Interesting Shadows

[richardphat]

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

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!

[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.

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]

Originally Posted by privateer

...
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.

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!


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

[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]

Originally Posted by IFRT-WHUFC

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.

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):


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.


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.

[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?