Update:

Reworked campaign "Western Approaches"
No more find and sink 2 Cruisers if you don't want too:up:

nice:up:

Hey, TDW, how is the new set of textures looking for you?

Sorry, haven't looked yet :oops:. Too busy adding damage smoke to every compartment on the sub :D I'll look at it now :up:

Hey, you take your time with that, I have been waiting for that for a long time.

@Zedi, the shadow map itself has rust on it! Let me whip up a map without the rust and see if that solves the mystery of the unwanted rust.

Thanks you so much for this SteelViking. If you can do these improvements on all units, then finally these ships will fit the sh5 fleet.
Who knows.. maybe one day you guys can find a way to add shadows and the transparency of the ship hull underwater so there will be absolutely no difference between any ship.

When a GR2 unit is rendered the game engine adds the verticies of the unit that are underwater to a depth map. This depth map is then used in the water pixel shader to determine whether that pixel is deep water color or the color of the ship that is underwater (it is linearly interpolated). No such thing exists for DAT rendered units. That is why you can't 'see' them underwater from above water. I made a revised water pixel shader that made them show but it's not perfect. It will take modifying the sh5.exe to do it correctly.

Thanks for the files Steelviking! I made another test, quick test, but I can't see much difference... :88) Am I missing something? Maybe some screenshots? The one big thing that separates these ships form SH 5 ships, is the light/dark side. SH5 has really big contrast, but here it's almost the same... What do you think TDW, you have been looking at these ships some time too?

Well I'll get back on this soon, have to go now. But great work everyone :yeah:.

Yes I have same problem. Can't tell much of a difference at all :hmmm:

Lets wait for the results on the shadow map from SteelViking.
The big improvement so far is that finally the new ships are not white like some hospital ships.

Okay, if you can't tell the difference with that one, let me make one that ya can't miss.:know:

Okay fellas, apply this and look at the NMFMPC and see if you can tell the difference.:haha:

http://www.mediafire.com/?yf5sxgv1ovqa691

@Zedi, I am almost done removing the rust. It was coming from the shadow map like I thought.

Here is the NMFMPC shadow map with no rust(well, very little), just apply in JSGME over the campaign mod and take a look.

http://www.mediafire.com/?3row13gbtsdc4m7

Its oke now, no rust. So finally this a solved issue.
Light/dark sides are visible but not so much. The ship is still a too much bright compared to the sh5 ships and at night is very visible even from great distances. Here is a comparison, pics taken at morning when the sun is low:

Looking in to the sun direction. Notice the shadows from flag and guns, only objects that cast shadows.
http://i1232.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1305393884

Looking from the other side. There is not much of difference.
http://i1232.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1305393885

But there are some dark/light area, for example on the deck
http://i1232.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1305393886

I cannot figure out how come I can see the ship hull under water in single missions but none in campaign.. :nope:

Well, there is the situation:

I can make the ship darker, that is no problem.

The certain parts of the deck are dark(like where overhangs are) are coming right from the shadow map. I can do anything we want in regards to that.

However, one side of the ship being brighter than the other, I cannot fix with shadow maps. I didn't even realize that was happening.:hmmm:

We need to find a way to add dynamic shadows to the ship, that would put the non-sunny side in the dark.

Yes, agreed! You know, I have wasted maybe 6 hours looking into this, in S3D there are just the right tools to edit explicit materials. We can darken the diffuse color and lighten the specular color to make more contrast. Here is one example:

http://i1138.photobucket.com/albums/...nels/white.jpg

and the other side:

http://i1138.photobucket.com/albums/...nels/black.jpg

So both pictures are from the same ship. I can darken shadows and brighten reflections to adjust the look to more SH 5 style. What makes me mad is that I get good results in S3 editor, but I never get any changes to show in game. I have tried just about any material combination and order, embedded textures or not... It looks to me that these settings just don't work in SH 5.

What looks great in SH 4 is just too bright in SH 5.:damn:

It's because of the vertex and pixel shaders for the Unified Render Controller. I'm almost 100% certain :yep:

Exactly, I didn't expect what would work for SH4 to work here. That is why shadow maps are the way to do things. They are in the SH5 files for a reason, lets use them. I have shown that they can be used to do anything in regards to lighting except gradients from light side to dark side.

@TDW, I think you are right, but before you spend time on the URC, lets look into getting dynamic shadows to work.

If we can get dynamic shadows to render, I see all of our problems being solved on this issue.

Then the ships hulls not rendering under water when viewed from the top needs tackled.

Dynamic shadows, reflections, and related items are for Granny files only. The devs didn't take these items into account when they added DAT functionality :nope:

The reflection passed to the pixel shader from the game engine for DAT units is blank :shifty: There's one reason I know this.

I've explained why the ship's hulls are not rendering underwater when viewed from above water. If you want to dive into the sh5.exe and figure this out go for it :up: