It probably depends on where in the game. It wouldn't be nice to have a lot of self-shadowing with lots of enemies in the area.
*renamed* Lighting and shadows in games
- Thread starter muungano
- Start date
It probably depends on where in the game. It wouldn't be nice to have a lot of self-shadowing with lots of enemies in the area.
Hazuki Ryu
Regular
Yes, I was alone and I noticed as I walked and some enemies apear the shadow detail became worse.
Do you still claim every character in GTAIV has self shadowing?
GTA4 has selfshading, on both niko and NPC characters. Its not very good but its there. Remember you have to be outside at daytime, or be under strong lighting at night (havent really checked for it at night).
Its clearly there thought, just walk up to characters that are out in the soundlight, and see how the sunlight hits them at one angle, and their body casts shadows on the other side of the sun, on themselves, and on the ground, it changes with their movement, and the angle of lightsources.
I love answering olllld posts.... here's what I think is going on in there.
If you watch the video you'll see that the guy doesn't cast shadows on the barrels. The barrels cast shadows on the wall, as does the lever.
They render shadow images once for items that cast shadows, ignoring self-shadow.
Then render the non-shadowing objects with the grayscale shadow and NO DEPTH TEST. Just always hit.
Render the shadowing objects without the shadow.
Done! You can even blur the shadow nicely.
Wow, NBA 2005 on the PS2 had self shadowing? *Looks up* Oh and did any of the Splinter Cell games on the PS2 contain self-shadowing? Like I've said before, the only PS2 games that I knew of with self shadowing were the Ace Combat games and Shadow of the Colossus. I thought it was too wasteful technique to use with the PS2. As far as the Xbox goes, wasn't self-shadowing a supported feature from the get go like the various types of bump mapping it could do?
Hmm, I had thought only SotC and the Ace Combat games were the only PS2 games containing self-shadowing. Did any PS2 Splinter Cell title have it as well. And as far as the Xbox goes, wasn't self-shadowing pretty much a "built in" technique from the get go like the various types of shaders it could perform? Also I must say I remember Sly Cooper 3 using stencil shadows I believe. They didn't have that noticeable jagginess to them, so I assume they were stencil. They looked pretty good, all characters and NPCs had them when close to a light source like a fire. Looked good and ran well to me.
Silent Hill 2 had self shadowing in the cutscenes, while SH3 had them in both cutscenes and in-game and was much more profound. SH4 had it as well, though it was subtle.
Here's one example of the cutscenes:
http://static.pici.se/pictures/SvkJUtJDC.gif
Here's one example of the cutscenes:
http://static.pici.se/pictures/SvkJUtJDC.gif
brain_stew
Regular
One big bug bear I have when it comes to the use of low resolution shadow maps in console games is that in many cases, the subsequant PC port doesn't support higher resolution shadow maps.
Prince of Persia would be a beautiful looking game but its visuals can be utterly destroyed at times with loads of hideous looking super low resolution shadow maps all over the place, its a huge eyesore. My GTX 260 runs the game fine at 1080p with 4xAA/8xAF with a near constant 60fps so its just aggravating knowing that my sytem could quite easily render much better shadows but the developers have decided to block me from doing so. COD4 is an equally annoying case, the shadows in that game can look ridiculously ugly at times.
Both Unreal Engine 3 games and Crysis for example let the user set the level of their shadow maps in config files and I just wish more developers would allow similar levels of tweaking. Honestly, I'm just not the biggest fans of extensive use of shadow maps in general if one is working within the restraints of the current console level hardware, the prebaked lighting/projected textures of Mirror's Edge and Source with minimal dynamic shadows gives a much better end result despite it being less accurate imo.
Mirror's Edge really is a stand out example to me for the merits of lots of quality prebaked lighting, the end result (especially on a high end PC) is stunning, and yet not computationally expensive. Having said that, I think Doom 3 really spoiled me, it seems absurd that game's are desperately trying to match the standards set by a game that's coming upto 5 years old now. I understand stencil shadows are far from ideal for current console hardware but there's definitely examples of them working very well in some current generation console games, Riddick and Prey, for instance so perhaps its not as an unusable method as some suggest.
Prince of Persia would be a beautiful looking game but its visuals can be utterly destroyed at times with loads of hideous looking super low resolution shadow maps all over the place, its a huge eyesore. My GTX 260 runs the game fine at 1080p with 4xAA/8xAF with a near constant 60fps so its just aggravating knowing that my sytem could quite easily render much better shadows but the developers have decided to block me from doing so. COD4 is an equally annoying case, the shadows in that game can look ridiculously ugly at times.
Both Unreal Engine 3 games and Crysis for example let the user set the level of their shadow maps in config files and I just wish more developers would allow similar levels of tweaking. Honestly, I'm just not the biggest fans of extensive use of shadow maps in general if one is working within the restraints of the current console level hardware, the prebaked lighting/projected textures of Mirror's Edge and Source with minimal dynamic shadows gives a much better end result despite it being less accurate imo.
Mirror's Edge really is a stand out example to me for the merits of lots of quality prebaked lighting, the end result (especially on a high end PC) is stunning, and yet not computationally expensive. Having said that, I think Doom 3 really spoiled me, it seems absurd that game's are desperately trying to match the standards set by a game that's coming upto 5 years old now. I understand stencil shadows are far from ideal for current console hardware but there's definitely examples of them working very well in some current generation console games, Riddick and Prey, for instance so perhaps its not as an unusable method as some suggest.
Last edited by a moderator:
brain_stew
Regular
Yes, COD4 is really one of the worst examples, the way the half decent resolution shadows pop in can be very jarring, because it happens straight in front of you and isn't really at all gradual.
They seemingly must have been targetting quite low level hardware, even a 8800GT will play the game at very high resolutions with AA/AF at 60fps with performance to spare. All it would take is a simple config variable or menu item and the game would be much more visually appealing. I'm sure I'm not alone in being a PC gamer that really appreciate developers that spend that small amount of time to allow PC gamers to take advantage of their hardware.
As I mentioned Prince of Persia is quite similar and its really such a shame, because the art style has loevely clean and smooth look, and looks stunning at 1080p with some anti aliasing. The problem is there's loads of ugly low resolution jaggy shadow maps scattered all over the environment with no smoothing algorithms or anything applied to them, popping from one LOD to another at very close distances. I'm certain if the LOD bias of the shadows and absolute resolution of them was bumped up it'd be incredible looking, but the current solution can be so jarring at times.
I guess someone needs to phone up Naughty Dog and ask them what they did with the original Uncharted, as that's probably the only console game I've played that's stuffed to the brim with dynamic shadow maps without resorting to making them an ugly low resolution mess.
Playing Half Life 2 and Mirror's Edge again and it really reinforces my opinion that if you can't achieve results like Naughty Dog or Crytek then forget adding dynamic shadow maps to everything just stick with high quality prebaked lighting and the end aesthetic is often much more visually pleasing.
I've played 2 PS2 Splinter Cell titles. Neither of them had self-shadowing. In fact, they didn't have much in the way of dynamic lighting to begin with. You occasionally had a shadow projected onto Sam Fisher, but they mostly ditched that in the later games in favor of almost entirely prebaked lighting.
Yeah, the Xbox was the focus platform the whole way through. It's the version people really cared about getting if they had a choice of which platform to get it on.
GhostHunter on the PS2 had self shadowing, and good antialiasing (for a PS2 game)
the torch was also casting shadows of what it was lighting. And i remember being amazed buy the shadow effect that the main character was producing when viewed from behind with the sun behind the character. Another great effect was some video pojector or disco ball which were projecting moving images on the surrounding environment and on the characters as well. I think this game deserved more credit, at least on a technical level.
the torch was also casting shadows of what it was lighting. And i remember being amazed buy the shadow effect that the main character was producing when viewed from behind with the sun behind the character. Another great effect was some video pojector or disco ball which were projecting moving images on the surrounding environment and on the characters as well. I think this game deserved more credit, at least on a technical level.