[Nuke]

Table is hands down the best option. Perhaps a flag in the ships.tbl?

id just do a tag that lets you pick the effect, like fs1, fs2, scp, etc. sorry didnt read

would be cool to have scripted as an option too. that uses a hook or set of hooks (like init/on frame/exit), and appropriate hook variables (like viewport position and coords, and currently selected ship class) which can be scripted to draw whatever effect is required. if used without a script you essentially get a blank viewport. probably not as good as shader though.

[The E]

Added to trunk in revision 7382.

To learn how to configure this effect, please see the following wiki pages for details:

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ai_profiles.tbl#.24Default_weapon_select_effect:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ai_profiles.tbl#.24Default_ship_select_effect:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24Selection_Effect:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl#.24Selection_Effect:

A scripting hook will soon be added.

[Valathil]

SEXP triggering
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSki1LMMUpE

[Kolgena]

Nice.

[Commander Zane]

Yes.

[Spoon]

Awesome, its been commited

*Spoon eagerly awaits the next nightly*

Edit: Okay so Kyad gave me a r7384amd build on irc
The Effect looks awesome, but the ai_profile flags (wanted to see the fs1 effect) don't seem to work (yet?)

[Lucika]

Is it possible to somehow use it as a different sort of arrival effect? Obviously with "No Warp Effect" selected on arrival - however, this effect is reversed compared to what I'd need for that.

[MatthTheGeek]

You can easily trick that sexp-wise. Have the ship warp in/spawn far from the map, cloak it, teleport it in the game zone, uncloak it.

[Dragon]

A "start cloaked" checkbox in FRED would be great for that, also, it'd allow such things as cloaked ambushes.

[Lucika]

A "start cloaked" checkbox in FRED would be great for that, also, it'd allow such things as cloaked ambushes.

This.

[DaBrain]

Impressive work again Valathil!

Will we be able to create effects like this ourselves later on? (I.e. keyframed UV translation, or other shader value animations.)

2) Dynamic range

Taken from FS1 cinematic intro.
As you can see all the objects in the view truly appear to be affected by very bright planet they are orbiting, though there is also planet lighting applied and blur, it alone would give better impression of strong lighting in the scenes like planets.

Objects affected by the bright planet? Sounds like Global Illumination.
Well, there is a really cheap trick for an approximization.

It sounds more fancy than it really is.

http://wiki.polycount.com/DiffuselyConvolvedCubeMap?action=show&redirect=Diffusely+Convolved+Cube+Map

A while a ago I've started using this in Shadows of Lylat.

Standard ambient light
This is the example for a simple ambient light and one directional light, comparable to a mission in FS2. Notice it has only one color and there is no light direction, therefore it simply blends over/ignores the normal maps. The bottom side of the cube, which isn't lit by the directional light doesn't show the normal mapping at all, even though it's lit by the ambient light.




Diffusely Convolved Cube Map "lighting"

The same without an ambient light, but with a 'lightmap' (simply the skybox, but blurred) and the same directional light as before.
You can see how the differences in the light colors. From the top it's lit white-ish blue, orange from the sides and the bottom is pretty dark.
On the bottom of the cube you can also see that the cubemap lighting still looks a bit like a reflection, cause it actually still is.

And this is how it looks in-gane.

You can clearly see the top "lighting" from the blue sky and the orange in the middle from the horizon.
The whole ship looks a lot more 'real' and the material looks like it's actually metal.

Only from some angles it still looks a bit like a reflection.



(Ambient factor is 0 and emissive light is turned off...)

This already possible.
However a better approach would be something like this to simulate different environments.
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/06/08/advanced-shading-and-lighting-for-mobile/

[The E]

And I would really appreciate it if you would be so kind as to share your technique for making this.

[DaBrain]

Ah, of course.

Diffusely convolved cube mapping sounds like it's something really complicated, but it's actually something really simple.
You simply use the cube map a bit different.
Instead of using it to simulate world reflections, we use it to simulate ambient lighting.

All you have to do is to blur your cubemap and maybe adjust the brightness and contrast a bit.

With the standard shaders you'll loose your 'reflections'.
Also you'll either have to adust your alpha channel of all specular maps by hand, or add a constant value on top of it in the shaders.

A black alpha channel woud mean no 'ambient lighting'. Depending on how strong you want the fake lighting to be, your entire spec alpha channel should be more or less grey.

A good tool to blur cubemaps (without seams) is CubeMapGen:
http://developer.amd.com/archive/gpu/cubemapgen/pages/default.aspx



On a sidenote: Only normal map haters use ambient lights!

[The E]

So basically, you're using the env map colour as the ambient term?

Look, I really would like to see the actual _implementation_, because I would like to use it as an option in FSO.

[Lucika]

You can easily trick that sexp-wise. Have the ship warp in/spawn far from the map, cloak it, teleport it in the game zone, uncloak it.

That was, the ship would appear way too early on the escort list.

[pecenipicek]

You can easily trick that sexp-wise. Have the ship warp in/spawn far from the map, cloak it, teleport it in the game zone, uncloak it.

That was, the ship would appear way too early on the escort list.

cant you trigger the escort status via sexp's too?

[The E]

You certainly can.

[Dragon]

Still, a "start cloaked" checkbox would make many things easier to FRED, for example a cloaked ambush.
On topic of DCCM: hacked or not, this solution is interesting, I think it'd work great for BP, eliminating the need for dummy "suns" on planets, which hog light sources limit. Of course, it'd be a lot of work to implement.

[Spoon]

So when will we get a working FS1 effect?

[Rodo]

wow wow, give the man a break.