Doom3world

Hi all!

Is there some way to render ambientlights without normalmaps? cuz when i turning off bumpmapping, ambient looks alot more better than with it, especially on models. i looked at ambientlight.vfp, but im noob in shader languages It would be really really cool if anyone got it fixed.

p.s. sorry 4 the english, cuz im russian.
p.p.s preved, krosavtchegi

I think D3 ambientlights don't use normalmaps...
Try to light a surface with an ambientlight... it'll look flat.

What would be cool is to have Q4-like ambientlights working in D3

r_skipbump=0 84kb
r_skipbump=1 59 kb

so, waddaya think now

p.s. hehe, sorry, im an idiot . fixed

I think that they are the same image.. please fix the link

Edit: wow, now I understand. I've never noticed how it looks bad with ambientlights... mostly because I always use ambientlights with a brightness lower than 30 or 40 and only as "background" of other lights.

But is seems like you can enable / disable bumbmap for the entire game and not for the single light...

I hope someone will help you... I know nothing about shader languages

Anyone ever look into this?

It would definitely make the game look better as the no fall off ambients look like absolute crap since they render the bump maps incorrectly.

I don't suppose there's any harm in detracting from the topic a bit so what constitutes an ambient light anyway? I mean we know what they do in the context of the game but what effect are they supposed to represent in the real world?

I'm guessing it's supposed to be light that doesn't have a defined source or direction. It's supposed to be a cheap alternative to ambient occlusion.

And if that's the case, I don't know how anyone would go about fixing the problem short of implementing some kind of real-time ambient occlusion. I'm not even sure that's possible without access to the full source code.

I imagine adding falloff wouldn't do anything other than dull the relief of surfaces closer to the center of an ambient light. It's a slight improvement, but the fundemental problem present with ambient lights would remain.

Well for our work in Dark Mod, we only use an extremely low level of the 'no fall off' ambient. For us, this simulates the worlds global illumination...diffuse reflection...or whatever you wish to call it. Shadows without a very small amount of ambient are unnaturally pitch black in doom 3, as I'm sure you know.

In any case, the no falloff ambient incorrectly lights the bump map...making it look like it's lit from an angle..instead of flat. We use such a low level that's really not noticeable but it would still be nice to fix it.

Try turning the ambient down. What's the EXACT ambient light-shader you're using? I ended up making my own custom ones for Q4 because I didn't like the ones included. Sadly, I don't have have my Q4 content anymore, but here's a link to a map I made:
http://planetquake.gamespy.com/View.php ... tail&id=64

In there should be some good ambient lights that don't brighten the place up to much but DO make things so you can see them.
Ambient lights normally don't interact with anything (from what I remember). What I would do with them is use them to fill in an area so you can see @ a certain light level, then use normal lights for the rest. Sadly, all the threads I have bookmarked about lights are gone (they were on non-d3w sites).



Better english then me.

lol

Better english than me. Sorry, just had to point that out, considering the context.

this is dedicated to all the grammar nazi's out there: http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/grammar

it's "grammar nazis" not "grammar nazi's"!



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maybe i was making it possessive.

aah, possessed by a grammar nazi, i see.

about that ambient light thingie and chances to fix it:
i found a comment in lights.mtr (line 949)


so i understand doing "non-directional bump mapping" is the problem. then looking at the material shaders for ambient lights i see they all start like this:


normal lights do not have this "ambientLight"-argument in their shader.
i know next to nothing about these things, but does it call a special ambientlight-func in the renderer? if so, then it cannot be fixed without access to the source code.
but maybe it is pointing somewhere else? or there are different types of light, that can be misused for some non bumpmapping ambient light fake?

r_skipbump=1 turns off all the bumpmapping and makes everything look old school. definately not a fix.

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Yeah, if there was some way to 'abuse' r_skipbump 1 to be used with a single ambient light, but not other lights...then we would be somewhere. There has to be a way.

There is.

Haha. Please share rebb!

Look here, hope it helps.

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=21230