Better lightning in the new build?

[vakuum]

Remember the problem with characters + light?
characters in light was bright, and if they where outside the light the where dark..
The problem was when they where moving into the light, or half of the character was in some sort of light..

Looks like they have fixed this in the new build after what i can see in the new E3 video.

Hopefully this is the cause when it comes to all sorts of props, cars, etc.. and not only characters

 

[PvtRyan]

Yeah I saw that too, the shadowing on his back was smooth, not like in Striders from last year. For interested people: it's at 9:33 in the video.

Another example (attachment) that shows that 'you're either lit or not' isn't an issue anymore.

Although, in the beginning, when the scanner points his light at a train carrage, it's fully lit no matter where it's pointing at... ah we'll see.

 

[moppe]

Yeah I saw that too, the shadowing on his back was smooth, not like in Striders from last year. For interested people: it's at 9:33 in the video.

Another example (attachment) that shows that 'you're either lit or not' isn't an issue anymore.

Although, in the beginning, when the scanner points his light at a train carrage, it's fully lit no matter where it's pointing at... ah we'll see.

If they fixed that, I'll think that they will make it possible to make just a single flashlightbeam show up.

 

[Varsity]

Guns are still 100% lighted/shadowed, though.

 

[moppe]

Guns are still 100% lighted/shadowed, though.

Huh?
Atleast from the beta, the guns you're holding have dynamic lightning.

 

[Apos]

The lighting when the comebine is leading you down the hall is just astounding: so smooth and lifelike.
It seems to work differently at different times: perhaps a scaling system that gives you a real bang for your buck in some scenes, but scales back for performance reasons in others.

 

[PvtRyan]

Maybe it's polygon/vertex based? A polygon is either lit or unlit. With a combine, the transition is smooth, because it has so many polygons, but the train is pretty low poly geometry resulting in a more harsh lighting.

 

[moppe]

Yeah, but making a flashlight sprite on a polygon would be pretty easy, right?

 

[clarky003]

yeh thats right it does look like vertex lighting, like your tourch light. Also if you look at the wood flooring outside, you can see the cranes reflections , which is a nice HDR effect.

 

[Apos]

It seems to depend from situation to situation. The seem to use cheaper lighting simulation when outdoors.

 

[PvtRyan]

yeh thats right it does look like vertex lighting, like your tourch light. Also if you look at the wood flooring outside, you can see the cranes reflections , which is a nice HDR effect.

That's not HDR, has nothing to do with it.

The most basic explanation of HDR is that it isn't limited by 256 values of brightness like LDR. And if the brightness of something is over a certain value then a glare/bloom effect is applied.

 

[Brian Damage]

Yeah, HDR is rendering textures and colours using a [0,16]-type scale instead of a [0,1]-type scale. Helps with glare effects and textures that would otherwise be muddy from too much colour value rounding.

At least, that's the way Atomic mag explains it.

 

[Polykarbon]

Apos is correct.

PvtRyan, I am also curious about that.

 

[Mountain Man]

In laymen's terms, high dynamic range lighting (or HDR) gives something the illusion that it is brighter than what your monitor is actually capable of displaying.

 

[the_prodigy]

The overlapping shadow bug is still there. In the pic below, the shadows of the big box and the crane magnet are overlapping and the overlapped region is dark. This shouldn't happen with one light source (in this case the source of light is the 'map light', that's just one light source .. if you know what i mean), the shadows should merge seemlessly (same darkness). We've seen this bug in last years E3 lab video too. In that case, the shadow of an item on the table went through the table and overlapped with the shadow of the table, forming a dark region.

Hope they fix this before it ships. I can't believe it still hasn't been fixed.

 

[Apos]

There is definately a blending of effects. Check out the swinging legs/torso and the gorgeous way it moves in and out of the light. This effect appears to happen whenever there is a specific light in the scene that has been specially tagged to have this sort of lighting quality. If you watch the CS: Source section closely, you can see that both the "light/shadow sliding over the weapon" effect AND the "global weapon model brightness/darkness" appear to happen at different times. The former happens when the Terrorists are running under the archway towards the rickety bridge, and the latter happens when the terrorists run under the overpass and up the stairs. It looks great both ways, and the transistions don't appear to be jarring at all. No doubt it's giving us the best lighting bang for our performance buck instead of crippling things with full dynamic lighting of all models all the time, or leaving us in the past with only global model lighting all of the time.

 

[Apos]

Hope they fix this before it ships. I can't believe it still hasn't been fixed.

I don't think it's fixable with an acceptable performance cost. The shadowing used for those effects are projected stencil shadows, and trying to make them all play nice with each other, let alone get cast over dynamic objects, is probably not in the cards if it hasn't happened already.

 

[Polykarbon]

Apos is entirely correct.

We talked about this earlier, but, to sum it up.

Apos:

No doubt it's giving us the best lighting bang for our performance buck instead of crippling things with full dynamic lighting of all models all the time, or leaving us in the past with only global model lighting all of the time.

 

[ShinRa]

Hope they fix this before it ships. I can't believe it still hasn't been fixed.

Yes, i wont even buy the game if they don't fix this. Because you know of course, the reason everyone is getting hl2 is to watch soda cans have shadows on tables correctly.

 

[moppe]

I don't care now. The lightning looks amazing.
All I want is that they fix the flashlight.

 

[Polykarbon]

If you guys are wondering if this is going to happen all the time...it won't. You arn't going to see a soda can sitting on a physical chair with shadows going through it.

There are different stencil depths. It;s about the distance/light ratio/scale factor. Valve is doing it all great--have patience and stop nitpicking =p

 

[dscowboy]

There's two major lighting types in HL2, like Apos was describing above. Lightmaps are used as ambient world lighting, and to represent general light from the sky/sun/moon. They are static and calculated when the map is compiled. Dynamic models make use of lightmaps by sampling the worldbrush texture directly under the model and adjusting the model's OVERALL brightness. This causes 'problems' when the transition from light to dark in the lightmap is very sudden, for example, see the Barricade video from last year where the resistance fighters walk in front of the windows. In the general outdoors you're not likely to see this because the light/dark transitions in the lightmaps are smoother.

The other type of lighting used is a kind of dynamic spotlight, which shades the models correctly per-pixel as seen when a combine walks under an overhead light.

There is no 'bug' that need to be fixed, lightmaps just do not work to shade models per-pixel. Lightmap data is stored in relation to the surfaces of the worldbrushes, there is nothing to tell you the level of light at a specific point in space or on a model. You just have to fake it by sampling the light level of the ground you're on. This is the same way lightmaps worked in HL1.

 

[the_prodigy]

Yes, i wont even buy the game if they don't fix this. Because you know of course, the reason everyone is getting hl2 is to watch soda cans have shadows on tables correctly.

Never said anything bout not getting the game. It seems like a stupid bug and I would think it's easy to fix. Sorry. Jerk off. Don't give me your sarcastic crap.

I don't think it's fixable with an acceptable performance cost. The shadowing used for those effects are projected stencil shadows, and trying to make them all play nice with each other, let alone get cast over dynamic objects, is probably not in the cards if it hasn't happened already.

Why would it reduce the performance? I would think that in this case all that has to be done is make all the shadows from one particular light source the same darkness so even if shadows of different objects from the same light source overlap, it wouldn't create that sort of overlap (eg opaque red on another layer of opaque red, there would be no visible overlap region). But if u consider the shadows as translucent layers then I could see why this problem is occuring. But I don't see why it's hard to remove and why there will be a performance cost. People with knowledge in this field lemme know.

 

[the_prodigy]

Thanks dscowboy, that cleared out a bit.

 

[dscowboy]

But I don't see why it's hard to remove and why there will be a performance cost. People with knowledge in this field lemme know.

See the other lighting thread:

Originally Posted by DarkStar
I don't understand the shadow overlapping bug/engine limitation. Why is it so hard for the engine to realize, "when 2 shadows overlap, just combine them and draw one shadow, don't make it twice as dark." It almost seems like they would have to intentionally program it to make shadows overlap, which makes no sense. Can someone explain this to me?

Yes. Think about this: There are two lights in a room, and two people with two shadows each. Where the shadows do not intersect, there will be a light shadow because one of the lights is still hitting that area. Where the shadows intersect, the combined shadow will be darker because zero lights are hitting that area. Adding the shadows together makes them look more realistic when they intersect. The only problem comes if the intersection is of two shadows from the same lightsource. Normally it's pretty hard to notice, the magnet/crate thing made it easy to see.

 

[Spiffae]

Why would it reduce the performance? I would think that in this case all that has to be done is make all the shadows from one particular light source the same darkness so even if shadows of different objects from the same light source overlap, it wouldn't create that sort of overlap (eg opaque red on another layer of opaque red, there would be no visible overlap region). But if u consider the shadows as translucent layers then I could see why this problem is occuring. But I don't see why it's hard to remove and why there will be a performance cost. People with knowledge in this field lemme know.

Well, what you're talking about seems to getting pretty close to a unified lighting model. For that, please see DOOM III.

 

[the_prodigy]

Adding the shadows together makes them look more realistic when they intersect. The only problem comes if the intersection is of two shadows from the same lightsource. Normally it's pretty hard to notice, the magnet/crate thing made it easy to see.

Yeah exactly. It shouldn't add the shadows when they are caused due to the same light source. Anyway ....

 

[Apos]

I would think that in this case all that has to be done is make all the shadows from one particular light source the same darkness so even if shadows of different objects from the same light source overlap,

That's the problem right there. Stencil shadows aren't actually cast by the light sources on the map per se. They are sort of an effect more than a real lighting simulartion: a projection of the model onto world geometry.

But I don't see why it's hard to remove and why there will be a performance cost. People with knowledge in this field lemme know.

That's not me, and I agree it seems like it shouldn't be that hard to fix. I mean, why couldn't you just have the darkness of the shadow vary depending on the radiosity of the surface it's being cast on, and have it have a log effect so that the shadow would be really faint so that it would blend in with darker areas? (that wouldn't solve the stencil on stencil problem, but it would solve the stencil on static darkness problem a bit) The problem is, I can say things like that, but I have no idea whatsoever how feasible they actually are.