new game engine for uru?

[andylegate]

Andy, I think it's really neat what you're doing, but I can't lie, I think the lighting in Uru looks much better. Gira already has shadows and dynamic lighting and it looks better than it does in the new engine. Gira almost looks like SecondLife in your screenshot (albeit the better-looking parts of SecondLife).

"This" Show Spoiler

vs
This:
http://www.mystwear.com/graphics/Eder_Gira/

Everyone has a right to their opinion, but comparing CryEngine to SecondLife? Blah...........

You are right. In Plasma Gira, and other Ages do have Dynamic lighting, and some shadows. Gira does not have Dynamic shadows. It has static shadow decals. Visibility of said decals are slowly removed as night falls, and returns as day light returns.

The shadows in CryEngine are dynamic and real time, for all objects. They don't fade out, they move. Because, the night time phase of CryEngine, you have moon light, which is also dynamic, and the moon light also casts shadows, and they move with the moon too.

The picture you cite (and the others I posted) there is only one light: The sun. I've not put in any other lights, as I've only worked on this for 3 days. It's very much a WIP.

The plants in CryEngine move when you brush them. They move in the wind (sort of like MOUL's Grass Shader Mod, except this one is a bit more random, and you have both Global Wind, and Local Wind that you can put in, trigger, and have change). Matter of fact, if you want a LOT Of wind, you can even put in a Tornado.....Would that be something? Solve the puzzle to get into the basement before the twister gets ya!

But I would never dream of trying to convert you from Plasma to something else. You have shown that you are a very loyal Plasma person (and there's nothing wrong with that of course), and as such you have spent a lot of time making tools for Plasma.

But to compare CryEngine to SecondLife? Okay, my pic of my work maybe, as I am definately not the worlds best artist, but still.......







I'd say SecondLife doesn't hold a flame anywhere near it....................

[Chacal]

If Second Life looked like that, maybe I would have registered...
Andy, I find your experiments absolutely fascinating.

[andylegate]

hehehe, yah, I think I would have signed up too!

Here's another experiment for you to look at. I never did get around to trying an Outside scene with Unreal's SDK. Here's a video, taken with FRAPS while in the SDK Editor using the testing function.

Please note: This is something I threw together in just a few hours tonight after testing the moving platform you see me jump to. Just some meshes from Gahreesen thrown in, with just the diffused textures (no bump maps or other special shading put in). Stock sky box, stock sun light, nothing fancy. I didn't even bother to hide the collider I'm standing on at first. Note the dynamic shadow of the moving platform, then I jump to it. This is using Unreal's Mover Entity. You are not pinned to it, you can walk around on the platform just fine. I thought the way it looks wasn't too bad really:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt5rbJM_HQU

[Paradox]

Looking more closely at Andy's screenshot, beyond the dynamic shadows (which look great) and the water (which also looks pretty good), I can kinda see what Lontahv might be getting at. Maybe it's the light colour or the light intensity, but it seems to make things appear a bit flat.

An issue that Gira avoids with lighting is that it is already set up for fully dynamic lighting. The vertex paint on all the meshes is black.
With other Ages, most of the lighting is painted onto the mesh, and switching to dynamic lighting would really destroy some of the existing content if the content weren't also updated to handle RT lighting.

On the subject of cool things that we'd like to implement, I know we would love to see better real-time shadows that don't murder the CPU, and per-pixel real-time deferred lighting is something that has been discussed. Ideally though, we want to move the entire engine over to OpenGL before implementing any new graphical features, so that we don't end up re-implementing them when adding cross-platform support.
The other issue at the moment is that both graphics and physics need replacing, but branan is the only guy we've got right now who is familiar enough with either of them to handle most of the implementation. If you've got experience with Bullet or with GL and C++, you should drop by IRC sometime...

[Deledrius]

Looking more closely at Andy's screenshot, beyond the dynamic shadows (which look great) and the water (which also looks pretty good), I can kinda see what Lontahv might be getting at. Maybe it's the light colour or the light intensity, but it seems to make things appear a bit flat.

The lighting is too bright and intense, I think. It's causing extremely sharp shadows, which while possibly more in line with the climate for the immediate area doesn't exactly mesh with the larger more verdant Gira environment, but most importantly I think there's a subtle mismatch caused by the cracks burned into the stoney texturing all over the Age. The lighting and shadows on those cracks is softer and deeper, something you wouldn't get with such harsh lighting that has proper scattering and bounce. I strongly suspect that's the cause of the visual disparity. Either reducing the sunlight's maximum intensity, or re-working the terrain models and textures to be more detailed (and thus letting the new engine handle the actual bumps/cracks/etc. for light and dark) would go a long way. Just a straight conversion here is going to cause some odd contrasts that are not intended.

[andylegate]

Okay, now both Paradox's and Deledrius comments are a bit more constructive and informative for me (no offense meant to Lontahv, but they're a bit more constructive).

What I can do, and again, this is just a "hey, let's change this and see what happens." idea, and since I'm doing the work, I don't mind, but I can change the rock textures at Gira in CryEngine, and change the bump mapping too. I'll also change the pitch and angle at which the sun is at (which actually, I don't have it lined up at the same angle that is in Uru), and yes, I can change the intensity and color of the sun light too.
I'll also look at the fog setting, since the sun is using volumetric lighting in the first place. We'll see what kinda Gira we can get in CryEngine.

Oh, and Dox; the only experience I have with OpenGL, Bullet and C++ is: OpenGL has something to do with my graphics, Bullets are what I use in my rifles here at home, and when I was in the Navy, and I think I once got a grade of C++ back in high school......

The only programming I know involves an Ax, a Hammer, and very loud and multiple cursing. Results always vary........

[Lontahv]

Andy, I'm sorry if I came off a bit blunt, but the point I was making was exactly what you said in your later post: you can't just throw Uru content into CryEngine and have it look good right off the bat. It takes a lot of tweaking and reworking (you've done an outstanding job but it still needs a huge amount of work to compete with Gira in Plasma). Uru content was made for Uru, and without quite some modifications it will only look its best in the Uru engine. Sun flares and fancy shadows just don't do it for me when the geometry is not well lit overall and textures are being bleached to the point they look fake. I completely agree with you that CryEngine at its best (CryEngine playing Crysis maps, for instance) looks really, really wicked good and can do a lot more graphically than Plasma. However, Gira-in-CryEngine is not to the Gira-in-Plasma bar of quality yet, and until I see it reach that bar I will stay skeptical that a (somewhat simple) Plasma->CryEngine conversion is even feasible.

I think the main issue is the lack of vertex paint (as 'Dox said in his post): this is the main problem SecondLife suffers from graphically. The second issue is the one Deledrius posted about and explained: the textures. CryEngine seems to not be set up to handle textures where black pixels should not get washed out by light (the rock cracks in Gira). To fix the issues with the textures, I think you'd probably have to do what Crysis maps do and actually apply normal-maps (again, some major reworking).

[andylegate]

Okay, here is the actual texture used for the rock faces in Gira:



On close inspection, the rock face itself is speckled, but not like a rough rock surface. More like pixelation instead of colors. This makes me go, Hrrrrmmmmmm. And of course, as was pointed out, the cracks themselves are blurred. This is a problem because in order to make the cracks have depth (making a 2D texture look 3D on a flat surface), you need to use the Bumpmap Offset feature in the material. This is a very cool thing (for those of you that don't know) that makes things like wide cracks or brick mortar actually look like they have depth. When used right, you'd swear someone went in and modeled each and every brick!

But with the cracks blurred like this........

Oh, and adjusting the sun's color and intensity? Sure.........



when I first opened this up, I suddenly thought of the movie Airplane! Where Ted Striker first walks onto the flight deck of the plane and looks at the controls, where the camera pans for like 10 seconds, showing dial, button and lever and switch, but it's like it never ends!

I was like: "eeeep! "

So this will take a bit of messing around with (I looked in the manual.......er......they don't talk about this a whole lot. Just: "Yah, that is where you change stuff....."

[Trylon]

Hmm, that texture shows interesting compression artefacts.
I decomposed it to HSL, and especially in the hue and saturation part, there 's quite some 4x4 blocking going on..

Mmh, maybe I can fix it up... let's see...

EDIT:
here goes, got rid of that pesky hue noise

[andylegate]

Oh cool! Thanks Trylon! That does look better!

And here I was going to re-invent the wheel by trying to find another cracked, orange rock texture....... hehehehehe.