marconelly!
Veteran
Because of the modeling - it's not a perfect surface, you have the polygons seams. But it's specular map, that's pretty obvious.
BumpMapping on PS2
- Thread starter ShinHoshi
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marconelly! said:
That it was specular was obvious, i heard around there was "something else" in there too, but maybe i was daydreaming...
I believe Fafalada once, on this forum, wrote about doing DOT3 with only two passes on PS2.
I'm not sure (can't find the post) but I think it involved having a CLUT texture with two pallets, then you only had to change the pallets to obtain the four different textures necessary for the x,y and -x,-y normals. No z-normal, to save on rendering passes, so I guess this scheme is only really good for bumps that can be approximated with a triangle or a parabolic shape.
Keep in mind that this method being CLUT based, could also easily include colour information, so that's diffuse DOT3 in two passes, the same as other hardware.
For specular lighting you would need more passes though.
Maybe one-pass CLUT bump mapping could be used here, because the specular highlight usually only occupies a small part of the shaded model, a tiled CLUT BM could be bounded by vertex alpha around the highlight.
So that's DOT3 diffuse with specular highlight, in 3 passes, on PS2! Tell me again developers, why aren't you using bump mapping on PS2, at least just a little bit?
One-pass CLUT BM can, if handled right, look really good, take a look at the below link and try the demonstration program:
http://homepage1.nifty.com/open-prog/java/applet/applet108/Page1.htm
http://www.eg.org/EG/CGF/Volume19/Issue3/paper140/Bumpview.zip
I'm not sure (can't find the post) but I think it involved having a CLUT texture with two pallets, then you only had to change the pallets to obtain the four different textures necessary for the x,y and -x,-y normals. No z-normal, to save on rendering passes, so I guess this scheme is only really good for bumps that can be approximated with a triangle or a parabolic shape.
Keep in mind that this method being CLUT based, could also easily include colour information, so that's diffuse DOT3 in two passes, the same as other hardware.
For specular lighting you would need more passes though.
Maybe one-pass CLUT bump mapping could be used here, because the specular highlight usually only occupies a small part of the shaded model, a tiled CLUT BM could be bounded by vertex alpha around the highlight.
So that's DOT3 diffuse with specular highlight, in 3 passes, on PS2! Tell me again developers, why aren't you using bump mapping on PS2, at least just a little bit?
One-pass CLUT BM can, if handled right, look really good, take a look at the below link and try the demonstration program:
http://homepage1.nifty.com/open-prog/java/applet/applet108/Page1.htm
http://www.eg.org/EG/CGF/Volume19/Issue3/paper140/Bumpview.zip
PC-Engine said:
I think they're the same thing............. maybe....................... perhaps...................
I had a glance at the CLUT bump-mapping demos and it doesn't look much better than emboss mapping. I doubt that there is much point to using it instead of regular Emboss, since the look would not be worth the speed penalty.
I think that the answer when someone asks "Bump Mapping on Ps2?" will always be "No."
I think that the answer when someone asks "Bump Mapping on Ps2?" will always be "No."
So not even this is possible, or?
http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/publications/papers/bumpmapping.pdf (910KB)
http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/publications/papers/bumpmapping.pdf (910KB)
marconelly!
Veteran
I don't remember that ever being asked, and I could swear there was some kind of BM going on as I've spent probably 5 minutes just making sure to see how it works in some rooms. There are rooms that are located underground so your character emits light around him. There are places in those rooms where tiny (and I mean *tiny*) bones are scattered around the floor. You can actually see the light cast by your character move over each side of those bones as you walk over them. It subtle, but I dont' know how such effect could have been accomplished without some kind of BM going on.
Yeah, but patenting these techniques has never stopped anyone from copying them. If so, there wouldn't be a single game using normal mapping being made if royalties are not paid to Crytek. Even then, why not pay some penny to companies having the patent and license their methods? I doubt Argonout is begrudgingly keeping their CLUT bumpmapping away from the rest of the world...
I'm also surprised why is Spherical Harmonic lighting not being used anywhere but some tech demos yet? Basically the only place I've even seen that running live were those new PSP tech demos.
Marconcelly,
I remember doing the same kind of "testws" on BGDA too, and my conclusion is that those bumps were geometry.
I remember the room with the bones on the floor, and i remember playing with the lights and notice that the bump was a real geometrical bump, what gave it away was the fact that after a while i noticed the nature of vertex based lighting PS2 games have. The bump changed colours "in triangles", meaning it's per-vertex lighting and not per-pixel. Therefore, it was geometry and not bump mapping.
In the end, the effect is the same, and looked good, so it's not a problem.
All the lighting in BGDA and pretty much every game on PS2 is per-vertex. I said "pretty much every game".
I remember doing the same kind of "testws" on BGDA too, and my conclusion is that those bumps were geometry.
I remember the room with the bones on the floor, and i remember playing with the lights and notice that the bump was a real geometrical bump, what gave it away was the fact that after a while i noticed the nature of vertex based lighting PS2 games have. The bump changed colours "in triangles", meaning it's per-vertex lighting and not per-pixel. Therefore, it was geometry and not bump mapping.
In the end, the effect is the same, and looked good, so it's not a problem.
All the lighting in BGDA and pretty much every game on PS2 is per-vertex. I said "pretty much every game".
Marc,
I don't mean to be an ass, but do you have an Xbox? If so, you can see the huge difference between bump mapping there, and the pre-baked BMs in say, CoN/BGDA. If I didn't know better, I too probably would have thought some things on PS2 used BM, but after seeing the real deal in action, it's pretty obvious it's pre-baked.
I don't mean to be an ass, but do you have an Xbox? If so, you can see the huge difference between bump mapping there, and the pre-baked BMs in say, CoN/BGDA. If I didn't know better, I too probably would have thought some things on PS2 used BM, but after seeing the real deal in action, it's pretty obvious it's pre-baked.
^^ An Xbox or any PC graphics card of the last 4 years or so.
marconelly!
Veteran
I doubt you could see any triangles, as the bones I was talking about are like 8x2 pixels big or something to that effect - *really* tiny. It could be geometry though, but man, that would be an overkill if they actually modelled stuff like that.
Again, I am not talking about anything pre-baked (of those two games, only CoN has pre-baked BMs, there are none in BGDA from what I remember), and yes, I know very well what I'm talking about. I know what bump mapping is, how it works, and what different kinds of it are there, as I was looking at it, and it's various variations since the days of Amiga, hell maybe even C64. If you read my first post in this thread, you will see that except for CoN/BGDA which I wasn't even sure about, and which I know used geometry for almost everything, I actually always knew that none of the PS2 games use any BM.
As a matter of fact, the only two games to have that as an advertised feature are Stretch Panic and Jak 3, and none of them I think actually have that effect.
Marco matey,
Trust me, i saw the vertex based structure of the lighting, you know what i'm talking about. It was small, and hard to see, but it's there, and once you see it once, you start noticing the patterns. Like you can notice it on (for example) Tekken characters, they're small triangles but you can still see that the lighting changes on a per-vertex fashion because you can see the colours change "by triangles" and not "by pixels" like it is when per-pixel lighting is used.
I agree it must have been a pain to model all those details, but hey, that's the way it is...
Trust me, i saw the vertex based structure of the lighting, you know what i'm talking about. It was small, and hard to see, but it's there, and once you see it once, you start noticing the patterns. Like you can notice it on (for example) Tekken characters, they're small triangles but you can still see that the lighting changes on a per-vertex fashion because you can see the colours change "by triangles" and not "by pixels" like it is when per-pixel lighting is used.
I agree it must have been a pain to model all those details, but hey, that's the way it is...
Shin,
As was said before, TekkenTag used geometry+specular on the floors. TTT had specular lighting on quite a lot of surfaces in fact, and those floors looked pretty amazing at the time. I was also fooled into thinking it was BM, but if you play the game long enough, u'll notice the bumps are REAL bumps. And unless Namco found out how to do Offset Mapping, or even Displacement Mapping on PS2 even before OM was "invented", then kudos to them. But it's geometry with specular on them.
As was said before, TekkenTag used geometry+specular on the floors. TTT had specular lighting on quite a lot of surfaces in fact, and those floors looked pretty amazing at the time. I was also fooled into thinking it was BM, but if you play the game long enough, u'll notice the bumps are REAL bumps. And unless Namco found out how to do Offset Mapping, or even Displacement Mapping on PS2 even before OM was "invented", then kudos to them. But it's geometry with specular on them.
Sometimes I forget that every developer has to find the way to do effects in the less costly way for the hardware. And perhaps on PS2 it's cheaper to use real meshes while on XBOX BM would come cheaper.
At the end, the important thing is to keep visuals high and to give a certain appearance to the game.
And as I can see, I am not the only one Namco fooled so Kudos to them.
I had the impression PS2 had used the tech on many games since sps2 came with a demo that applied the tech.
At the end, the important thing is to keep visuals high and to give a certain appearance to the game.
And as I can see, I am not the only one Namco fooled so Kudos to them.
I had the impression PS2 had used the tech on many games since sps2 came with a demo that applied the tech.
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