[Zacam]

per pixel lighting with speculars, bump and parallax maps.

Well, that part is done. :-D

[ION3]

Ambient occlusion for nebula missions can be precomputed. And stored as an ambient light map, which adds to the diffuse lighting. Alternatively the diffuse could already be baked into the ambient light map. (only works with original texture coordinates) (popably not good for most models for that reason) (especially not for capships which use tiling)

[qazwsx]

Actually, quite a few ships use AO bakes in their diffuse textures now, I know a lot of recently made ones do.

[Pottuvoi]

Albedo or diffuse map should not be combined with ambient occlusion map as it makes the result look muddy. (meaning multiplying ambient on top of diffuse into the RPG channels.)
The problem is that previously white surface is now dark gray in direct light, same happens to all colors.

Ambient occlusion should be it's own channel or channels which masks ambient light. (Best result would be direction aware occlusion of ambient.)

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Albedo or diffuse map should not be combined with ambient occlusion map as it makes the result look muddy. (meaning multiplying ambient on top of diffuse into the RPG channels.)
The problem is that previously white surface is now dark gray in direct light, same happens to all colors.

Isn't that only when you apply the AO bake to the shinemap?

[ION3]

Albedo or diffuse map should not be combined with ambient occlusion map as it makes the result look muddy.

Yes. But that's common practice at the moment. Ambient occlusion is for ambient light, meaning non-directional. Like light from a nebula. The diffuse map shouldn't contain ambient occlusion, as that reduces the quality of direct light computations. (sunlight)

The only case where nebula light is directional is when you are close to some big object, which blocks the light.

If the move to adding support for seperate ambient oclusion maps in the engine is somwhere in the future, modelers should at least keep the maps seperated somewhere on their hard drives, so they can be added later. Or the mvp team can store them somwhere.

The other thing is that, for artistic reasons, a lot of modelers propably want ambient oclusion on their ships even for missions which don't take place in a nebula.

Something else: Why don't we have specular power maps?

Isn't that only when you apply the AO bake to the shinemap?

Why should anyone add ambient occlusion to the shinemap?

[chief1983]

Isn't that only when you apply the AO bake to the shinemap?

Why should anyone add ambient occlusion to the shinemap?

Actually, I'm not sure that sounds like a horrible idea.  I'm curious how that would come out.

[pecenipicek]

i find it bizzare how uneducated the last few posts have been on the usage of pre-baked AO and the usage of it in the context of texturing and the limitations of that particular technique.



also, i find it bizzare that this thread of mine resurfaced after almost a year of stagnation...

[Kolgena]

Year of stagnation? Does that mean that you haven't had the time to make some headway into this? That's unfortunate

And yeah, some of the above AO comments read like something off of yahoo answers...

[General Battuta]

I don't think pece is a coder.

[pecenipicek]

nope. i was trying to figure out heads from tails for that and failed miserably, and just let this slide. i fail as a coder, but i do okay as a modeller. so yeah.

[ION3]

i find it bizzare how uneducated the last few posts have been on the usage of pre-baked AO and the usage of it in the context of texturing and the limitations of that particular technique.

Are you talking about my post? Would you care to educate me?

I should add, that my comment was not about using ambient occlusion to visualize detail that is only on the texture. I was talking about using it to reinforce the appearance of geometry which is modeled with polygons. With techniques like horizon mapping and normal mapping things are different of course.

[Pottuvoi]

This reminds me, has anyone tried to simulate a light coming from glowmap with proper GI and output it as a glowmap?
This is something that multiple UVs would help a lot, but with unique texturing for a ship it can already be tested.

This is a trick that wouldn't cost anything(outside a UV), but would give a nice shape and give a feel of local lights and interreflection to the ship.

Something like volume PRT vould be a nice way to do this and inter reflection to other ships, but it would require some deep planning and rewrite of code. (directional (5d?) texture on octree is a funny thing.. )

[pecenipicek]

This reminds me, has anyone tried to simulate a light coming from glowmap with proper GI and output it as a glowmap?

*points at the iceni in the most recent MVP's*

[Kolgena]

HTL Hattie is also an example of this.

[Pottuvoi]

Nice.. need to check them out.

[Luis Dias]

What about straightforward shadows? Not rushing or anything ...

Like global warming campaigners say, "no pressure"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSTLDel-G9k

[Kolgena]

Straightforward shadows as opposed to what?

[torc]

any upgrade regarding shadows?

[Angelus]

nope. the coder, who's supposed to work on it, hasn't joined yet, thus he/ she hasn't started to work on it.
All other coders have other stuff on their plate.