Dynamic lighting?

[jacen]

fuk man I never said it did, did i? People were complaining that when you shoot your gun the area around you doesn't light up, and I was saying that it does on my computer. Or didn't you read through the rest fo the damn thread?

sry man
i just misinterpreted your post

And Apos, with the Doom3 flashlight not seeming to make shadows sometimes, I noticed that too and I think it's because the light is pointing directly away from you so the shadows that are cast are mostly going to be cast directly away from you also which means the things casting the shadows usually get in the way and you can't see them.

yeah
just use
pm_thirdperson 1
pm_thirdpersonangle 45 or 90
you will see that the flashlight will cast dynamic shadows

i know that the light cone of the flashlight in d3 is some sort of "tricked", but it really looks good, so i wont get i the details.

"blah blah"

oh man
be quiet
i bought and enjoyed both d3 and hl2 (i also bought farcry, but it was a little hard to test some lighting and physics effects with the sandbox so i put it on the shelf) and enjoyed both.

what ppl moan about is, that developers constantly claim things they wont put up in the final product.

d3:
-) normal mapping used to calculate displacement mapping (only achievable by softmodding)
-) self shadowing (same here)

hl2:
-) dynamic lighting
-) reflective water dx9 standard (even farcry did that )

 

[scarecrow1]

Gamers should know by now that its all just lip-service, if they dont- they are: dumb, like many people have said before, games are meant to be played not to be over analyzed by its graphics or what this does or that does! but how fun the game is and how it affects the player.

 

[jacen]

Gamers should know by now that its all just lip-service, if they dont- they are: dumb, like many people have said before, games are meant to be played not to be over analyzed by its graphics or what this does or that does! but how fun the game is and how it affects the player.

tbh: discovering the engine takes alot more time then just finishing the game at hard.
for me its a way to prolong my gaming experience after completing the story.
so at least for me its positive. and when i play splayer, i dont bitch about the engine ... i just play the game

 

[potaytox1000]

Dude, wtf do u want? its just a little thing that valve missed, no game is perfect, infact the lighting in hl2 is just as good as d3's. cuz they both excel in different areas so stop whining, quit looking for bad things in hl2, that makes me like it even less, and @#$@in play the game.

 

[Mountain Man]

Object shadows in HL2 are basically just very nice stencil shadows (with some bugs, like showing through solid objects) which for the most part do the job, though have the problem of not changing direction in reaction to lights in the game (you'll see these shadows sometimes pointing TOWARDS the only lightsource in a room, since their direction is apparently set globally for the map)

Interestingly enough, Bloodlines, which is built on the Source engine, does feature dynamic shadows. Run past a light, and your character's shadow will arc around as expected, so obviously the Source engine can do the kind of lighting effects everybody is talking about, though Valve simply chose not to implement them for, I'm guessing, performance reasons.

 

[socK]

The engine can do it, but it is not in HL2 afaik.

 

[The Silhouette]

The source engine dosen´t support dynamic lighting

Wrong you moron, Source does support dynamic lighting. It is used in HL2. It does not support dynamic shadowing by default though. A little code and it could

To whoever said "specular lighting", no such thing idiot. Their is Specular highlights, and mapping which gives a model/texture the cool reflective sheen.

Most of the people in here and trying to be the all knower of "grafix injin lolz" but the majority of them couldn't tell Dynamic lighting from Dynamic shadowing (And Thats A FACT proven in this thread or morons) so most comments in this thread are ment to be takin as a joke except mine and a few others.

 

[PvtRyan]

What most people overlook in the lighting solution of HL2, is the nice "realtime radiosity". In HL1, the illumination of characters and objects was done by a sample point at the bottom of the entity, this measured the lightmap color and made the entire npc that color, you can even still see this in the e32k3 HL2 Strider video, but after that Valve implemented that characters can be partially illuminated by a light, and even by indirect lights around a corner (hence the 'radiosity' part) this gives a very nice illumination for characters, especially when normal mapped (like the hostages in office, they are a good example of this, for example when they walk through the projector). Also the radiosity normal mapping looks pretty sweet.

In my opinion, Doom 3's lighting is quite worthless, not because of id's programming skills, they did an awesome job, but simply because it's very limited by today's hardware and couldn't implement a system for radiosity, making lighting harsh and unrealistic. That's why I think a unified lighting engine had no place in 2004. The first engine that properly does radiosity realtime is Reality engine, with its 'realtime radiance transfer' which gives a decent enough result. I'm pretty sure UE3 also has something for this. At that point, lightmaps become redundant and a fully dynamic solution is the new way to go, but until then, I really don't see any advantage to dynamic lighting other than showing off.

Just look at de_prodigy and then still call the lighting bad.

Interestingly enough, Bloodlines, which is built on the Source engine, does feature dynamic shadows. Run past a light, and your character's shadow will arc around as expected, so obviously the Source engine can do the kind of lighting effects everybody is talking about, though Valve simply chose not to implement them for, I'm guessing, performance reasons.

Never played Bloodlines, but what kind of shadows does it use? The render-to-texture soft shadows from HL2 (which look nice, but have major issues cause they only cast on brushes) or some other form of shadows?

 

[Mountain Man]

Never played Bloodlines, but what kind of shadows does it use? The render-to-texture soft shadows from HL2 (which look nice, but have major issues cause they only cast on brushes) or some other form of shadows?

I honestly couldn't tell you. All I know is that shadows react to the direction and intensity of the light source, but it's not full dynamic shadows like Doom 3.

 

[D€vIL²]

There's dynamic lighting which can be attached to MOVING objects so that it lights up the area as the object moves. The only thing HL2 doesn't have is dynamic SHADOWS.

Want proof? Make a map and attach the light_dynamic entity to a physical prop parent. Go ingame and move the object around the level, you will see that the light moves and changes as the object is moved.

I know this for a fact because I have several dynamic lights in my level.

Yeah but is looks crappy, the vid tutorial on making a dynamic hanging light shows you the only form of dynamic lighting in source and it doesn't look like d3. I think the lighting is call static lighting, i personally don't like it.

*be sure to turn down the brightness in the options and follow the "barley visible" instructions they make the shadows and such look much better.

 

[diluted]

Wrong you moron, Source does support dynamic lighting. It is used in HL2. It does not support dynamic shadowing by default though. A little code and it could

To whoever said "specular lighting", no such thing idiot. Their is Specular highlights, and mapping which gives a model/texture the cool reflective sheen.

Most of the people in here and trying to be the all knower of "grafix injin lolz" but the majority of them couldn't tell Dynamic lighting from Dynamic shadowing (And Thats A FACT proven in this thread or morons) so most comments in this thread are ment to be takin as a joke except mine and a few others.

you forgot the /elitist nerd on the end of your post. seriously, it's great that you're all-knowing and stuff, but you don't need to be a dick about it.

 

[Gordons_nan]

"not state of the art"!!!! sometimes i think that gamers today are a bit spoilt when it comes to games features. I remember the day when gamers cared more for the content and gameplay of a game, not the graphics as much as now. What i mean to say is: "ARE FRICKIN INSANE??? THE LIGHTING IN HL2 IS ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL..."Not as good as Doom 3's lighting"???? DOOM3 had no lighting!!!!it was frickin pitch black throughout the game, that annoyed me(it was cool and freaky yeah!!) i just cant beleive what im hearing.
Ill give you guys(the newer more spoilt generation of gamers!!) a little advice....forget what you dont like about it or would "like" to see in it, just enjoy and love the things that are GOOD and AWESOME about HL2, otherwise you will never be satisfied by any computer game, PERIOD!!! especially a FPS!!!!!!!!(enough exclamation marks???!!)

Did I ever say I didn't enjoy the game? No.

This game is the best god damn game I've ever played.

I just wanted to raise a question about the lack of dynamic lighting effects. Ok? Now shut up. :thumbs:

 

[Gordons_nan]

Gamers should know by now that its all just lip-service, if they dont- they are: dumb, like many people have said before, games are meant to be played not to be over analyzed by its graphics or what this does or that does! but how fun the game is and how it affects the player.

If people want to analyze a games graphics, especially one as significant as HL2 then this does not make them, 'dumb'.

Why not just STFU and let them discuss it in peace? If you have nothing useful to add to the discussion then shoo.

 

[Gordons_nan]

Dude, wtf do u want? its just a little thing that valve missed, no game is perfect, infact the lighting in hl2 is just as good as d3's. cuz they both excel in different areas so stop whining, quit looking for bad things in hl2, that makes me like it even less, and @#$@in play the game.

I love the game, it is my favourite game ever. Now shut up.

 

[Killing2Live]

The source engine is capable of more than its showing and is very upgradable and is capable of HDR (High Dynamic Range lighting) but just wasnt implemented into the game yet because graphics cards would have a hard time with it.

Just my noob input, please correct me if im wrong

 

[Colonel Sanders]

Interestingly enough, Bloodlines, which is built on the Source engine, does feature dynamic shadows. Run past a light, and your character's shadow will arc around as expected, so obviously the Source engine can do the kind of lighting effects everybody is talking about, though Valve simply chose not to implement them for, I'm guessing, performance reasons.

Though I haven't played it, the screenshots I've seen of Bloodlines seem to show that it has the some of the same fancy shadows as other games (such as two shadows being cast by one object/person from multiple light sources) so I'd assume your right. Not as good as Doom 3, but still shows that Source is capable of it.

Then again Trokia had access to the source code inorder to make the games (didn't they?) so, as stated in an earlier post they could have coded in their own more advanced lighting engine.

 

[xcellerate]

hl2 had the lighting, check out the ati video with the dynamic bloom effects turned on and such, looks awesome.

 

[theace55]

Dynamic lights are just lights that can be changed in real-time during gameplay. When dealing with games you can't think to program real light, instead you have to do all sorts of crap to simulate it best to run on modern hardware. Calculating the path of a zillion photon particles is probably going to explode your processor.

The static lighting people refer to I think are the lightmaps used in the HL2 levels. The shadows casted (by the buildings, pilars, etc) are usaully pre-calculated and and casted on the level. I noticed you can kind of tell which lights are dynamic or not if they can shine upon portions models instead of the whole model at a time. like in the buggy mission if you drive the buggy under a shadow, the whole buggy will darken at once instead of the shadow casting over the buggy realistically.

 

[Sid Burn]

hl2 had the lighting, check out the ati video with the dynamic bloom effects turned on and such, looks awesome.

checking it now.

 

[PhaTox]

I noticed that sometimes the shadows are really miscalculated,i.e. in ravenholm i was standing in a room with a light bulb that seemed to enlighten the room. In fact i shot a razorblade directly below the bulb. Not only that the shadow pointed at the wrong direction, but also the overall lighting quality in the room did not change. Unfortunatly I only noticed that because some nerd here in the forum had pointed something like that out, telling everybody how bad the game was because of the shadows. Otherwise i would not have tried that out and noticed it. Somewhat screwed my gameplay. Sad- isn`t it?

 

[PhaTox]

Wrong you moron, Source does support dynamic lighting. It is used in HL2. It does not support dynamic shadowing by default though. A little code and it could

To whoever said "specular lighting", no such thing idiot. Their is Specular highlights, and mapping which gives a model/texture the cool reflective sheen.

Most of the people in here and trying to be the all knower of "grafix injin lolz" but the majority of them couldn't tell Dynamic lighting from Dynamic shadowing (And Thats A FACT proven in this thread or morons) so most comments in this thread are ment to be takin as a joke except mine and a few others.

despite the fact that your grammar and spelling is horrible for a native speaker/writer, i give you the advice not to flame on everybody and verbally shoot everybody moving around. Insulting everybody will lead to nobody taking you for serious. Advice given for free. :dozey:

 

[DEATH eVADER]

i like the lighting in cs:source when you shoot while in the smoke (nade)

I liked that too. Could you use nightvision in the smoke or is the inventory item just useful for dark corridors and such?

 

[Kashban]

Something annoying I found about the HL2 lighning is the static of lights all around. No such thing as shooting lights out, no pushing them around. I very enjoyed that in Far Cry and it adds pretty much to the game's reality level. Granted, the light maps in HL2 are quite good from a photorealistic view, but it's static and lifeless.

Even Chronicles of Riddick has some more instances of dynamic lights and is on a good performance too.

Far Cry, on some inner levels, maxed out my hardware very easily, bringing it to a full stop and non playable 1-5 fps. That is, once I got some faster hardware to play with, I'll play it again on maximum details. I will not do that with HL2, because it IS already playable on max details.

I think Valve took out most dynamic lights to keep the hardware requirements low. They didn't need to push the technology level that far as Far Cry and Doom3 do because of all the hype before the release.

HL2 is a good shooter, but is is NOT the shooter of the year in my eyes. I was more impressed by Far Cry.

Cheers,
Kashban

 

[CREMATOR666]

FC is just all vacation and crazy scientists, IMO

 

[xcellerate]

the movie for the "high dynamic range rendering" with the dynamic light blooms and reflective sources and stuff is called "Source_HDR02" its ~120mb. If that helps any, its a bink vide.

 

[RTC]

The source engine dosen´t support dynamic lighting (like doom 3 or Splinter Cell). I thing it just uses shadow buffers like in UT2003-2004.

But dynamic shadows isn´t really a must in a game like HL2 IMO.

Yes it does.
Explain to me how the flashlight works again
Point proven.

 

[diluted]

n/m
6char

 

[Asuka]

Couldnt dissagree more.
Heres some ss's i picked randomly with some lighting effects
Water ..2 sided
inside 1
inside2

and the flashlight effects are just amazing.

Thats not dynamic lighting. Thats staic. What hl2 seems to not have is this. Try shooting the lights over the halls in de_prodigy Counter-Strike Source. To you see the lighting/shadows get effected? No. Im sure they will add it later on. Really not sure why its not in the game but whocares. Still looks better then Doom 3 (Textures, faces, skyboxes) Hl2 > Doom 3. Still liked Doom 3 tho both are good games. Then again i like everything

 

[MiccyNarc]

Yes it does.
Explain to me how the flashlight works again
Point proven.

In which case every single game released in the past 15 years has dynamic lighting.
The flashlight is horribly unrealistic in its lighting effects. In some cases, some surfaces won't even be affected by the light. Not only that but it does not cast shadows.
"dynamic" lighting it is not.

 

[Logic]

"Dynamic lighting" has been in games for a long, long time. Of course HL2 has dynamic lighting, though there are instances where it isn't used to full effect. What it doesn't have is fully dynamic shadowing, which Doom 3 specialises in (everything is shadowed in real-time).

Doom 3 is technically proficient, but Half-Life 2 still manages to be more aesthetically pleasing to most people, due to better art direction and design. Of course this is subjective, but I think on the whole most people would say that HL2 is the more beautiful game.

 

[theace55]

Dynamic lighting is lighting that can be changed during the gameplay. Any 3d game probably has some form of it. Ever since doom3 dynamic lighting has gotten this omg-mega-advanced stigma when it has been around FOREVER. Games with vertex lighting engines can do some kind of dynamic light even. It's just that doom3 has most and the "fanciest" dynamic lights, and HL2 isn't as fancy. That doesn't it has no dynamic lights whatsoever. The effects such as muzzle flash light and fire can probably be pulled off very easilly with some editing

 

[Sainku]

Half life 2 does have dynamic lighting, just look at the lights in prodigy. It doesnt have dynamic shadows, which are the shadows that move with the dynamic lights . You can also shoot lights out using a mapping trick, they just didnt do it in half life 2. The source engine itself is capable of much more than is shown in half life 2, but half life 2 can be played on systems that couldn't even dream of some of those effects. So I guess they left some things out like HDR, more people can play the game that way.

Personally, I didnt really like Doom 3 gameplay or graphics wise. Chronicles of Riddick was much more fun for me and I think it will look better than Doom 3 when it comes out on pc.

 

[Alieni²]

Half life 2 does have dynamic lighting, just look at the lights in prodigy. It doesnt have dynamic shadows, which are the shadows that move with the dynamic lights . You can also shoot lights out using a mapping trick, they just didnt do it in half life 2. The source engine itself is capable of much more than is shown in half life 2, but half life 2 can be played on systems that couldn't even dream of some of those effects. So I guess they left some things out like HDR, more people can play the game that way.

Personally, I didnt really like Doom 3 gameplay or graphics wise. Chronicles of Riddick was much more fun for me and I think it will look better than Doom 3 when it comes out on pc.

I totally agree. And thanks to steam the dynamic shadows and everything they want can be added in the engine anytime VALVe decides to do so.

 

[subtlesnake]

One of things that really cought my eye in the videos was the dynamic lighting around the turrets, it looks really natural.

 

[Spiffe]

Example.
If you use the flashlight and light on something, some furniture, a ladder, a box or whatever. The light does not "light up" the area. There should be a shadow on the other side aswell. I have not seen any dynamic lightnining in HL2 or in css. Lightning effects.. yeaah =)
but no dynamic lightning effects.

Guess we all will see this in HL3 huh!
Av det grövsta dessutom... <-swe



:edit:^^^Sorry. someone already said allmost the same thing =P

 

[subtlesnake]

Dynamic lighting refers simply to the light itself, not to any shadows.

 

[NormalSim12]

dynamic lights are in D3 and splinter cell becuase it affects the core gameplay conventions (sneaking around and getting scared). HL2 isnt about that, so it doesnt need to perfect that. Go play counterstrike you realism-loving whiners.

 

[Syphoon!!]

Well the majority opinions are correct in this thread, but there's a few points I'd like to make after reading through all of it:

Source doesn't use stencil shadowing for the dynamic entities. Stencil shadows (called that because it uses the stencil buffer), also known as volumetric shadows, are per-pixel accurate (so they don't get the jaggies around their edges, but they're also hard edged, so softness is rather tricky). Doom 3 uses them.

Now Valve was quite right not to use stencil shadowing because that really affects your map making ability. Stencil shadows slow down dramatically the more polygons there are casting a shadow. They're also rather useless for global illumination (ie the sun) if you want to go outdoors, because everything's very much in shadow or it isn't.

Source does have dynamic lighting, but it's all rather incorrect. The flashlight is just a texture splatted out, which could only work in a lightmap environment, but that's why you get odd texture behaviour when you cast the flashlight over them.

Someone mentioned it uses shadow buffers (also known as shadow mapping). This is true for the dynamic objects, but the lighting still isn't correct, since they're all cast from one global point, not the local lighting, whether indoors or outdoors. This is the algorithm that's going to be used more and more in games since shadow volumes scale so poorly. The next engine John Carmack is working on will have nothing but shadow mapping. This suffers from the "jaggies" too, because essentially all it is is texture projection (in a sort of inverse of the flashlight hack), but the algorithm has much more room for modification to do cool things like soft shadowing. If you pay attention you'll notice that dynamic objects that aren't moving increase the texture quality of their shadow mapping, and switch down the shadow quality a notch when they do move to avoid too much memory usage. Shadow mapping is why there's all the shadow "glitches" when objects are on top of each other. Shadow volumes don't suffer from it because they mathematically build the shape of the shadows in the scene before darkening appropriate areas. Shadow mapped objects just project a shadow texture without care where they are in the world. And all the shadow textures do is decrease the lighting on the pixels they cover, so if they overlap, they just get darkened more.

Someone also mentioned that Doom 3 was better because it used more specular. I would like to say D3 suffered from its overuse of specular, especially on human models. HL2 was pretty good most of the time in how subtle it was with its specular treatment.

To whoever bit off someone's head for saying specular lighting instead of highlighting: don't be a pedantic dick. It's fine to say specular lighting, everyone's going to know what you're talking about.

As for dynamic lights in general such as gun shots and flares, again that is dynamic lighting, but it's incorrect, since all they're doing is just increasing the light values on the lightmap nearby. It's not per-pixel, the jaggies still result, and the "dynamic radiosity" still makes it look incorrect when it affects dynamic entities.

What about the future? Once hardware's sufficiently powerful, about the time Id release the game using Carmack's new engine, I wouldn't be surprised if Valve released Source with the option to use shadow buffers as a universal lighting tool. However, it wouldn't look too good unless they re-released all the maps as well, with light placement refined for dynamic lighting. Retro-fitting an existing game with a completely new lighting model isn't particularly easy.

 

[Cypher19]

Syphoon, so far I think you're the most educated person in this topic on the subject. I'd like to correct a few things:

They're also rather useless for global illumination (ie the sun) if you want to go outdoors, because everything's very much in shadow or it isn't.

Actually, if you do an ambient light pass, the shadows from a sun can look very nice. I've seen a small video of a map with a moving sun outdoors in Doom3 that has the sun as one light source, and also has an ambient light, and it looks fairly nice.

The flashlight is just a texture splatted out, which could only work in a lightmap environment, but that's why you get odd texture behaviour when you cast the flashlight over them.

The flashlight is a texture/shader combination (you'll notice the light has realistic attenuation, for example)

This suffers from the "jaggies" too, because essentially all it is is texture projection (in a sort of inverse of the flashlight hack), but the algorithm has much more room for modification to do cool things like soft shadowing.

In the QuakeCon 2004 video, JC actually said that he decided 2048x2048 shadow maps look pretty nice, and used that as the baseline for the rest of the level of detail calculations (he's apparently being really cocky again by using non-power-of-2 textures for omnidirectional lights, and dynamically resizing those textures based on how much space onscreen the light has)

And all the shadow textures do is decrease the lighting on the pixels they cover, so if they overlap, they just get darkened more.

Because of the way that the pixel shaders work for shadow maps, you can actually customize how light and dark the shadows are (to the point that you can skip an ambient light render?) but you SHOULD have full darkness in the middle so that if you have multiple lights the values add up pretty nicely.

As for dynamic lights in general such as gun shots and flares, again that is dynamic lighting, but it's incorrect, since all they're doing is just increasing the light values on the lightmap nearby. It's not per-pixel, the jaggies still result, and the "dynamic radiosity" still makes it look incorrect when it affects dynamic entities.

It isn't? Every bit of muzzle flash I'VE seen is per-pixel, and I think they actually are dynamic lights.

 

[Syphoon!!]

Actually, if you do an ambient light pass, the shadows from a sun can look very nice. I've seen a small video of a map with a moving sun outdoors in Doom3 that has the sun as one light source, and also has an ambient light, and it looks fairly nice.

That's what Deus Ex 2 did, and it doesn't look correct because you lose the darkest of shadows. I know it's better for bigger scenes because you can get away with more, but it's a hack, and I'd prefer if we avoided hacks . (Sorry, sort of projecting myself there. I'm in a game team atm that's building its own engine. We originally were going volumetric back in 2001, but decided it hampered our gameplay options too much, so we're probably going to end up looking a lot like Source).

The flashlight is a texture/shader combination (you'll notice the light has realistic attenuation, for example)

Yes, but it's still little more than a projected texture hack.

In the QuakeCon 2004 video, JC actually said that he decided 2048x2048 shadow maps look pretty nice, and used that as the baseline for the rest of the level of detail calculations (he's apparently being really cocky again by using non-power-of-2 textures for omnidirectional lights, and dynamically resizing those textures based on how much space onscreen the light has)

Non-power-of-2 won't be that great an issue with the new cards and the relevant GL extension. But is that really what he said? It's been a while since I watched that and I can't remember much, but I thought he said that even with a shadow map as large as 2048x2048 a global source (eg sun) didn't make very nice shadows on a large map, that the jaggies were bound to get you eventually, so that was why he was working on that mip-mapping-like approach (based on distance, not screen visibility) to his mapping textures?

It isn't? Every bit of muzzle flash I'VE seen is per-pixel, and I think they actually are dynamic lights.

I wasn't too sure about that. I'm sort of going off the early screenshots from maps where the light-map resolution was low and blocky, and the muzzle flashes were correspondingly blocky too. I'm also pretty sure they're a bit blocky in CSS, along with some trickery in the smoke. But if there's a written Valve comment saying the muzzle flashes are per-pixel now, I'd accept it.

EDIT: http://www.halflife2.net/media/displayimage.php?album=2&pos=13
This was the screenshot I was thinking of.