Caustics

[PvtRyan]

Can Source render caustics, and I mean on the lightmaps it uses, not realtime dynamically.

Look at this: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/566/566186/img_1882889.html
(Vampire: Bloodlines screenshot)

The lights appear to have caustics around them, of course this is baked into the texture and not dynamic, but it looks cool though. I've heard Source can also use indirect illumination to render the lightmaps and bake them onto the textures.

 

[Chris D]

Well Vampire is being developed on Source. And if that screenshot has caustics in it then that means the Source engine can do it.

 

[Axyon]

Uhh, you kinda answered your own question, really. Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines uses Source as its engine.

 

[el Chi]

Pardon my foolishness dear sirs but; Wha' thuh bleedin' 'ell is this "caaw-sticks" nonsense?

 

[Ahnteis]

Not sure what caustics are (I'm thinking strong bases chemically here and I'm sure that's not what you mean) -- but note that Vampire does have some specially lighting they added in to give it a darker, moodier feeling.

 

[PvtRyan]

Well Vampire is being developed on Source. And if that screenshot has caustics in it then that means the Source engine can do it.

Yeah I know.
But I don't know if what I saw were actual caustics or something else.
And I started this thread to generate some conversation about this subject.
I haven't seen this in other games though, are there any games that use this?

 

[Flyingdebris]

Caustics are those effects you see when light passes through a distorted surface.

look into a swimming pool, see all those wiggly lines, those are caustics

in the Vampire Bloodlines picture, the wiggly patterns on the walls from the lamps are caustics

 

[Chris D]

What about the water in HL2... It refracts the light etc... Isn't that caustics?

 

[Para]

Not really; refraction causes caustics. Caustics are those funny looking waves of light in the bottom of ie. swimming pool, refraction is the distortion water causes. Easiest way to see refraction in water is to stick a pole in steady water and look how it bends when it's not facing the waters normal.

Bah, that sounded geeky...

 

[Korgoth]

Those look more like a map, than any kind of effect to me really... I know for sure source can't do caustics in real time because it would be to consuming... Besides that those don't really look all that great to me, or it could be some sort of dx 9 feature that i'm not aware of, heh who knows....

 

[PvtRyan]

Those look more like a map, than any kind of effect to me really... I know for sure source can't do caustics in real time because it would be to consuming... Besides that those don't really look all that great to me, or it could be some sort of dx 9 feature that i'm not aware of, heh who knows....

That's what I said, it's baked onto the texture. Like all lightmaps in HL2. It's done in Hammer I guess, it's not an effect really.

 

[Ahnteis]

We know soure can do distortion because:
1) They said it can
2) The magnifying glass in the Dr.'s lab.

 

[ray_MAN]

The magnifying glass in Kleiner's Lab could have easily been a well placed camera creating that effect.

 

[Spiffae]

We know soure can do distortion because:
1) They said it can
2) The magnifying glass in the Dr.'s lab.

Distortion is one thing, caustics is another. Water distoring what you see is distorion. Light creating distorted patterns after it's passed through something is caustics.

My guess is that you could do caustics with a shader or animated texture. If you look at the tech demo vid though... no caustics.

 

[Comreak]

Didn't Serious Sam have underwater caustics? They looked pretty good. The projections from a swinging light would look awesome. You'd think the effect would be pretty taxing though.

 

[iamironsam]

The Aquamark benchmarking program has caustics. Just looks like an animated texture layer, fairly simple.

 

[mrchimp]

UT2003 usesed lightmaps to fake caustics and i bets that what serious sam did as well.

I'm sure I can remember valve saying something on this subject... might have said you could do it with shaders but I doubt they meant you could creat real caustics but instead something similair to a lightmap, although I have seen real time caustics done in a tech demo.

 

[Anthraxxx]

The magnifying glass in Kleiner's Lab could have easily been a well placed camera creating that effect.

Ok. So what about the orange vats of liquid behind Kleiner? There was some wierd wavy sh*t going on inside those vats.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Can Source render caustics, and I mean on the lightmaps it uses, not realtime dynamically.

Look at this: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/566/566186/img_1882889.html
(Vampire: Bloodlines screenshot)

The lights appear to have caustics around them, of course this is baked into the texture and not dynamic, but it looks cool though. I've heard Source can also use indirect illumination to render the lightmaps and bake them onto the textures.

those you mention in the pics are jusr shadows cast from the lights.. doesnt mean caustics cant be done, it was partially in unreal, faking it gets great results

 

[Styloid]

It took a while but I found the quote for you guys:

Q: Are caustics, either real-time or precalculated, present in Source's lighting engine?
A: Our game currently doesn't have caustics in it, but it's easy to write a new shader to render caustics using our shader sys

caustic:
The enveloping surface formed by light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface, especially one with spherical aberration.
a.k.a. the neat webby effect you see on the bottom of a swimming pool, or the shapes of light that spread on the table from sunlight going through a glass of water.

from the Valve info thread.

 

[Spiffae]

thanks styloid. we needed that.

 

[SidewinderX]

well, anyhting can be done with lightmaps... they're pre-made...

 

[iamaelephant]

Maybe I'm the only one, but my personal opinion on this subject is Who Cares?

Honestly little things like this will not improve the game the slightest bit.

 

[Shuzer]

Maybe I'm the only one, but my personal opinion on this subject is Who Cares?

Honestly little things like this will not improve the game the slightest bit.

They'll improve it visually, which makes it more immersing

 

[Zoorado]

Caustics!

No way Source is gonna have caustics like these, though.

 

[Black_Death]

Caustics!

No way Source is gonna have caustics like these, though.

Hell, thats easy, devs can whip up code like that in seconds :naughty:

 

[Black_Death]

They'll improve it visually, which makes it more immersing

Yeah, in SP, but ill turn down the details and turn up the brightness for MP competative gaming, so i wont really notice the extra graphical details

 

[Zoorado]

Hell, thats easy, devs can whip up code like that in seconds :naughty:

Heh, yeah riiight.
Fully programmable shaders are still a distance away in real-time game engines, I'm afraid. So you can't "whip up" complex shader algorithms that require thousands of rendering passes (eg. caustics and SSS simulation) in today's games like you can with Pixar's RenderMan.

 

[Black_Death]

My comment was implied as a joke

I do realize that producing a piece of work like this for the entire game in a reasonable amount of time would be reaching near impossibility :monkee:

 

[weerat]

I really wish they'd hurry up and realease the damn game, cos then we'd see an end to pointless quandaries such as this one!

 

[HybridM]

Those don't look like caustics to me...just the colour from the stained glass lamp shade.

Any game can do caustics with an animated texture.

 

[mrchimp]

Heh, yeah riiight.
Fully programmable shaders are still a distance away in real-time game engines, I'm afraid. So you can't "whip up" complex shader algorithms that require thousands of rendering passes (eg. caustics and SSS simulation) in today's games like you can with Pixar's RenderMan.

I'v seen caustics done in real time, the demo is proberly still on Nvidias developer website. Also I would love it if you could actually give me an example of a render useing 1000 passes.

 

[Dagobert]

Well Vampire is being developed on Source. And if that screenshot has caustics in it then that means the Source engine can do it.

THE LIGHTING FOR VAMPIRE WAS RE-WRITTEN

Read the latest interview.

Troiyka bloke:

'First, we needed to implement a moodier lighting system that would handle the stark contrasts of nighttime scenes, as well as brightly lit indoor scenes.'

 

[Impute]

Those are not caustics in that picture. Want some causticcs.. here.

http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs348b-competition/cs348b-01/bottle/caustics.jpg
http://usurped.net/renders/caustics.jpg
http://www.glossar.de/glossar/images/caustics2.jpg
http://plissken.fatalunity.com/gallery/misc/caustics/caustics.jpg

real time lighting like that is FAR beyond any thing we can do right now. But you can fake it.

http://qmb.quakepit.com/screenshots/caustics.jpg
http://www.ati.com/developer/images/1761-3761.jpg

 

[jonbob]

If you can fake it - it being the final image, what difference does it make in the eyes of the average gamer who doesn't know or care what caustics are?

 

[Styloid]

If you can fake it - it being the final image, what difference does it make in the eyes of the average gamer who doesn't know or care what caustics are?

Because that is how you build up hype for a game; draw up as big a list as possible of all the features (as inane as some may be) and feed it to as many people as possible.
Before you've experienced the real bulk of what makes a game good (gameplay), these lists are really all you have to go on.