Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Omniscaper on June 19, 2004, 12:31:05 am

Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Omniscaper on June 19, 2004, 12:31:05 am
Scotchy FINIDHED his Galaxy class and I'm converting it this moment. I was just wondering if glow effects are a possibility to compliment the glow maps?

Glows and bumpmapping I think would be the final graphical touch that would perfect FSO's FS miracle package.

I'll have some screenies of the Galaxy up by monday ( got a wedding shoot tomorrow and fathers day celebration Sunday)
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 19, 2004, 02:38:10 am
Which type of glows?
- glows that apply light to nearby ships (Not likely to be implemented)
- glowmaps (Implemented)
- glowpoints (Implemented)
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Turnsky on June 19, 2004, 02:39:50 am
ever play bridge commander, WM?.. he means a sort of "glow" around the brightly lit part of the starships (nacelle glow, etc)
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 19, 2004, 02:42:18 am
Ehm, they look like glowmaps to me. Is there something I'm missing (http://www.gamershell.com/hellzone_Space_Sim_Bridge_Commander.shtml)?
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Trivial Psychic on June 19, 2004, 03:18:03 am
Omni may be refering to overexposure, so that the blue glow from the warp nacelles will give a slight blue haze, even when not viewing the glow sections directly... at least that's what I think he's talking about.
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 19, 2004, 04:48:22 am
Overexposure was implemented awhile back, but the builds aren't up anymore and the sourcecode was never posted.
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: kasperl on June 19, 2004, 05:55:14 am
Dangit.

Sticks is still 'round, isn't he? If he could re-implement it, that would be nice. Perhaps an alpha layer on the glowmap to determine what parts to overexpose.....
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: DaBrain on June 19, 2004, 06:23:57 am
Quote
Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Ehm, they look like glowmaps to me. Is there something I'm missing (http://www.gamershell.com/hellzone_Space_Sim_Bridge_Commander.shtml)?



Yup:

(http://static.computergames.ro/assassin/images/bridgecommander/BridgeCommander2.jpg)

(http://www.gamingfiles.com/screenshots/8/others/98.jpg)

Why is it hard to impelment?
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Setekh on June 19, 2004, 06:51:22 am
Basically, it's not straightforward to separate out the parts of the image that are meant to be overexposed and then apply the filter to them. Go look up the overexposure threads in this forum by Sticks and have a look at the way they're implemented - if you can think of a better way, join the team. ;)
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: DaBrain on June 19, 2004, 06:55:10 am
Is it possible to use overexposure only for the glow maps ?
(And IHMO for the interface ;) )
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Lightspeed on June 19, 2004, 08:16:59 am
and suns.

I think you should have a menu to select WHAT should be overexposed.
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Drew on June 19, 2004, 09:13:08 am
that looks like particals or volume ligting to me
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Flipside on June 19, 2004, 09:41:55 am
Actually, in theory, all it requires is to take the glowmap layer, drop the resolution, blur it, and then render that very faintly over the frame.... in theory.
AFAIK Bloom IS on the SCP's list of things to do.
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Turambar on June 19, 2004, 10:12:32 am
then do it!
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Flipside on June 19, 2004, 10:17:29 am
LOL I'm not a coder, but hold in mind the fact that this would have to happen at least 30 times a second, so it will probably be limited by your graphics card specs ;)
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 19, 2004, 03:06:29 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Setekh
Basically, it's not straightforward to separate out the parts of the image that are meant to be overexposed and then apply the filter to them. Go look up the overexposure threads in this forum by Sticks and have a look at the way they're implemented - if you can think of a better way, join the team. ;)


The problem is, the big one is in the SCP priv forum. For anyone wishing to work on this, I quote Sticks:
Quote
The relevant code is in gr_d3d_start_frame() and gr_d3d_stop_frame as well as gr_d3d_render_buffer. Cheers mate!


I know Bobboau was messing with this, Bob, do you have the ol' tarball around?

Edit: BTW DaBrain, those look worlds better than the ones I was looking at. :D
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: DaBrain on June 20, 2004, 08:02:56 am
Quote
Originally posted by WMCoolmon

Edit: BTW DaBrain, those look worlds better than the ones I was looking at. :D



All thanks to the glows ;)


Edit: A little 1 min mockup ;) (I know it's not very good.)

(http://www.ystart.net/upload/20040620/1087739593.jpg)

Is this the effect ?
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Liberator on June 20, 2004, 04:34:06 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
Actually, in theory, all it requires is to take the glowmap layer, drop the resolution, blur it, and then render that very faintly over the frame.... in theory.
AFAIK Bloom IS on the SCP's list of things to do.


Truly, right now we've got

primary render pass
glow map render pass
spec map render pass

That's 3 render passes for the one image.  Now multiply that by an acceptable frame rate, let's say 30, and that makes 90 images that have to be rendered every second to make the game playable and look like we want it.  If we add Bloom as a 4th render pass that make for 120 images minimum that have to be drawn. That's the minimum.  If you have AA on that doubles or even quadruples to an image count of 480 images per second rendering.  IMO, Something that needs to go to the top of the TO DO list is figuring out a way to reduce the number of render passes so that all that work is done is as few a render passes as possible.  It may require putting the glow and bloom maps into some form of compressed texture that allows multiple versions per file.(see Homeworld 2, their textures have glowmaps and spec maps in the same file.)
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: phreak on June 20, 2004, 07:51:37 pm
im not going to pick out the number of things wrong with that post
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Bobboau on June 20, 2004, 08:11:09 pm
actualy there are only two render passes, defuse/glow and specular, the rendering of the ox layer would be trivial, the bigger problem would probly be a good way to blur the image properly, iirc this was what made the last OX build less than spectacular. (it realy just looked like glow mapps were applyed twice)

I guess I can take a crack at getting this working again, I didn't want to step on Sticks' toes, but he seems to have unapeared
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Liberator on June 20, 2004, 08:19:45 pm
Quote
Originally posted by PhReAk
im not going to pick out the number of things wrong with that post


Enlighten me, I wish to know.

I have been corrected on the render passes, but the AA calculations are correct if you change the base render passes.  AFAIK, 4x Anti-Aliasing is a result of 4 slightly different images being averaged together to eliminate the jaggies that result from drawing in pixels.
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Bobboau on June 20, 2004, 08:39:56 pm
eh, AA I belive (though I may be wrong as I havvn't realy looked into it's implementation) is just a larger resolution being downsized, either that or they have some sort of per pixel thingy going on
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: ShadowDrakken on June 20, 2004, 09:39:16 pm
no clue how software AA is done, but it's stupid to use software AA anyway... hardware AA isn't done with an extra pass normally however, it's done mathematically as each polygon is rendered, except full screen AA, which is done as a simple blur filter before sending the frame to the screen
(btw, yes I know that's over-simplified, it's not just a "blur filter" but a mathematical smoothing)
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Flipside on June 21, 2004, 12:03:03 pm
AFAIK it is as Bobb says, the whole screen is rendered up at double size (for 2x AA) and then condensed down to the correct size, thus eliminating/reducing the hard edges that can appear.

There is a comparative AA technique in Lightwave etc, which compares the pixels with the ones surrounding it, but that would take far too long for gaming needs :(
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Falcon on June 21, 2004, 01:55:25 pm
I tried search for overexposure effects but no luck in finding a dl
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: DaBrain on June 21, 2004, 02:38:09 pm
There never was an DL.
Only a picture in the internals.
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Fineus on June 21, 2004, 03:15:21 pm
And those links are broken unfortunately...
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Turambar on June 21, 2004, 03:20:34 pm
its like some kind of conspiracy...
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 21, 2004, 04:05:51 pm
Quote
Originally posted by DaBrain
There never was an DL.
Only a picture in the internals.


Actually there was a build and source released, but the links to those are broken, as is the site they were on.
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Turambar on June 21, 2004, 04:29:38 pm
its hard-drive scouring time people!

too bad i wasnt around back when this came out, otherwise i'd probably have it
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: ShadowDrakken on June 21, 2004, 06:10:14 pm
Falcon: that's cause as I've said repeatedly, that's not what overexposure is :P that is light blooming... so of course you won't find it as overexposure =-_-=;
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Nico on June 22, 2004, 03:27:46 am
That's neither, that's stupid glow, but the SCP dudes screw naming conventions from the begining :p
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Setekh on June 22, 2004, 06:53:06 am
Quote
Originally posted by Bobboau
he seems to have unapeared


I just realised how much my ability to interpret the English language has improved through my knowing you, Bob. :p
Title: Are glowe effects a future possibility?
Post by: Nico on June 22, 2004, 09:48:48 am
Same goes for me, which is in my case rather funny :p