinates.

I'll give it a shot while you dig around in the guts of the code, RB. Sure wish I knew more about hex and assembly to help you out better.

In SH4 the MaxUnderwaterSunLightAngle is set to 90 and I'm pretty sure i've seen the sub cast shadows onto the seabed!

hope this is of some interest.
Rick

[Graf Paper]

I sincerely hope I am on to something, Racerboy. We'll try and hold down the fort while you're away. Maybe the rest of us will have good news for you when you return. :up:

Rick, that is very good information indeed! I was thinking that the very shallow angle of that parameter was why there were no discernible shadows being cast when submerged. It's like the way no shadows are apparent at high noon in the real world.

Keep it up! Any information could be the key that unlocks the door, even if it seems completely unrelated (such as this info about the parameter settings used in SH4). :yeah:

I'm beginning to go beyond suspicion into the realm of certainty that many effects are there in SH3, just unimplemented or disabled when the game was being developed to try and ensure decent framerates on computer hardware that was current back in those days.

[tonschk]

[quote=IFRT-WHUFC
In SH4 the MaxUnderwaterSunLightAngle is set to 90 and I'm pretty sure i've seen the sub cast shadows onto the seabed!

hope this is of some interest.
Rick[/quote]

Dynamic Shadows in SH4 ? , this is Impossible , the developer of SH4 " Dan " told us very clear that SH4 dont have any Dynamic Shadows , this are his own words .......

Hi guys, We did have dynamic shadows for SH3, but they were disabled in code I think. There's almost no programmers left from that team to ask them about it... and I don't think there's any tangible way to get them back http://1.2.3.10/bmi/www.subsim.com/radioroom/images/smilies/icon_frown.gif

Sorry can't be of much help. They were unfinished and created lots of visual problems, .

Dan

[IFRT-WHUFC]

I think the problem with the crew is that they have a light source attached to them which is self illuminating (selfillumi) if this can be changed or removed, i'm sure would solve this problem! (Which I'm not sure how to do without it causing a CTD).

ok
Rick

[Hitman]

I just hope someone can figure out why the crew looks like they've been painted with radioactive waste after replacing the 1.4b SH3Controllers.act file with the 1.0 version

IIRC those parts painted in lime green were actually the parts which would be shadowed. Hence you could solve already the worst part if you find the code line that sets the green to high in the three colours mix (Red/blue/green). Probably reducing the balance of all colours a lot would simply give a darker look to the shaded area that currently appears as green.

[TheDarkWraith]

IIRC those parts painted in lime green were actually the parts which would be shadowed. Hence you could solve already the worst part if you find the code line that sets the green to high in the three colours mix (Red/blue/green). Probably reducing the balance of all colours a lot would simply give a darker look to the shaded area that currently appears as green.

I only have my company laptop so I'm going from memory here until I get back home. In \data\Crew\Body01 and \data\Crew\Body02 I remember extracting out the TGAs used in those and they looked more like lightmaps or bumpmaps than anything else. When I viewed them with Photoshop 5 the green channel was the only channel enabled. Remember some posts back when I put up those screenshots of green crew and said aliens had taken over my uboat? That happened when I removed the bumpmap controllers and the 'selfillu' controllers.
In the Type 2/0 nodes dealing with crew there are Type 13/0 nodes that are 'selfillu' attached to them. I believe these are the self-illumination that IFRT-WHUFC is speaking of. That's about all I can help with for now until I get back to my real computer and tools.
I think it's great that SH3 has one up on SH4 - Dynamic shadows :rock:

[skwasjer]

Uhm... 4-5 pages back... Have you tried? :hmmm:

PS: I'm fairly sure the 'selfillu' does not refer to self illumination in this particular case. I'd assume it should be 'bump' (as it is in other files) but apparently it isn't. Either it's a mix up or I don't know what, but the game files have more errors, this may well just be one. The game probably does not care about it (like many other cases where faults are tolerated) as it always expects a normal map for crew anyway. One thing that is sure is the textures linked to them which are most definately 'normal maps'.

Again, I would try disabling the normal map per how I suggested below...

RB, have you tried disabling the normal map for crew?

explain what you're talking about. I think I know what you're asking me but just want to be sure. I saw that there was a selfillumni controller attached to the 2/0 nodes in the crew's body and I tried removing those but didn't have any effect.
Either you have to remove the uv-data (uv map 2), not sure if the game stops rendering bump map then, or otherwise you can try substitute the normal map texture with a flat map (probably RGB=128,255,128). In the latter case, the result should be no 'height' alteration so light is not bend depending on light source, which seems to be the problem.

[Graf Paper]

In perusing some of these files, I just wonder if that fix might be as simple as using the v1.0 crew textures for the uv mapping?

I also took a peek at EnvSim.act and noticed numerous references to lighting, in addition to the references in the SH3Controllers.act file upon which RB has been concentrating.

This may require more than simply altering settings in scene.dat with S3D but I'll keep plugging away at it until someone has a look at those .act files.

Makes me wish you had built in support for this file type with S3D, skwas. I'm just not enough of a mad genius programmer to read hex. :06:

[fair_weather]

This is a fairly intriguing discussion.

And as a 3d illustrator it's very interesting to me.

I've been trying to mod the lighting in SH4, but it has eluded me...need to figure out what does what.

But, I think I can help with some of the theory behind lighting, mainly the self shadowing of the turms.

What I think the problem is, is the ambient lighting. It's too bright and it's blowing out the self shadowing.

I've been doing some testing in Cinema4D and have gotten similar results to what you have there.

I'm not one to know how to code much of anything, I just try to make things look good :doh:

If there's a way to change the ambient lighting throughout the day, that might fix the muted self shadows. Have the ambient light strong during noon and gradually decrease it throughout the day.

But, that's for way way in the future.

Just me throwing out ideas.

Keep up the good work :D

Edit:

Just reinstalled SH3, stock 1.0, enabled shadows. In awe.

And I think I figured out what the problem is with the multicolored crew.

It's the UV mapping, or some part of it, on the crew that is conflicting with the shadows. That's why it didn't show up on the modded crewmen. (a few pages back) However it did show up on the binoculars, which I think are a seperate .obj. If the crew were "fixed" by applying an exterior texture mod, can't the same be done with the binoculars?

And if Shadows can be implimented in SH3, it can be done in SH4.

Don't say it's impossible. Just look at Freespace 2 and what has been done with the Source Code Project. If one thing can be done in SH3. Since SH4 is a modified SH3 engine, it should be possible.

[IFRT-WHUFC]

[quote=Graf Paper]In perusing some of these files, I just wonder if that fix might be as simple as using the v1.0 crew textures for the uv mapping?

I'm affraid not, as enabling shadows in the original version 1 game, the crew also glowed the same!

ok
Rick

[tonschk]

And if Shadows can be implimented in SH3, it can be done in SH4.

Don't say it's impossible. Just look at Freespace 2 and what has been done with the Source Code Project. If one thing can be done in SH3. Since SH4 is a modified SH3 engine, it should be possible.

I hope so :DL

[fair_weather]

If you have SH4, you can check this out for yourself.

Go to Documents>SH4>data>cfg>main.cfg

It'll look almost the same compared to SH3, including the line under [VIDEO]

DynamicShadows=No

You can change it to yes, but like later versions of SH3 it won't work.

...actually...

That'd be something to test. If SH3 had dynamic shadows in the stock version, but just had them line disabled.

...Could the same be in SH4? :o

...I have to try this...

[TheDarkWraith]

That'd be something to test. If SH3 had dynamic shadows in the stock version, but just had them line disabled.

...Could the same be in SH4? :o

...I have to try this...

DynamicShadow and DynamicShadowCast controllers do not exist in SH4. Look in SHControllers.ACT and you'll see they are missing. Actually look in all .ACT files for SH4 and you won't find those aforementioned controllers (not even in SH4.xxx).

[fair_weather]

Can't they be keyed in?

For a laugh? :06:

[TheDarkWraith]

Can't they be keyed in?

For a laugh? :06:

I've been trying to figure out what the .ACT files are. Are they Perl scripts? Another kind of script? What? If we can decipher that part then making new .ACT files might be possible.

[Graf Paper]

So far as I can decipher so far, the ACT files seem to have a C++ executable wrapper with the line numbers stripped out, using MS Visual C++ 7.0. Find out what that wrapper hides and you'll know what ACT files are at their heart. Could be they're simple DLL files or maybe some sort of scripting language.

I've been experimenting with the settings for the Shadows test mod and it seems every experiment I've tried had yielded unremarkable results. Still no shadows just beneat the waves.

I suppose I need to Google for information on exactly how translation and rotation work with light sources in DirectX 9.

If I still canoot get some worthy results, it would seem that editing other files may be called for.

[TheDarkWraith]

Could be they're simple DLL files or maybe some sort of scripting language.

I think they're simple DLL files actually. Just from the bits and pieces I see when viewing them with a hex editor gives me this idea. From my assembly programming days they appear to have assembly segment 'parts':

text....;.......@.................. ..`.rdata..d....P.......P..............@..@.data.. .............................@....reloc

it appears there is a text segment, rdata segment, data segment, and reloc segment.

[Madox58]

They act in several different ways.
They have a table that directs each block much as standard files.
But they are also designed to interact with Kashmir.
Kashmir, as we know, can edit the act files, and other files
in Sh3 and SH4.

So if you have Kashmir?
You fire it up,
it reads all the SH? files and you go on your merry way.
Much of the code in the ACT files is interface stuff.

It tells Kashmir how to display the key information.
(Can you say interface?)

What more do you need to know?
:03:

[Reece]

(Can you say interface?)Now that's rubbing it in-to-face!:har:
Sorry I couldn't help myself!:oops::03:

[UberTorpedo]

Ouote:

"So if you have Kashmir?
You fire it up..."

Ahhh, yes. Best Led Zeppelin song ever :rotfl:
youtube link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73dvrir5kig&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideosearch%3 Fq%3Dled%2Bzepplin%26um%3D1%26ie%3DUTF-8%26ei%3D-uvCSZLVKomQtQOH2OnjBg%26sa%3DX%26oi%3Dvi&feature=player_embedded)

[Anvart]

They act in several different ways.
They have a table that directs each block much as standard files.
But they are also designed to interact with Kashmir.
Kashmir, as we know, can edit the act files, and other files
in Sh3 and SH4.

So if you have Kashmir?
You fire it up,
it reads all the SH? files and you go on your merry way.
Much of the code in the ACT files is interface stuff.

It tells Kashmir how to display the key information.
(Can you say interface?)

What more do you need to know?
:03:
Greetings Privateer.
I'm glad to see you!
...
This thread still ruminates about problem of past years (2005... 2006) ...?
Modders of past years have not wanted to expend time for this bug of Dev's ...
"Овчинка выделки не стоит ..." - russian saying ...
*.act - dynamic library ...
If it's interestingly possible to look import\export of executed files using the native Widows tool ... "Dependency Walker" (depends.exe) ...
For the best presentation it is necessary to use "Undecorate C++ functions" ...
You must use "Application Profiling to Detect Dynamic Dependencies" for more detailed review (for dynamic libraries) ...
Simply load sh3.exe, run application profiling and play in game some time ... and then look functions ...

As example: fragment (kernel.dll - one of the main files):
...
void cEngAnswer::CreateClones(struct sObject *)
void sAssocTable::Set(unsigned int,unsigned int)
void sCamera::EnableSpecular(bool,float)
sOcclusionQuery::sOcclusionQuery(void)
Transform3D::Transform3D(bool)
cEngAnswer::cEngAnswer(int)
sAutoList::sAutoList(struct sAutoList * *)
sAutoPointer::sAutoPointer(void)
sCamera::sCamera(struct sObject *,struct sGeometry *,float,float,float,float,float,float,float,float)
sController::sController(struct sController &)
sController::sController(struct sRuntimeInstance * *)
sGeometry::sGeometry(struct sRuntimeInstance * *)
sMaterial::sMaterial(struct sMaterial &)
void EngFree(void *)
int sTextureManager::Eval(void)
void FastNormalize(float (&)[3],float (&)[3])
struct sRuntimeInstance * sRuntimeInstance::FindByID(unsigned int,unsigned int,unsigned char)
struct sRefTarget * sRefTarget::FindByName(char *)
void GetBezierCoefs(struct Quat &,float,float,float,float)
unsigned int sAutoList::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sController::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sGeometry::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sMaterial::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sObject::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sOcclusionQuery::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sRefTarget::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sRuntimeInstance::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sSectorAlignedBox::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sVectorController::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sVertexProgram::GetClassID(void)
unsigned int sVirtual::GetClassID(void)
void Transform3D::GetColumn(float (&)[3],int)
char * sRuntimeClass::GetData(struct sRuntimeInstance *,int,int *)
char * sRuntimeClass::GetData(struct sRuntimeInstance *,int,int *)
char * sRuntimeClass::GetData(struct sRuntimeInstance *,int,int *)
char * sRuntimeInstance::GetData(int,int *)
float GetDefBezierTangents(float *,int,int,int,float *)
struct sRuntimeClass * sRuntimeClass::GetRuntimeClass(char *)
void GetScreenPixels(int,int,int,int,void *,enum PixelFormat *,enum DataType *)
struct sTexture * sTextureManager::GetTexture(char *)
void GetViewport(int &,int &)
struct sRuntimeInstance * GlobalFind(unsigned int *)
struct sAssocTable sAssocTable::GlobalRepository
struct sRuntimeInstance * sObject::HFindByID(unsigned int,unsigned int,unsigned char,int)
struct sObject * sObject::HierarchySweep(struct sVirtual *,unsigned int,int)
struct sObject * sObject::globallist
struct sRuntimeInstance * sRuntimeInstance::globallist
struct sRuntimeClass * sRuntimeClass::list
struct sPixelShader * sMaterial::pGlobalPixelShader
unsigned int sObject::sFrame
:rotfl:

P.S.
It's not exact tool, but the general (or common?) kind of functions you will see ...
Besides using this method ("Application Profiling") you can see errors in work of sh3 on your machine (as example, your video don't work correctly with game shaders) and also absence (loss) of some files (textures, for example) ...
P.P.S.
Very long post therefore has reduced in 2 times ...

[TheDarkWraith]

@Anvart:

Ever seen this before:

00:00:00.203: GetProcAddress(0x7C800000 [c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL], "FlsAlloc") called from "c:\program files\ubisoft\silenthunteriii\MSVCR71.DLL" at address 0x7C341950 and returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127).
00:00:00.203: GetProcAddress(0x7C800000 [c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL], "FlsGetValue") called from "c:\program files\ubisoft\silenthunteriii\MSVCR71.DLL" at address 0x7C34195D and returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127).
00:00:00.203: GetProcAddress(0x7C800000 [c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL], "FlsSetValue") called from "c:\program files\ubisoft\silenthunteriii\MSVCR71.DLL" at address 0x7C34196A and returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127).
00:00:00.203: GetProcAddress(0x7C800000 [c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL], "FlsFree") called from "c:\program files\ubisoft\silenthunteriii\MSVCR71.DLL" at address 0x7C341977 and returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127).

Is there something wrong with my c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL?
Nice little tool you have shown also :up:

It's also interesting what happens with you try to run a 'modified' SH3.EXE with this tool. It terminates the application saying that a debugger is in use and for you to shut it down and then retry :hmmm:

[CapZap1970]

Anvart:
What prog are u using?
Could you please provide more details on how to use it?
Thank you :up:
CapZap

[TheDarkWraith]

Anvart:
What prog are u using?
Could you please provide more details on how to use it?
Thank you :up:
CapZap

do a google search for depends.exe ("Dependency Walker"). The best way I've found to use it is to do more google searching on it (how to use), reading the help file, and experimenting.

[SquareSteelBar]

do a google search for depends.exe ("Dependency Walker"). The best way I've found to use it is to do more google searching on it (how to use), reading the help file, and experimenting.You can find it e.g. on your WindowsXP Setup CD in SUPPORT\TOOLS\SUPPORT.CAB [depends.exe & depends.hlp].

[Anvart]

Yes, SquareSteelBar is absolutely right! ... + (small note: depends.exe & depends.dll & depends.hlp) ...
You can find the program on a Windows distributive disk or make Google search as RB ...


@Anvart:
Ever seen this before:

00:00:00.203: GetProcAddress(0x7C800000 [c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL], "FlsAlloc") called from "c:\program files\ubisoft\silenthunteriii\MSVCR71.DLL" at address 0x7C341950 and returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127).
00:00:00.203: GetProcAddress(0x7C800000 [c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL], "FlsGetValue") called from "c:\program files\ubisoft\silenthunteriii\MSVCR71.DLL" at address 0x7C34195D and returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127).
00:00:00.203: GetProcAddress(0x7C800000 [c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL], "FlsSetValue") called from "c:\program files\ubisoft\silenthunteriii\MSVCR71.DLL" at address 0x7C34196A and returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127).
00:00:00.203: GetProcAddress(0x7C800000 [c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL], "FlsFree") called from "c:\program files\ubisoft\silenthunteriii\MSVCR71.DLL" at address 0x7C341977 and returned NULL by thread 1. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127).

Is there something wrong with my c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL?

Don't worry, your Kernel32.dll such as at all of us ... it's Windows discrepancies ...
Look not red (not system) errors ...

Nice little tool you have shown also :up:

It's also interesting what happens with you try to run a 'modified' SH3.EXE with this tool. It terminates the application saying that a debugger is in use and for you to shut it down and then retry :hmmm:

It's xxx protection ...
Try to use changing of depends.exe attributes (name, window class or something else) or other neutralisation of protection
(as example: with NoCD - no prob's) ...
This pic after short playing in profiling mode:

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/7645/depwalker.jpg

And
interesting to look some programs ...
The link is removed as limited (of topic) on time publication ...

P.S.
and Close F.A.Q. ... it's theme not for this Forum ...
read program Help ...

[CapZap1970]

Got it!!! :up:
Thk a lot RB.
CapZap

[NGT]

It's StarForce protection ...
Try to use changing of depends.exe attributes (name, window class or something else) or other neutralisation of protection
(as example, with NoCD - no prob's) ...
...

Hello everybody, and sorry for the interruption of experts discussion, but:

I have LEGAL CD without StarForce protection:

From Cenega distributors / www. sklep.cenega.pl

Barcode: 5 907671 210811

If somebody want, I can sent the sh3.exe (2280 kb).

I have sh3.exe with StarForce too, 968 kb, but with sh3.dll (11476 kb)

The legal free version without StarForce have not this sh3.dll.

Some people here, like Denis469, from Russia, uses together the big sh3.exe AND the sh3.dll

Thank you Racerboy, Anvart, Privateer and everybody for trying improve this game :salute:

...and sorry for incomprehensible English...

[Madox58]

Nice program suggestion Anvart.
:up:

I use IDA Pro myself.
It allows you to run SH3 inside the program.
And by useing 2 screens, I can watch the code execution,
line by line.

Then I can set break points, telling the Game to stop where ever I want.
This is a great way to work on DLL intercepts.

[TheDarkWraith]

Yes Anvarts link to other 'tools' was a most excellent link! :yeah:
Now I have come to another 'problem'....anyone know where one can find verbose definition lists to MFCxx.dlls? I'm not talking about the standard MFCxx.def files, I'm looking for more verbose ones that actually give you more insight into what the ordinals do. Anyone??

[tonschk]

Weird mess of dynamic shadows ,the machine gun cast two times in two differents decks the same shadow ,I hope someday I will be able to fix this kind of problems

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z58/tonschk/messweird.jpg

[Anvart]

Nice program suggestion Anvart.
:up:

I use IDA Pro myself.
It allows you to run SH3 inside the program.
And by useing 2 screens, I can watch the code execution,
line by line.

Then I can set break points, telling the Game to stop where ever I want.
This is a great way to work on DLL intercepts.
Yeah, my friend ...
It's right ...
I have it too ... and not only it ... ;)

[Anvart]

...
I'm looking for more verbose ones that actually give you more insight into what the ordinals do. Anyone??
May be i have not understood ...
You about books as "MFC Programming ..." by Herbert Shildt ...
or about Microsoft.com ... developers section ...
or about help for Visual Studio (or other C/C++ compilers) ...

[clouclou]

Where is this research, which promised fun for games?
Claude.

[ArnoldR]

So, SH3 is designed to display shadows, but nobody ever succeeded to make them work properly... This game is really disappointing... Every day, I understand better why it is so cheap! This is just a botched game made in a rush...
:Kaleun_Sick:

[Ktl_KUrtz]

So, SH3 is designed to display shadows, but nobody ever succeeded to make them work properly... This game is really disappointing... Every day, I understand better why it is so cheap! This is just a botched game made in a rush...
Kaleun_Sick:
The game developer's do not care, it is just a product to be got out just as soon as it is saleable!
Anything of value in Silent Hunter III has been done by the mod community.
:Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:

[tonschk]

I think SH3 has enabled just core shadows not cast shadows


https://www.hostpic.org/images/2202041828220303.jpg (https://www.hostpic.org/view.php?filename=2202041828220303.jpg)

[Anvart]

I think everyone knows that 'dynamic' shadows were only in the first version of the game. In the next version of the game, they were no longer there. The reason is absolutely not correct work with submarines. Back in the first half of 2005, players who had the next version of the game and wanted to test shadows were replacing (or adding a renamed) SH3Controllers.act file.
The file SH3Controllers.act (as SH3_DynamicShadow) of the first version you can find in my Public Folder.

[tonschk]

I think everyone knows that 'dynamic' shadows were only in the first version of the game. In the next version of the game, they were no longer there. The reason is absolutely not correct work with submarines. Back in the first half of 2005, players who had the next version of the game and wanted to test shadows were replacing (or adding a renamed) SH3Controllers.act file.
The file SH3Controllers.act (as SH3_DynamicShadow) of the first version you can find in my Public Folder.


Thank you Anvart :yeah::salute::up:,

Here is some sort of explanation about how to code dynamic shadows ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVG6kEEAGA0

[John Pancoast]

Dynamic shadows would be nice but I'd rather see the myriad of game play problems fixed first vs. *another* graphical item.

[Mister_M]

Dynamic shadows don't add a lot of "eye candy" in SH3, and they are buggy anyway. I think that SH3 is just not good enough to create "realistic" environmental scenes. Particule effects are also very limited.

Unlike some others I believe in sharing information that I find. The more heads looking into this the better IMO (I thought the attitude had changed around here - I see nothing ever changes as always).

:agree: