Soft shadows demo

[Humus]

Yet another demo.
This time it's dynamic soft shadows implemented by interpolating between a set of lightmaps.

http://esprit.campus.luth.se/~humus/

 

[micron]

How many lightmaps did you need to store to achieve this "dynamic" effect?

 

[tEd]

16 if go by the amount lightmaps.dds's the demo comes with

 

[digitalwanderer]

Thanks for the demo, and thanks for giving me a fresh story for Hanners to wake up to on EB.

Just downloaded it, off to play!

 

[micron]

16 if go by the amount lightmaps.dds's the demo comes with

The whole thing transitions smoothly for only 16 lightmaps no?

 

[Reverend]

This is unreal...

 

[digitalwanderer]

GREAT looking demo Humus! The shadows are incredible.

Two things:

1. Why is everything always so shiny? If you tone down the shiny do you lose the bump mapping or something?

I'd LOVE to see a demo with bump mapping and flat (non-shiny) textures, it's something I've never seen.

2. Any possibility of adding the "wasd" keys for navigating? Everytime I start one of your demos my left hand just naturally falls into gaming position and it just feels wrong that nothing happens when I push them keys!

Thanks for the pretty eye-candy Humus, I'll sit back and watch the discussion now and try and understand the tech.

 

[Reverend]

1. Why is everything always so shiny? If you tone down the shiny do you lose the bump mapping or something?

I'd LOVE to see a demo with bump mapping and flat (non-shiny) textures, it's something I've never seen.

Should be very simple to do by just adding an adjustable value (without messing with the codes for folks like you!). Some apps have adjustable glossmap value for example.

2. Any possibility of adding the "wasd" keys for navigating? Everytime I start one of your demos my left hand just naturally falls into gaming position and it just feels wrong that nothing happens when I push them keys!

Not exactly free movement but Humus uses the arrow keys for simple front-back-left-right camera movement.

 

[vrecan]

another beautiful demo as usual humus keep up the good work!

 

[digitalwanderer]

Should be very simple to do by just adding an adjustable value (without messing with the codes for folks like you!). Some apps have adjustable glossmap value for example.

Thanks for the info. So the only reason they make everything look so glossy lately is because they think we LIKE it glossy?

I'm kind of offended by the "pretty/shiny" mentality, but it did work for a while...I guess I just want to see if bump-mapping could actually look more realistic.

Not exactly free movement but Humus uses the arrow keys for simple front-back-left-right camera movement.

I'm not that dumb Rev, I did know that.

I just always mouse with me right hand and when I enter a 3D world like that my left goes for the "wasd" keys, moving my left hand over to the arrow keys just feels kind of akward.

Yes I'm just being incredibly nit-picky, but it bugged me enough times that I felt it worth mentioning.

 

[overclocked]

Does it only work with ATI card´s? Tried it o my 5900 and it says that it don´t support blabla.. Would be nice too get it working.

 

[DeanoC]

Diffuse bumps are quite hard to notice, so tech demos have generally overdone the specular shinyness.

Most games are much more subtle, but tech demo's aren't meant to be subtle, each effect is meant to be obvious.

 

[DemoCoder]

If uses GLSL, so you need a driver that supports it.

 

[Cryect]

If you want to change the shiness open up lighting.shd

Now find the below line

	float specular = pow(saturate(dot(reflect(-viewVec, bump), lightVec)), 16.0);

If you want less shiniess put a multiplier like 0.35* before pow and if you want the shininess to be a little more spread out instead of a very tight ball change 16 to say 8, 4, 2, or 1.

Only issue I have with the demo is for the size of the light those shadows are a little too soft for objects pretty close to it.

Edit: Oh and the less specular the less the bump mapping is noticable

Edit 2: Since there is no GI being done IMO this demo as well looks a little better with just a tiny bit of ambient light (nothing against you humus just giving my opinion ^_^) If you are interested in trying that change.

	gl_FragColor = shadow * (diffuse * base + specular);

to

	gl_FragColor = shadow * (diffuse * base + specular)+0.15*base;

 

[LeGreg]

GREAT I'd LOVE to see a demo with bump mapping and flat (non-shiny) textures, it's something I've never seen.

you probably saw them already but the bump didn't stand out because there wasn't any specular effect so you didn't pay attention. At least they didn't vary as much as you go through the room.

Note that at low angles a lot of surfaces turn specular (fresnel effect).

 

[101998]

Wow, that is one sweet looking demo!

 

[Humus]

How many lightmaps did you need to store to achieve this "dynamic" effect?

As have been mentioned, I use 16 lightmaps. I could go down a bit too, maybe to 12 and still get quite good results. 8 are too few though, it gets a bit jumpy then.

 

[Humus]

1. Why is everything always so shiny?

I like shiny

2. Any possibility of adding the "wasd" keys for navigating? Everytime I start one of your demos my left hand just naturally falls into gaming position and it just feels wrong that nothing happens when I push them keys!

You can configure any keys you want. Just open the F1 menu. It'll then be the same in all demos.

 

[Humus]

Only issue I have with the demo is for the size of the light those shadows are a little too soft for objects pretty close to it.

I would say they are pretty much exactly as soft as they should be. I sample 400 light positions within a light sphere that's the exact same size as the light I draw.

 

[jb]

Humus, nice work (as always)!