Posts by AtsEst

Woah, Congrats!

Quote from blackdog

Thanks a lot for the info about the GPU.

Is there a mobile GPU that could work with the Cryengine? Other than an Alienware with SLI cards

Are the workstations i also found in the outlet with ATIs FirePro M with 2gb of GDDR5 rubbish, in terms of gaming?

What about the 650M found in Macbooks?

FirePro is a series of cards (2gb should be enough memory, considering most mobile gpus are slow as it is).

650m should be considerably faster, but don't take my word for it, check out: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-…ards.130.0.html

and look around notebookcheck in general (I found them to have decent reviews and good info all round).

Quote from blackdog

Among the DELLs, this machine struck me, seems pretty good. Pity the 14". Thoughts?

Vostro 3460

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-3632QM (2.2GHz, 6M cache)

Windows® 8 Pro

32GB mSATA3 SSD for Minicard Slots [Blocked Image: http://forum.multiplayer.it/images/faccine/confused2.gif]

750 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)

8 GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz Memory (2 DIMMs)

Display : 14.0 inch High Definition LED Display (1366 x 768) with Anti-Glare

LCD Back Cover : Silver

Graphics : 1GB nVidia GeForce GT 630M Discrete Graphic Card

Back Up Media Not Included

Windows 8 Professional (64 Bit OS)

Wireless : Intel Centrino Advanced-N 2230 (2x2, a/g/n) + Bluetooth

8X DVD+/- RW Drive

Battery : Primary 6 Cell 48W/HR

Internal Qwerty Keyboarid

Display More

If you want to drag it along and work on it then it is pretty much the perfect size(don't expect much of a battery life though). The bad thing about the display is that is quite low resolution. But that can be remedied by getting an actual display so you have more screen real estate to work with and get a lot better IQ as well.

I got myself a 15" dell xps ~2 years ago with a 1080p screen which is decent but definitely does not replace a multiple display setup. Also dragging it along with its huge power brick isn't comfortable at all. also the GPU in it is a 540m which is pretty much the same spec as 630m, should be more than enough for Hammer. But it will likely choke up if you throw anything heavier at it (Cryengine SDK for example).

The best of luck to you guys.I hope you find something new very soon!

Good advice all round. I thought I'd add in my two cents as well:

For lighting deconstruction from artistic perspective (values, use of color, form and composition) I find that looking at paintings is super helpful as they are basically reconstructions of light and every stroke is there to do a specific thing. For example take a look at the 2D galleries from cgsociety: http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=3 or there is always the work from the oldschool masters(random side note: abstract art can be good reference for dealing with form and composition). Though there are things that can go missing in paintings, photo reference helps there and obviously for technical reasons as well. Two good sites for photo reference: http://1x.com/ and http://natgeofound.tumblr.com/.

And a couple links with lighting tutorials:

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

http://www.amaanakram.com/lightingT/part1.htm

If you are looking for more in depth tutorials/discussions on the matter you'd do good by looking up a book.

All of this is way too familiar to me.

Thankfully work starts at 10 here, the sad part is that I rarely make it in before 10:30

Environment probes are basically a form of image based lighting, the main benefit of them is the fact that they can provide directional ambient lighting affecting both to the specular and diffuse component! Quite similar to the below image:
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Note the difference between the color of the surfaces facing left and facing right.(image from: http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-state-of-rendering/)

This will work the same for exteriors(example: dusk skydome with a gradient from red to purple) and interiors. Note that the changes in ambient lighting in interiors are generally quite a bit more harsh compared to exterior settings -> so you will want to use more probes to get a better result (the more probes you use the closer you get to emulating gi). Depending on the geometry them being spherical might become somewhat of a annoyance though.

Also probes receive the lighting directly from their surroundings so by using them you will get the proper ambiance levels. I would go as far as zero'ing out all ambient lighting settings in the ToD parameters(note that your environmets will black before you enable and generate your probes if done this way) and only using probes for ambiance(note this might cause some problems with particles: they will not receive the ambiance form the sky color, and other small bits and bobs). All though the free sdk is quite a bit behind you probably want to have the diffuse and specular multipliers for the probes at 1 and hdr at 0 or what ever else makes a mirror material(black diffuse, white specular) match up with the surrounding environments.The more times you generate the probes the more "indirect bounces" you get.

You might also want to play around with the box projection properties for the probes as that way you will get better localized lighting. Regularly the probes simulate an infinitely far away box so when you move around the reflections/ambiance doesn't change inside a probe. But using box projection means that the reflections change based on your location relative to the probe.

Another note: that you can use any sort of emissive material to add light to the probes be it the sky, emissive particles, glowing fog, or a glow material on an object.

Visareas are mainly used to save performance and their documentation in the sdk manual should be very much sufficient for settign them up, if not you can always ask here. It is good to know how to use them but likely not needed for a portfolio piece. If you decide to use global ambient lighting from the tod menu you can also use visareas to change local ambient light levels.

The rest is pretty much just adding in regular lights to add actual light sources(like chris described) and if you want to fake additional GI or light bleeding or caustics or whatever else. And negative lights(they do work in the free sdk) for additional AO(use negative diffuse/hdr value in the light properties). Also you can use light boxes to limit the area affected by the light.

*Edit* Just in case and for good measure adding an article about physicalized shading as that is becoming or already has become a very big thing. It is not actually implemented in the free sdk, but following the basic principles for it can get you some really good results.Also gloss maps become very important with this approach as do environment probes.

Link: http://www.fxguide.com/featured/game-…r-me-rendering/

Short explanation follows:

There are mainly two types of fundamentally different materials metals and dielectrics.

Dielectrics reflect light by actually letting the light go a tiny but underneath their surface and then hopefully finding its way back out again. Regular dielectrics do not have colored specular information!

For rendering in cryengine it means that the diffuse component is the dominant one.

Check out this table for a variety of the diffuse values:

[Blocked Image: https://www.fxguide.com/wp-content/upl…ues-462x768.jpg]

Metals mainly reflect light straight from their surface. For pure metals the diffuse component is almost non existent. Metals do have colored specular. That is the same for perfectly polished and matte sanded metals(This is why gloss maps are very very important).

In cryengine this means that all reflected light is reflected through the specular component. If there is no probe to reflect the environment then there wont be a proper reflection.

Below is a chart for specular values for common metals and dielectrics:

[Blocked Image: http://www.fxguide.com/wp-content/upl…ecularChart.png]

And one more important thing is the conservation of energy: non emissive materials can never reflect more light than they absorb.

*Edit*Edit* There is a great talk about physicalized shading done by the guys from Guerrilla, and they explain it a lot better than I can:P

I hope this might be useful

Thanks!

It looks like the build is broken, are you running an older version of the SDK, have you tried redownloading it?

Is the issue still there after regenerating the the terrain texture?

That looks friggin awesome!

Quote from Chimeray

Still speculation though I want the truth, the way Ken Levine and company intended. I don't wanna think, I wanna be a sheep.

Actually there was some more information on this very thread, but it has since vanished.

I also avoided much of the media before the launch of the game and am so happy that I did. From the moment when you get picked to get the "prize" for the raffle... I was so hooked there onwards.

Stemming form that I am wondering how does the racism fit into the story. How did it come to happen is it there because of the setting and source of conflict, or is it a construct from the mind of Comstock meaning he seeded it, if so why, because he lost his mind?

A couple more questions, who is / what is the origin of the songbird, and what does the choice between the two necklaces mean in a larger sense, other than being a reference to Elizabeth being trapped, does songbird fit into it?

I really liked how the story progression from global / impersonal to very very personal and of course the feeling of "being thrown around the place" for pretty much during the entire endgame. As well as the foreshadowing and being designed very smartly all round.

Just finished the game...

Partially I still have my jaw on the floor and I'm trying to figure out where all the pieces fit as well as contemplating if it is a good or a bad thing that I will probably never work on a game like this myself.

Very big thanks to everyone who made this game happen.

Those streets and the foggy horizon dotted with lights ...

Except for it arriving so late, what did you expect from it? I am just curios.

Grats!

You can't go wrong with blorange and the green accents are a nice touch. As mentioned the atmospherics are really dense. Try to differentiate your key lights(ideally one per scene that defines the coloration and mood for it) and support lights(intensity should be really low compared to the key), Currently it is a lit quite uniformly(alteration of same sized blue and orange patches). Give it more contrast by including some more intense areas as well as some dark ones and separate your colors a bit more. Generally speaking simpler is better but that said it is always cool to try coming up with something different (It would really help to differentiate your map from others). All of this said gameplay comes first and I figure NS2 to be a quite difficult game to light considering the drastically changing environment conditions that come from gameplay.

Merry Christmas!

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Another small test. Thinking about putting together a 5 min short of some sort in the near future.