Soft Shadows and will they be in HL2

[Roland Deschain]

Ok, two part question:

1)I hear so much about Soft Shadows and I have no idea what they are. So could somebody, in the simplest possible manner, explain what they are and how they are different from the shadows I see in, lets say, Splinter Cell.

2)Will they be in Half Life 2.

Thanks

 

[Pitbul]

yeah cause we got all the answers to game with no release date.

 

[Shuzer]

Soft shadows are.. soft. They do not have ultra precise, hard (hence the description soft/hard shadows) edges (like Doom 3)
HL2 does indeed feature soft shadows, they're just not fully dynamic

 

[crabcakes66]

I can just imagine my Fps dropping like a rock in an area with shadows like that in the U3 demo.

 

[Kazuki_Fuse]

I'm almost 100% certain Unreal 2 had soft shadows that characters cast. They gradually faded too, I've seen in HL2 movies that characters shadows fade as they stretch out. If Unreal 2 has it I'd be hoping HL2 at leasts supports it.

 

[brink's]

yeah cause we got all the answers to game with no release date.

Calm down buddy, he was just asking.

Yes it will have soft shadows.

 

[crownest]

Yes, but only for graphic cards that support DirectX 9.0 (Eg. GeForce FX, Radeon 9800) DirectX 8.0 cards will also have similar shadows, but a bit sharper. Dont know what that means, but i think the egdes of the shadow will have sharp egdes, which looks ugly.

http://www.planetdescent.com/lyris/hl2_mpc.html

 

[hildigrim]

why is there a page about hl2 on the site of descent, looks pretty retarded......i really don't knwo why they don't put that on planethalflife or something

 

[Burning Fish]

Max Payne 2 had soft shadows too, you saw them when you did a shootdodge, the further Max was from the ground, the "softer" the shadows were.

 

[ferd]

I've never even heard about soft shadows

 

[hildigrim]

i've never saw them, i always disable shadows in the menu, they EAT your frame-rate, so i don't know which game has the best shadows....

But isn't there a difference between using layers to make shadows look softer and really apply the 'soft shadows' programming style???

 

[PvtRyan]

In the Source DX9 bink video the Antlion casts a soft shadow. Nothing spectacular, but it makes shadows look prettier in general. Hard edge shadows are ugly.

 

[StardogChampion]

1)I hear so much about Soft Shadows and I have no idea what they are. So could somebody, in the simplest possible manner, explain what they are and how they are different from the shadows I see in, lets say, Splinter Cell.

Just look at any shadow on your floor... you probably won't be able to draw an exact line around it because it doesn't have a sharp edge to follow.

 

[CTTcrew_MrBlue]

Where there soft shadows in thief 3? it seemed to run ok on my comp with full detail on a 9800 pro.

PS. I love youre avatar lazicsavo, shrek 2 was hilarious :E :E :cheese:

 

[Raxxman]

Slightly different question.

But what takes the strain of Shadows?

I'm asking cause I have a 9600 XT 256 meg edition and a few games (Halo, Chrome) play spanking untill you turn shadows on, at which point I get visible framerate drop.

The rest of my spec is a 2000+, 768 ram. So is it the card that takes the majority of the shadow work?

ta

 

[StardogChampion]

Where there soft shadows in thief 3? it seemed to run ok on my comp with full detail on a 9800 pro.

PS. I love youre avatar lazicsavo, shrek 2 was hilarious :E :E :cheese:

Thief 3 - Look at the fire lamps on some walls, they cast a circular light which fades out at the ends, although the shadow the flame casts from an object won't be soft.

 

[Burning Fish]

PS. I love youre avatar lazicsavo, shrek 2 was hilarious :E :E :cheese:

Lol, I didn't even notice his avatar. Absolutely loved the movie, best movie I've seen this year.

 

[Intel17]

Half Life 2 has precomputed shadowmaps which are soft. But real time soft shadows are very computationally expensive. Look at UE3.

 

[hildigrim]

Half Life 2 has precomputed shadowmaps which are soft

That's exactly what i meant, thank you for using the right words!! :thumbs:

 

[Roland Deschain]

Oh, so those are soft shadows (saw them in Max Payne 2). yeah, they did look really good (I was shoot dodging just to see them). I don't think thief 3 has them since they are either black or not there. They don't fade in or out.

 

[SubKamran]

In the Source DX9 bink video the Antlion casts a soft shadow. Nothing spectacular, but it makes shadows look prettier in general. Hard edge shadows are ugly.

Yah, with the light MOD for Thief 3 it makes the shadows softer (though probably not technically "soft shadows").

 

[Cypher19]

If you want an assload of information about current real-time soft shadowing algorithms, I'd recommend checking out this web page: http://www.ce.chalmers.se/old/staff/tomasm/soft/

In addition to documents on how the process is done, it also feature numerous screenshots and videos of the demos in action.

Actually, here's the best difference between hard/soft shadows: http://www.ce.chalmers.se/old/staff/tomasm/soft/opengl_demo_4a.jpg and http://www.ce.chalmers.se/old/staff/tomasm/soft/opengl_demo_4b.jpg

Note that these are all 100% dynamic.

Oh, and I don't believe HL2 will have this implementation of shadowing at all, since it's still very computationally expensive.

PS: I'd probably fall over and die if I saw this demo combined with rthdribl...

 

[lans]

If I'm not mistaken, Far cry did not have soft shadows?

 

[Cypher19]

No, Far Cry did not have soft shadows. The closest current implementation to soft shadowing in real time graphics in video games is a shadow generated as a texture, which at lower resolutions has quite a low quality and is very blurry, however they do have potential to look very nice and crisp, as Splinter Cell demonstrates.

However, once that demo I just posted becomes implemented in games (which by the way I feel is WAY better than the implementation used for Unreal engine 3) in a year or two from now, I think people will be really amazed at how good they look (even if only the XI800s or whatever they'll be called can do it at a decent framerate).

 

[Son_Kane]

To have true soft shadows you would need some sort of per pixel shading which HL2 doesn't currently have. All it does is makes the transition from shading to no shading. It's really nice though.

 

[barnacle]

How are Halflife 2 shadows not dynamic, they look good to me.

 

[Shuzer]

How are Halflife 2 shadows not dynamic, they look good to me.

They're (the shadow position) set by one global light source. Such is why shadows don't change according to different lamps as you see people/objects move by them.

It looks great outdoors, but it's a bit "eh" indoors, as it makes less sense.

 

[Kazuki_Fuse]

Really? They don't act accordingly to the surrounding lights such as lamps etc? I could be wrong but I thought I saw in the E32k4 video where the combine walks through the corridor with lights overhead and he shadow changes. I know I probably imagined it.