Section_Ei8ht

well, 20 bucks says that that post was just me trying to come up with a reason why my dumbass cant get the lighting to satisfy me. But the one thing that does bother me is the lighting passes on each surface. If I want to make a room with soft lighting, non pitch black shadows, I need to have two lights (correct me if I'm wrong). One that casts shadows, and a dimmer one that does not. Only problem with this is that now every surface in that room has two lighting passes on it (except a few, depending on the map). If I want to add more detailed lighting, I'm approaching three to four, and maybe even five lighting passes on a surface. In a big area such as the large room, my frame rate dropped to mad, and I'm on a 3 gig with a 9800xt, and in terms of playability, I'm gonna want people on low end systems to play this with great framerates. Granted, I can counter this by splitting the brushes and texturing them so they do not repeat so the engine does not break them up, so that is not the largest issue. I know that doom3 was made for a dark, scary, sci-fi enviornment. But even those scenarios have shadows that have an umbra and a penumbra. That is probably what is bothering me the most. Granted, if used the the right context, such as doom3 and im sure quake 4, it can look extremely well. Maybe its just that I cannot seem to find a threshold in my room that can get that kind of a look. Perhaps I'm just missing something in the lighting options (i thought maybe fallout would add a nice soft shadow, but that does not seem to be doing anything to my lights) that could make a soft shadow. And if not, then I can understand why there are no soft shadows. I think, and correct me if I am wrong, that because the engine is pure dynamic lighting, the processing required to make soft shadows would be too great to blend well with the rest of the rendering that needs to be done. I also am missing the texture light feature, but I understand the ways to get around that and make textures look as though they support the feature. Maybe, KungFu, you could give me some pointers or help me see what I'm missing when it comes to the doom 3 engine, because I know you are working with it right now. Actually now that I write out what I think is a limitation on the engine, I know am seeing that its not really that big of a list of limitations. I guess its more just wishful thinking. Doom 3 is a really powerful engine, dont get me wrong, it just seems that with so much emphasis on the lighting passes, It seems to me that the creation of a very large outdoor map with multiple light sources (perhaps a map that takes place in a city street at dusk, so you still have the hint of red sunlight, but the street lights and surrounding shop lights are still on) is near impossible. Granted Doom3 was not designed for this purpose, and I completely respect that. Just seems that the idea for expansion into a different mode of storytelling seems a bit limited. Sorry for the long post. I'm sure some of you are sleeping right now.

doom 3 is all well and good, but the more I mess with it, the more I find out its limitations. This will probably be the only compiles I do with the doom3 engine. Once Source is released, Source all the way (Unless of course, X-Ray is open for modding, then X-Ray would be the engine of choice).

alright, The more I look at these pics the more I grow on the lighting of the room. [Edit] I just noticed my texture alignment on the pillars is a little off in these pics, already fixed.

yeah, if you dont want any pitch black shadows in a room, you need to have one light that casts shadows, and another dimmer light that does not. Then you get a soft lighting effect. Only problem is, thats 2 lighting passes on every texture in the room with the exception a few. And as we all know, its the lighting passes that can really drop your framerate.

thanks, kungfu. Yeah, lighting is the hardest thing for me in Doom3. I have a whole other room constructed, but I didn't post any pictures because I cant get the lighting to look right. and due to the cinematic value and the map not needing to be playable, I'm almost fully ignoring the lightcount limits, but that still doesnt mean I can get it too look good. Thanks for the tip. I'll take care of the patch meshes, and I'll toy with some lighting in that room. I'll also post a pic of what I have of the larger room, even though the lighting sucks.

Hey there, mapcore. Havent posted here that much, so I figured I'd kick off the posting frenzy with a screenie. This map has no name, specifically due to the reason that this is not going to be a map made for playability, but its a map that I'm going to use for creating a cinematic that will be the main navagation of my upcoming portfolio/company website. Comments welcome.

yeah, i dig the brushwork, but im sorry, that lighting is just too much for the hl lighting engine to handle, im my opinion.

This has got to be the first time I have literally rolled on the floor laughing.

Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five are my favorites. Anything Phillip K. Dick is great for a short read, as well.

not too shabby. I would recommend some kind of rollover effect on your navigation links. Also seems to me that the counter and links on the left side stick out from the main design a little bit too much.

gotta pay for college somehow.

http://www.ultrashock.com http://www.actionscript.org http://www.macromedia.com

saw avp and collateral a few weeks back. Also got ahold of the Ladykillers and Day After tomorrow. All kicked ass. Havent seen I movie I havent liked in awhile.

not bad. I can dig the simplicity of it all. A little too simple for me, but then again, I love complicated flashwork, like 2advanced and flashlevel.

I get to make submarine sandwiches for people. But its all good because I moved up the ranks to the title of manager, so now I get to yell at as many people as I want, for any reason I see fit. I also get to take old time themed photographs of people at an amusement park. But thats okay, too, because I'm about two weeks from making manager there, too. As well as running a freelance multimedia design company. But my current client is being a huge pain in the ass. Working three jobs and going to college full time sucks ass. Not much time for mapping.