Pre rendered high resolution shadows

[wikipediano]

In quake 3, if I set all textures to no lightmap, will I still get shadows? I was thinking on having custom textures everywhere with pre rendered shadows, in other words, much more brushes needed. Jaggied shadows are really gay, and realtime soft shadows are really heavy.

[Pericolos0]

if you think you have enough texture memory, go ahead

but it's probably a dumb idea

[wikipediano]

Do you know old games like duke3D and doom? That's what I meant, rendering lightning and shadows in the texture itself.

[ReNo]

I'd have thought almost certainly not. Sure, it should "work" in that you'll get the baked in shadows appearing and, if you turn off lightmaps, there won't be any in game lighting applied, but the number of unique textures you will require to pull this off is almost undoubtadly going to be more than your engine of choice can handle. You might be able to do it if you are making a VERY small map, but I highly doubt it would be possible on most.

[InsaneSingingBlender]

plus you would have to be very good at telling where the shadows should be and how long the shadows should be.

[mike-0]

I dont understand how it would be a drag on his system if the shadows were built into the textures.

[insta]

I dont understand how it would be a drag on his system if the shadows were built into the textures.

Well you would fill the texture memory pretty quickly unless you want to repeat the same shadow pattern and angles on each surface.

[Section_Ei8ht]

That's what I meant, rendering lightning and shadows in the texture itself.

i hope any games built on that philosophy dont give the player flashlights.

[kleinluka]

half-life?

[Zacker]

HL renders lighting in a lightmap and not in the texture itself?

[ReNo]

Indeedy - textures are reused all over the shop, while lightmaps don't have the sort of resolution or amount of colour data found in actual textures therefore there is enough memory for them to be unique.