Screenshots

[a13n]

You're probably right.

I'd rather be left4dead.

[Hipshot]

...

[phantazm11]

Fjoggs: Really nice looking map, man.

[urgrund777]

B) The grass may be simple but its good for performance. Its really hard to get instancing right AND have it look good AND play smooth Any tips guys?
C) Sprites are not exactly possible here While I could use them, you have to remember the lighting engine we use, i.e. you cant have a lit sprite. It would be fullbright. So while its possible to use them, they would probably end up looking worse

Just use a 3D model if it's a limitation of your engine (though you have access to all the source yeh?) that it only runs a fullbright pass over sprites.

In the screenshots, my plant instances do everything you just mentioned... (all the lighting, shadowing, animate... etc, it's all pretty neat to work with in HLSL)

I deal with a lot of this daily at work, so I'm aware of the considerations required when thinking about a foliage solutions... of course each project (even using the same engine) differs greatly, so goals & requirements are often different. You say you want specular & normalmapping on the foliage? Well... it's gonna run slow! Especially if you opt for alpha blending, which will need an additional alpha test... it will start getting REAL slow! :P But, if that is your goal for your project in your engine... then perhaps a deferred solution would be better here?

Where your question is answered is in the instancing and batching... that's the 'Look Good' and 'Plays Smooth' part of your question. ...of course, it's up to your artists to actually make foliage that looks good, the tech won't help you there! :P

Good luck!

....anyway, this is WAY off-topic for a SCREENSHOTS thread, maybe post this stuff in your own engine thread?

As for water, we have all of the above and godrays are planned

cool!

[o'dium]

Its not off topic, its a discussion.

Plus you work with this every day and yet you dont know the dangers of using alpha blended sprites? Not only are they gonna need some ugly vertex lit hack to get them working ingame, they will also suffer drawing issues unless you really pay close attention to them. In other words to get them rendering correctly is slow.

Ours are alpha TESTED, its different. Alpha TESTED means we can use normal/spec on them perfectly fine, and they draw in the correct order cheaply. We use this in combination with alpha to coverage which softens the edges with FSAA is enabled.

Your solution just isn't a solution, not for newer engines. Its nice if your making an environment on an oldschool lightmapping engine, but it just wont work on more advanced lighting set ups.

[Hipshot]

Its not off topic, its a discussion.

It's a discussion for another topic.

Don't worry, I will contribute soon too...

[fKd]

heres a early shot from fun with cel

[a13n]

Wow, I've been waiting for your cel.
You don't use flat textures intentionally, do you?

[Fjoggs]

You like that cyan glass, don't you.
Looks nice.

[Hipshot]

The lower part here looks very cool!
Maybe you wanna use another sky though?

[fKd]

all textures are place holders till the geometry gets up to scratch... find/replace ftw

[Hipshot]

So that thing about me never doing any more Q3 level kinda backfired.... uh... so now I have ~4 levels going on, down here is one project.

Remember this one? viewtopic.php?f=10&t=26805&p=497903&hilit=hipshot_dm8#p497903
Started to fix this up to final quality. This is really most a graphical thing, since it lacks on that area, it was a hasty speed job. The fix is more to add a bit more detail where needed, fix textures (keep most the same style though Q1/Q2/U insp), update the light.
If there's any input on the level it self (gameplay, item/weapons, etc), that should probably be posted in the old thread (I know, _old_ thread...), cause when I release this version, it's final and will never change again.

This is the outside area.
[lvlshot]http://zfight.com/misc/images/maps/m8/m8_1.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://zfight.com/misc/images/maps/m8/m8_2.jpg[/lvlshot]

[g0th-]

Thats looks great Hipshot, along with socks work that might be one of the best looking outdoor scenes for q3.

[o'dium]

Get the fuck outa' here, thats not Quake 3, you are so fu...

Wait...

FUCK.... Man thats good. Great job, REALLY.

[fKd]

can i steal ya sky texture?

[Lunaran]

This is not a screenshot:

I had a quick idea for something I wanted to try out in Quake3 - not a full blown map investment, just some poking around. GTKR isn't working right! Of course it isn't. Okay, yay, I dunno why the hell it won't load shaders all of a sudden, I remember messing with some internal things for the sake of using it for Quake1 a while ago and I don't remember how to undo what I did, so whatever, I'll just uninstall it and reinstall.

No matter what version I install, it never creates the Radiant-1.x folder that has apparently vital files like synapse.config and the .proj files in it. It always did before, and now it won't. I installed Q3Radiant202 and it worked like a charm.

I fucking hate GTKRadiant with a passion, still to this day, and I want you all to know that.

Carry on.

[fKd]

show us ya screenshot

[Lunaran]

/me lifts up his shirt

[urgrund777]

Plus you work with this every day and yet you dont know the dangers of using alpha blended sprites?

not sure how you came to that conclusion? ...have a quick read through my post again.
that's great that you also understand what the diff between alpha testing & blending is, good work, keep it up.

Your solution just isn't a solution, not for newer engines.

Yeh, so not sure what you're after then... again, read my post, all the bells & whistles you mention are actually on display in that screenshot of mine... lets list them:
- Vertex stream instancing. can have thousands of these babies on screen no probs with little memory footprint
- HLSL, which means all your pretty pixel shader shit like normals/spec alpha blending/TESTING and anything else your shader artists cares to program
- by virtue of HLSL, support for all light types (that are supported byt he engine), so that takes care of your gunshot flash and "night scenes" and anything else all real-time
- 3D model can be weighted and animated, or just write a swaying algorithm in the vertex program
- AA support (inherent to the engine)
- 64bit HDR
- HLSL support ON SPRITES...

So having FFP on your sprites is a limitation on your engine - sorry, my bad for assuming your engine could do more in that regard - so yep, you'll get sorting issues trying to use a sprite system for grass whereas I can use alpha testing on a sprite based grass system and since it's shader based, also alpha blend the sprite out on distance, add shadowing, add normalmaps ...anything, the sprites support HLSL programs.

Again, it's all a matter of what you're after for your project? What is your teams' goals for foliage rendering? ...if all of that is still "old school lightmapped engine", be cool to hear what your targets are for foliage then and what next-next gen stuff the team is planning to achieve, it's a very broad field with heaps of solutions around! Good luck!

~


Hipshot - pretty clean work there dude! Crazy to see nice stuff still getting pumped out for it!

Screen-shot from a Wii game we pumped out the door a few months back...

[Fjoggs]

Hipshot: Very nice. Love how some of the textures are stock id textures. What's going on at the top right in the first screenshot? Looks like the sky is sorta melting/blending into the rock? Looks awesome

[sock]

Wow, hipshot that looks totally amazing, best terrain blending I have seen in a long time! (Including modern engines) The composition and colour palette for those screenshots are perfect, just goes to show Q3 can still be king with visuals. Looking forward to seeing more of your stuff and glad you have come back to mapping for Q3

Sims

[rgoer]

hipshot has the gameplay of the map changed since the version posted in that older thread? if so, is there a download for the current version?

[ix-ir]

Good to see you've regained the passion for mapping Hipshot, that map scene is amazing.

[Lunaran]

[lvlshot]http://lunaran.com/pics/q3_hdr2.jpg[/lvlshot]

Stupid skybox lines. I need to try ioq3.

I used python to crank out a ton of sun definitions with colors sampled from the skybox to mimic HDR dome lighting. There are 92 suns, which I'm willing to guess is a record.

I'm probably just going to plunk in a bunch of cubey agglomerations like this, sprinkle rocket launchers and spawns, and call it finished. I don't have the time to be dicking with this at all (seems I can only map when I'm putting something else off, which is why I've barely finished anything since graduating), but it's reeeally tempting to see if I can make python automate the random cubey agglomeration part too ...

[a13n]

Love how some of the textures are stock id textures.

and it never looks like another bleh.