Fan Ages on the Gehn Shard

[Annabelle]

I didn't want to bother much Justintime with that matter if he wouldn't have consider a porting to MOUL environment of his Tsoidahl Prad...

Here it goes. I explored your age thoroughly as I'm a big fan of it. If you remember well I already told you about some design flaws and you answered back to me: "you are cheating because normally we cannot explore this or that area." First thing, I never use /jump command or flymode inside Tsoidahl Prad. It's far too easy to use normal jumps to do so.

The whole idea behind my post is to expose you flaws and how I succesfully manage to exit normally out of normal areas in URU:CC environment because in a MOUL environment, it will be a lot easier and you have to expect that your age won't stay confined in Gehn Shard. Usually, the fan ages are then ported to other servers private or public like TOC and your "limits" will be crossed more easily exposing these flaws.


1st issue: The "holes" generated by the door opening in the study room (linking spot)

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As you can see & experience if you try it, the door room opening makes the whole walls behave strangely. If you run-jump against them, they just let you go thru. Beyond the bookshelf, only void awaits you. Beyond the 2nd "magic door", there's a narrow solid ledge. From there, it's exploration time.

2nd issue: The conflicting sceneries

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You already told me in a past discussion that "SINCE" we cannot go there which I'm not in accordance with since I'm going there in a blink of an eye you wouldn't work on this conflict between sceneries. You should really try to find a solution because it's just weird. Anyone with good spatial abilities could be figuring out there's a flaw there even without exiting the building. You cannot have a flat outer wall on the balcony side if you have a huge courtyard beside, it's one or the other.

3rd: Minor issues to be addressed too

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We cannot see it on the picture unfortunately but there are really 2 conflict zones on each side making the texture dancing, it is eye disturbing

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As I'm stating, in MOUL environment, there will be a lot of folks up where I am. If I can go and explore extensively there without any cheat, beware on MOUL environment... You should try to enhance the lighting in that part because it's pitch dark without the command /lite to make ourself glow

I might repeat myself here but it's an important thing to consider: in URU:CC, I don't mind much for corrections as the possibilities to explore are narrower and you have to be more skilled to approach skydiving in that environment. Porting this age as is on MOUL environment will reveal these issues to a wider skydivers and afficionados audience. It would be great if you could find time to look at them and try to fix them.

[Sirius]

We should always ask you to beta-test Ages, Annabelle...

Physics in Fan-Ages often are a bit weird. Authors generally don't care much about creating a 'clean', low-poly collision mesh. It's a bit annoying when you are colliding with a wall that's 10 feet away (as in most Cyan Ages), but it does avoid a huge number of holes. Plus there's always this error with physics properties which makes climbing a flat plane a challenge when it's 10° to horizontal.

Don't take it personally, Justintime. Tsoidahl Prad is actually one of the Ages I like most, and I would love to see it with better lighting, etc.

[Justintime9]

Wow, thanks for the analysis Anabelle! I can definitely see how those things could be a problem in MOUL. And I still wonder how you figured out that thing about the "secret door." lol (Maybe I'll make it an easter egg... ). Anyway, I'll probably take a very close look at all the areas that need improvement. Beginning with lighting and textures, and then going on to the more technical things. I can sort of see your point about the belcony problem... if you haven't figured it out already, the point of the courtyard disappearing from the balcony view is just for it to look better... but perhaps you're right that people may notice the spacial inconsistency. I had just hoped people would assume they had just underestimated the distance. But I do think I use the visregions a bit excessively.

And another thing, what do you guys think I should do with that "secret tunnel" behind the firemarble machine? I feel like it could be a lot cooler than it is, and that journal is kind of boring. lol

[Justintime9]

Ok, here's an update. I'm basically finished working on the office now. So just to give an idea:

BEFORE:



AFTER:



As you can see I've made quite a bit of progress. I'd appreciate some advice though. Do you think I should put something above the desk? The wall there just looks so bare. The problem is, I don't know what. Another tapestry would be redundant... maybe a painting? Oh, and for whoever is in charge of Deep Island, I'd appreciate it if you would make it public now. (rather than only accessible through Zefora.) So I can sort of build interest in the project. Bring it out of obscurity.

[Annabelle]

I would suggest you to ask Diafero with an email to diafero @ arcor.de, he is the shard admin and he should respond very fast.

A painting would be great because yes it looks bare.

I find that prettier except I'm not an expert on shadow & lighting, maybe wait for further input.

[Calena]

If you don't mind, I'll give you my opinion. Please keep in mind this is only my opinion based on what appeals to me personally, so take it for what it's worth. Use what you like, discard what you disagree with .

Personally, I look for believability. I like the lighting behind the desk. That wall looks good. Everything else looks out of place. I can't decide if you just haven't finished the lighting or you did that on purpose. The desk isn't lit, but the ceiling and far walls are? Even the bookshelves look as if they're receiving light. Where is it coming from? There are times when I'm not certain how a room should look that I've actually taken a lamp into a room at night and turned it on to study the effect it has on the entire room. That's what I like to see. In my mind, those two lamps should have enough light to comfortably work at that desk and no more. If I wanted the rest of the room lit, I'd put another light source somewhere.

When I place lighting in a scene, I understand I have to set every single object in the scene to receive and cast shadows according to the light in the room. Everything means just that. Every piece of paper, every pen, every wall, book, nook and cranny. Set the lights up and then bake the entire scene to reflect the lighting and always bake at least two images; one for ambient occlusion, which will give you the subtleties and one for shadows.

This age is already very good IMO. With the right upgrades, you can make it look absolutely gorgeous.

[GPNMilano]

I have my own suggestions, and this goes against pretty much everything in this thread about lighting. Unless you're doing an outdoors scene, you should never use light to cast shadow in Uru for anything but the avatar and animated objects. Ever. Cyan's ages look awesome, because with a few acceptions, they didn't use lights in the scene to light the objects, just the avatar. When something is animated (A swinging light, flag, anything that's meant to move and cast shadows) then the object should be lighted with the avatar. But everything else should not. Indoor scenes especially. Cyan's ages look good because they used 3dsMax lights to bake vertex colors onto the object. So the scene was lighted not in the engine but in 3dsMax and that lighting was exported into Uru. With indoor scens they used lightmaps for the floors, and created their own shadow decals for objects that weren't animated. This included outdoor scenes. There were exceptions where this wasn't the case (Eder Gira and Kemo, and the Cleft) They did this even in Myst V.

WIth PYPRP 1.6 that means if you want the same realism you'll have to hand vertex paint the scene, but it will look SO MUCH BETTTER. In your scene justin, i'd suggest vertex painting all but the floor. The floor should have a light map. then for the objects on the desk, putting small shadow decals for them. That would give you the best lighting for an interior space.

[Calena]

Cyan didn't use baked AO maps because 3dsMax7 is so old, it wasn't capable of baking the maps. Since I have all the sofware to experiment with the different techniques, I did a few tests. IMHO, the best results came from using both.

In-game comparison:

Shading Comparisons

1 - Max7 vertex shading only

2 - AO (low def) only

3 - Both auto vertex shading and AO mapping

We can also use better textures today because we aren't building for circa 2000 computers. The required specs for gameplay stated on Cyan's website calls for a GPU with 32Mb of memory. My GPU's are all 1Gb. I don't know if you could even find a 32Mb GPU card to purchase in this day and age.

[Sirius]

Isn't Justin already using baked shadows here ?
In any case, using dynamic lighting for objects will immediately be felt on low end computers. Plus Uru's lighting system is quite ugly: the shadows are sharp, and it doesn't feel natural for complex objects IMO.

With PYPRP 1.6 that means if you want the same realism you'll have to hand vertex paint the scene, but it will look SO MUCH BETTTER.

You don't need to paint the vertices by hand; providing you disable your material's texture, Blender will do it automatically when creating a new vertex color buffer (though it won't include shadows, except in blender 2.6 IIRC).
Vertex painting is really the fastest, cheapest way to simulate light so that it's good-looking enough.

About shadows, the "correct" way to do them is indeed using lightmaps for the whole receiving object, or creating a decal. Cyan artists didn't use a lot lightmaps, because as Calena said, most PCs didn't have enough GPU memory for so many textures. And the impact on performances is slightly higher than vertex color.

[Justintime9]

@Calena, I do see what you mean about the lighting. The top of the desk is lit decently, but I can definitely see that it should be much brighter. The base of the desk seems believable IMO, because the lamps are on TOP of the desk, and thus cannot quite reach the base. However, there is actually a THIRD light in the room. On the ceiling is a yellow light. That's why the shadow at the desk's base has a yellowish tint. I tried to make the effects of that lamp a bit more subtle. (keeping the blue dominant.)

And regarding your lighting strategy, I'll confess, I do it a lot simpler. I set up the lights, make sure all the settings are right, they can cast shadows, etc. Then I lightmap the individual objects. The top of the desk, the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Mostly I use larger images now. (1000 x 1000, or 2000 x 2000.) I've only just now begun to experiment with Lightmaps. So I don't really know what to use Ambient occlusion for, or how I would go about using TWO separate lightmaps. Of course if it would give a better result, I'll certainly try it.

@GPNMilano, I actually am using a few vertex paint decal shadows in the room. It is subtle, but in the corners of the room, and under such objects as the stool and desk lamps, I have those shadows. Aside from that, I haven't done much with vertex paint. I can see how it could be powerful, but because the objects need to have a LOT of vertices to paint anything that looks halfway decent, I don't want to risk causing lag. How do you do it? Paint all the shadows with vertex paint?

@Sirius, I can see that my strategy may be a problem then. I pretty much lightmapped EVERYTHING in Tsoidahl Prad. Down to the smallest objects. Probably not the best plan, but that's the way that's worked for me thus far. Probably the size of my lightmaps could cause lag for low end users too.

In any case, a lot of what's being saying goes a bit over my head, but I'm always open to new ideas. I actually had an interesting idea... considering all the discussion and critique here, perhaps I should create a "beta testing" thread, where I'll post my latest version of the age, and you guys can get a closer look at things and give better critiques. Plus, by getting critiques AS I work, I wont' have to go back and change things when I actually release it.