01narshadda



06bbarons



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10cargo



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m5


I'm faking it a bit, but with a little more work I think you could convert a JK texture into a fairly high quality floating point texture. High dynamic range works amazingly well on some levels (03katarn in particular) but you can't really see the effect in a screenshot.

That's quite an improvement. How exactly are the "bright" areas determined? Just luminosity?

So when are you adding radiosity to those lights (especially the red ones in the control panel thingies)? Those screenies are begging for it.

=p

Colormaps have 64 light level tables that remap the palette onto itself. These tables effectively represent different exposure levels. I'm only using two levels.

Oh yeah, that's how they did the glow in the dark stuff in software mode.

Oh man, the red lights look so much better this way.

-I actively despise those corridors in the basic version solely because of the darkness.

Looks very cool

Looks snazzy

That's a really neat effect. I hope you'll type up a quick tutorial once you've worked everything out.

So obviously JK didn't have colored lighting (not counting sector tinting) - but would it be possible to somehow implement a tint to the HDR-esque lighting? If this has already been asked in the thread, I apologize. I didn't have time to read through it.

By the way, is this Sith2 or a something else? i.e. did you really bother to modify Sige's rendering spaghetti?

IIRC sith2 supported 3dos, but I see none.

Very Cool!

Looks cool.

It's just a level viewer.

Awesome! The videos really help show the effect in its full coolness.

Get some bloom in there, those super-white spots are begging for it.

It does have bloom. The fact that you didn't notice is the highest compliment.

While the beauty of the lighting is self evident, there's one particular compliment I must make: You have really smooth mouse control. Very nice.

-Anyways, what might the implications of this be for actual gameplay? Is there some way to make the game render this way?

Very interesting work... thanks for sharing and I will keep an eye on developments here..this is great.

When I say bloom, I'm talking realistic bloom. Not that stupid "soft glow" that most engines slap on everything and incorrectly refer to as bloom (Unreal anyone?). If that's what you were talking about, then yes the fact that I didn't notice it is a compliment. But you want to notice real bloom, it's a very important visual cue that adds greatly to the realism of a render. Not seeing that should not be a compliment. Any render artist can tell you that bloom is important, you just need to do it right.

This is real bloom.






Screenshots taken from my full HDR engine, Sapphire.

I see slight glows on lights but that's about all I see. Bloom should be much larger on things like the sky in level 10, where I see no bloom at all. With a sky that white, it should cause a really big glare. >.>

I was really looking forward to seeing JK rendered in a full HDR pipeline when I read the first post, only to be disappointed because only materials that follow JKs colormaps glow (and only slightly). You should probably go with a full bloom effect rather than a simple 1-level glow.

Other than that though, outstanding work! I've been wondering about JK and HDR for a long time now and was even bugging Zeq about it. Glad to see a working proof-of-concept.

butt!

Ok definatly love the videos. I can see this being implimented in future JK levels.
Almost like a movie.
Coming out of dark cave into the overwhelming light glare. Eyes adjusting.
Definatly good idea.

...you guys know this isn't actually JK, right?

I like the dflt.mat at the end of the third video.

Also, I like the HDR effects.

i know lol
but there has to be a way to put it in JK levels.

You call that "bloom" xzero? Looks like an over exposed camera.

I agree. Those examples of bloom don't look good at all.

Games that are designed for HDR have full-gamut floating point textures. This uses a "full HDR pipeline." It's as good as JK is going to get.

I swear half the computer graphics industry is people who have no idea what it's like to look into a light as bright as the sun

Hey, I resemble that remark.

My shots were designed to look like an over-exposed camera, that was the point. That way you can see what should happen when things get too bright. When I say "full HDR pipeline", I'm talking lens streaks, flares, bloom and floating-point textures. Not just an HDR backbuffer and some auto-exposure. If you can add an HDR backbuffer and auto-exposure, the rest should be trivial.

Look at the super white spot on the left (distant hallway) in this shot:


The videos Jon posted are full of these, particularly in outdoor areas, and they're much worse.

These areas should be causing at least some bloom, as they would in reality. Without glow, these white spots are worse than having no HDR at all. It makes them hard to distinguish from very bright sources and washes out all textures which makes them look completely incorrect. Bloom gives the viewer a good sense of brightness, the more bloom something is causing, the brighter it seems. This holds true in actual photography, and in real-life as well (though we usually squint to protect our eyes). Without bloom, you just end up with walls (like above) that look just as bright as bright light sources on the walls nearby. In my shots, you can discern the difference between "bright spots" and "very bright spots". That's really what bloom is all about. The same thing happens in a real lens (natural or artificial). Humans are very good at detecting what's missing in a shot, which is why the Uncanny Valley is so difficult to cross. Bloom is one of those things that needs to be present.

Really, you're not using any benefits of HDR at all. Displays can only display from 0 to 255 anyway - HDR is usually used in games to provide proper ranges so that you can do accurate bloom effects and some other effects of that nature (blending, depth of field, motion blur, that kind of stuff). Auto-exposure and an HDR backbuffer are practically useless on their own.

You misunderstand what I am saying.

I know what I'm doing. I am using a full "HDR pipeline" as you describe it. For example, 'bloom' is the reason the lights glow.

The reason it doesn't look like the complete garbage you're talking about is because I'm capable of looking outside of a window. Partial gamut 8-bit textures causing a blue sky to bleed blue bloom all over the level is why the sky doesn't glow.

Get out.

You could have simply stated your reasons for not having things like the sky bloom instead of ****ting on me. But alas, I forgot you were Jon`C. The reason I continued on the subject of a "full HDR pipeline" is because I was under the impression that we had different meanings for the term. That would be because you never bothered to explain anything, you just simply said "I have a full HDR pipeline". Good job.

Nice work reading my post btw, I think you missed the part where I said my images were purposefully overexposed. And on that subject, my engine is designed to simulate a camera, not the human eye, so your comments about looking out of a window are pointless. If you view a window from the inside of a dark room with a camera, you will get a lot of bloom. But I'm sure you already knew that.



You really need to elaborate on your method because all of this talk about texture bit-depth has me confused. Normal HDR pipelines rely on HDR lighting values, not textures. Most games use standard 16bit or 32bit textures with DXT compression... hell, CryEngine2 doesn't even support HDR textures and it has very nice HDR.

Asking you to understand my confusion is probably asking far too much of you.

PS: Freelancer, you want good examples of bloom? Here:

Nobody cares.

If "I know what I'm doing, there is bloom, this is real HDR" is too difficult a concept for you to understand, "get out" certainly shouldn't be.

If you can consciously notice bloom you are doing it wrong. Period.

"And on that subject, my engine is designed to simulate a camera, not the human eye, so your comments about looking out of a window are pointless. If you view a window from the inside of a dark room with a camera, you will get a lot of bloom. But I'm sure you already knew that."

Why would a video game engine (which is more or less what we're talking about here) want to simulate viewing through a lens?

Because it's easier and faster to simulate a cheap camera with a bad lens, and it's weeaboo as ****.

And I'm pretty sure I've seen "Xzero's" "engine" somewhere else....

I completely understand both. You don't need to be such a ****ing dick about it. Honestly it's your attitude that is keeping me here, just because I know you want me gone. Call me a troll if you want.

If you can't notice bloom even subconsciously, you're also doing it wrong. The human brain is very good at detecting problems with images, even if the person viewing it can't tell you where the problem actually is. The bloom in your blown-up shot is just barely noticeable and is far too thin, so thin that it looks like there is none at all, which is bad. You need some level of visibility. I really think you should consider expanding to a standard 3 layer bloom, rather than a simple 1-layer gaussian blur (I trust you are using a gaussian blur). If you can't see it, you might as well not include it.

Alternatively you could just rework your tonemapper so that areas like that don't go overbright. Try lowering the range of the auto-exposure. That would solve a lot of the problems.

1. It's not a video game engine, it's a rendering engine. There's a distinct difference between the two.
2. Every engine these days aims for camera realism because it's what people are most used to seeing on their TVs. Simulating the human eye is ridiculous, we squint when things get too bright and blink every other second. Do you honestly want your display to constantly flicker? Besides, as I said above, people are very good at noticing things that are wrong with an image, and simulating the way eyes perceive the world is just asking for uncanny valley troubles.

Nice, bringing up ancient problems to further put me down. Can't think of anything better, can you?

You're likely thinking of RTHDRIBL, what I believe is the first HDR render engine released. It bears many similarities to my own, since it was my reference while learning D3D programming. But I guarantee you, my engine is my own. Crytek can back me up on that, they have a copy from my interview.

But you know what. I'll just go per your request. You obviously don't care about any other replies other than "ooohhh purrrtyy".

Really? You're going to try and argue semantics?

These are levels. From a video game. There is absolutely zero reason to simulate running through them while holding a camera to your face.

Roger: Why games aim for camera simulation is a topic for another thread.