HAMMER for halflife2

[Nay]

well i`ve mapped in it for about 3/4 years now hammer formly known as worldcraft, well theres one thing i would like to see in the new hammer, well basically a real time render mode in the 3d camera ( bit like unrealED ) which shows all real time RAD whats everyones thoughts?

 

[Argyll]

Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking! It would save the lengthy rad compile times just to see what your lighting will be like.

Hopefully Valve will incorporate lighting into the 3d view.

 

[ComradeBadger]

yeh and it wud save a helluvva lot of time checking the light-texture file works! hope it is built in!

 

[RoyalEF]

I don't see that happening. If Rad takes three hours to figure out how lighting looks, how is it going to do it in milliseconds while you are zipping around in the 3D view? If it had any preview it would be very limited and not what you would see in the game...since RAD require VIS to complete to determine where light shines and doesn't.

Doom3's editor has the best chance of having fully integrated lighting effect in the editor, since the Doom3 engine handles all lighting in realtime. I imagine Doom3 won't have a RAD component to compiling--or be very minimal.

 

[Nay]

maybe halflife2 might work like that and elimate RAD

 

[RoyalEF]

dynamic lighting is a huge thing, HL2 does not integrate it. You can see it in the pics and movies. Not all objects have shadows, no dynamic lighting featured....it is a selling point for the engine. If you see the trailer last year for Doom3 you see lots of things with lighting that HL could never do and most I doubt HL2 does comparably either.

 

[Thing'e']

I'm sure they have said that it will contain a lighting preview,along with model previews.

 

[Dave]

Originally posted by Thing'e'
I'm sure they have said that it will contain a lighting preview,along with model previews.

Yep I read that too.

 

[Onions]

dynamic lighting is a huge thing, HL2 does not integrate it. You can see it in the pics and movies. Not all objects have shadows, no dynamic lighting featured....it is a selling point for the engine.

Half-Life 1 DOES have dynamic lighting, so has hl2 from one of the screenshots i've seen. I dont think you understand what it means.

Also, cant remember where I heard it, but I'm pretty sure i remember hearing that the new hammer version WILL render lighting.

 

[RoyalEF]

If you've witnessed the Doom3 demos you would understand what *I* mean. I don't mean the 3 dynamic lights allowed in HL before the engine hits it's limit. I mean true, real-time dynamic lighting. WHere all lighting for all objects and surfaces (100%) are dynamic and calculated in realtime. Doom3 does it all.

You have a light bulb swinging back and forth, a sliding platform made of metal grillwork passes below it, a monster stands on the platform and another monster walks on the ground beneath moving platform. All the shadow throughout the room will swing with the lightbulb. The light will shin through the moving platform's grillwork, and the creature's shadow will move with it. Furthermore the light of the bulb, the upper creature's shadow and the grill will all travel across the SKIN of the creature below. No precalculated lighting-aka STATIC lighting.

HL has coded acceptions around the basic static lighting model--ones we know well like toggled light and LIght_spot entities, the glow from a launched rocket, the shadow feature which was later removed. And there are limitations (no more than three dynamic lights may affect a surface)

HL2 clearly has shadows for players and NPCs--but they are an acception and done by a "subtractive" shadow (so when my shadow overlays your shadow, mine makes yours darker). You can see this in the demo. You can also see that some objects lack shadows. There are individual lampposts and trees which cast no shadow, while others do. This means multistage light calculations... aka STATIC & DYNAMIC. So we have to run RAD and create a static unchanging lighting of the world and amend that with a variety of dynamic lighting affects--which will have limitations and exceptions.

 

[SpoBo]

I think Splinter Cell is the best example for that
I do believe HL2 has dynamic lighting .. if not it's not such a big deal since it already has dynamic shadows and the lighting is hardly needed at all ... It's just more stuff to render for your PC.

 

[iko0n]

Originally posted by SpoBo
I think Splinter Cell is the best example for that
I do believe HL2 has dynamic lighting .. if not it's not such a big deal since it already has dynamic shadows and the lighting is hardly needed at all ... It's just more stuff to render for your PC.

let's hope the whole light thingy is done ingame and that it are not prerendered shadows

 

[SpoBo]

Originally posted by iko0n
let's hope the whole light thingy is done ingame and that it are not prerendered shadows

Check the 7th movie .. when the car gets shot it's pushed over the street and you can clearly see dynamic shadows so don't worry about that