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Add Forum to Favorites | Send Topic To a Friend | View Forum FAQ | Track this topic Page: 1 2 »» |
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| Lighting in Doom 3 and HL 2.....Few questions |
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Erock Member since: 7/31/2003 From: USA |
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 Posted - 8/1/2003 6:59:00 AM |
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| As much as I have read on these to games, I still have no idea exactly what type of lighting systems each one is using. I am looking for someone/ones to clear this up for me and give me a detialed answer on which type/types of lighting they are using and how it works. From what I understand Doom 3 is using some type of real time radiosity lighting system, but not sure exactly how that is possable. HL 2 to me looks like it's using standard precalulated radiosity lightmaps with some per pixel lighting on the models, anyone know for sure? Any help would be great, thanks. |
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noVum Member since: 5/23/2002 From: Germany |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 7:04:34 AM |
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| Doom 3 uses simple perpixel lighting with stencil shadows, nothing fancy (only direct illumination, no GI) HL light looks like precalculated light maps |
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Erock Member since: 7/31/2003 From: USA |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 8:13:05 AM |
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Ahh ok thanks man, if anyone else has anything else to add I am all ears  |
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cseger Member since: 1/8/2003 From: Sweden |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 8:42:14 AM |
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| Doom3's lighting was always a big inspiration for me, and I've read alot of the post/interviews about the subject. Here's what I know: Doom3: Per-pixel bumpmaps, diffuse, specular, and light-filter cubemaps. Stencil shadows volumes for ALL lights. While this is not that impressive in itself, the most important thing is that it is _unified_, i.e. everything in the world is exactly the same. So you get no differences between the world and the objects/characters. I guess most of carmack's work has gone into optimizing and making sure the shadows work in ALL cases, which is easier said than done. Half-life 2: Lightmaps on world, 1 shadow map per object/character. Which is the old way of doing things, however, from looking at the E3 films, it seams that most of Valve's work has gone into FX-shaders, and making the world/surfaces very flexible. And also the characters of course. Pros and cons for either strategy can be argued, but I believe that Doom wins in the graphics area, and Half-life wins in the game-play and world-dynamics area. |
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Erock Member since: 7/31/2003 From: USA |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 9:18:54 AM |
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| "Doom3: Per-pixel bumpmaps, diffuse, specular, and light-filter cubemaps. Stencil shadows volumes for ALL lights. While this is not that impressive in itself, the most important thing is that it is _unified_, i.e. everything in the world is exactly the same. So you get no differences between the world and the objects/characters. I guess most of carmack's work has gone into optimizing and making sure the shadows work in ALL cases, which is easier said than done." That kind of detail is more along the lines of what I was looking for, thanks. But about the bump maps, everything I have seen on Doom 3 points to normal mapping and not bump mapping. Please don't tell me normal mapping is a form of bump mapping, I know this  And can you expline a bit more about light-filter cubemaps, I think I know what they are, or at least somewhat, but not 100% sure. "Pros and cons for either strategy can be argued, but I believe that Doom wins in the graphics area, and Half-life wins in the game-play and world-dynamics area." Yea I fully agree with that, I saw HL 2 up close at E3 and the graphic engine never impressived me. It does a few things nice like water, but over all nothing to impressive. Its physics, AI and world-dynamics are a diffrent story though, very very impressive! Many games look better on PC then HL 2, but none come close to gameplay from the looks of it. |
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AN_D_K Member since: 4/17/2003 |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 6:19:43 PM |
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| Does no one else think that the lighting in Doom 3, as clever as it is, just doesn't look real? Everything kinda looks plastic and each object doesn't really blend into the overall world. |
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sjelkjd Member since: 3/15/2001 |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 6:35:57 PM |
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| Actually it's the other way around to me - I watch HL2 and it looks fake, but I watch Doom3 and it looks more real(obviously still a long ways to go, but it's the better of the two). |
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Yann L Moderator Member since: 2/6/2002 From: Breizh |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 7:09:23 PM |
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quote: Yes, I agree with that. |
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y2kiah Member since: 2/17/2001 From: Daytona Beach, FL, United States |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 9:49:16 PM |
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| you're looking at still shots... trust me when you actually play the game you will be blown away by the lighting. It's all dynamic, you've never seen anything like it before so why are you dissing it? The plastic effect is not from the lighting, it's the bumpmapping which has always been a problem. It's hard to simulate a rough dull surface with a bumpmap unless it has extreme resolution. I like the way HL2 looks also, but I think they have their advantages in different ways. HL2 seems to rely on huge photoreal textures while doom3 is more of a "game art" style, but the engine is clean and precise. |
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Yann L Moderator Member since: 2/6/2002 From: Breizh |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 10:24:52 PM |
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[offtopic]quote: I have, trust me Actually, as you said, the D3 engine is clean and precise. Much too precise to be realistic, which is mostly due to the hard stencil shadows, which are unrealistic per-se (lack of soft shadows). The other very important thing is the lack of a pseudo-dynamic GI. When I look at D3, I feel like I'm thrown back into the times of 3DStudio 4, with simple pointlights and hard, raytraced shadows. You can do so much more on todays hardware. I think that D3 was in development for far too long. When it was originally being designed, it was surely revolutionary. But today, it is pretty much outdated before it even ships. I think it is overrated, by far. I seriously don't know what Carmack was thinking. OK, he chose shadow volumes. Would not have been my choice, but OK. What I really don't understand though, is the lacking support for advanced pixelshading capabilities. Where is the soft shadow option ? Where is the GI ? Carmack & friends get very early access to future hardware and specs. Had he designed his 3D engine in a more extensible way, adding support for the newest features would have been a piece of cake. Anyway, it might also be my aversion against Doom/Quake-sytle "artwork". I guess that thrid party licensees will surely use the D3 engine in a far more impressive way. [/offtopic] |
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JD Member since: 11/3/1999 From: USA |
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Posted - 8/1/2003 11:47:35 PM |
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| I made a realtime perpixel lighting/shadow editor that you can play with. I like pixel lights and their dynamic nature. When a light moves the shadows do too, or when you open a door into a dark room you can visually see light creeping in. When jail bars retract into ceiling the shadows do also. Little things like these add atmosphere to the game world unlike the static nature of lightmapped scenes. Forged3D world editor |
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Impossible Member since: 11/1/2000 |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 2:07:12 AM |
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quote: In defense of Carmack, I think it's less of a technology issue and more of a content issue. First of all, IMHO, there still is no commercial game title currently on the market that looks better than Doom III (yes Doom III is technically not on the market, but it will be there very soon.) Although he could make engine changes without needed major content updates, the content is already designed for super dark, scary lighting. The current renderer was started at least 3 years ago and the rendering code has been done for at least a year and a half. I'm sure Carmack is working on a HDR, GI lighting engine as we speak. According to some of Carmack's plan files, he'll definitely be taking full advantage of ps 2.0 graphics cards for the next game engine. Like you said, it could just be your artwork perference though. Ever since the original Doom id has favored very dark, hard lighting as opposed to soft GI stuff, even if the GI is more realistic. They switched from a radiosity lightmap renderer in Q2 to a simple direct illumination raytracer in Q3A because they artists liked the more direct lighting. Doom III seems to be an extension of this philosophy. |
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merlin9x9 Member since: 10/8/1999 From: USA |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 2:25:38 AM |
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| Certainly seeing moving shadows, highlights, etc. must be impressive. But it still looks like plastic. GI won't be possible in real-time for a while (at least not in such a way that it's visually worth doing), so Carmack's alternatives were: 1) precalculated--possibly GI-based--lighting with dynamic hacks or 2) to have it completely dynamic, at the sacrifice of realism beyond the dynamics. So, I believe that it's completely a technological issue, and not a content issue. As was mentioned earlier, the all-dynamic lighting choice wins the wow-factor contest. [edited by - merlin9x9 on August 2, 2003 2:28:57 AM] |
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silvermace Member since: 4/6/2002 From: Auckland, New Zealand |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 2:47:25 AM |
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quote: have you not seen Yann's engine, fool ? |
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Dominik_78 Member since: 5/18/2002 From: Germany |
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 Posted - 8/2/2003 3:28:13 AM |
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| Me not too. would like to see it. got a screenshot Yann? So as far as I can say - DooM 3 looked good to me - HL2 surly got better non-Graphics issues. And that's why I would prefer HL2 over DooM 3 - I am more into gameplay than Graphics. But would be nice too so see amaizing shadows and lights in realtime. [edited by - Dominik_78 on August 2, 2003 3:30:22 AM] |
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Anonymous Poster |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 4:17:07 AM |
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| <quote> have you not seen Yann's engine, fool ? </quote> i have not, have you ? And Yann L, you say that doom3 engine is outdated beafore it has even shiped ? have you ever seen a game using more advanced rendering engine ? i have not, and as far as i know there will be none when doom3 ships. Its easy to add a few more things to an engine that is beeing developed now, but doom3 is a game that has a contents, and that contents had to be seen by artists 2 years ago, and it was... you should kno is Yann L... You will have a right to say that doom3 technology is outdated when you will have a finished product or at least someting you can show to people. |
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Ingenu Member since: 1/3/2000 From: Horsham, United Kingdom |
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 Posted - 8/2/2003 5:16:45 AM |
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| vtales (Where Yann works) engine screenshots: http://www.vtales.com/game/temp/ Stencil shadows can generate 'softer' shadow by light jittering (is it the good word?). Anyway it's very fillrate intensive, and really only works well on PowerVR hardware. It's a waste on most other hardware IMO. Not the best engine design, but it's still impressive, I believe Mr Carmack released screenshots and movies far too early which kinda cut off the 'brand new amazing' effect for most people in the know. Isn't HL2 using stencil shadows for characters and other moving objects ? (maybe it uses lightmaps, don't remember) -* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-  |
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AN_D_K Member since: 4/17/2003 |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 7:25:40 AM |
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| I still admit that the Doom 3 lighting is still pretty amazing and dynamic, but it just doesn't look real. I have the E3 videos and it doesn't look real on that either. Actually, I was recently more impressed with lighting when I play Sega GT on the XBOX the other day. When you start off it seems like nothing special. The modelling isn't that good, the game is a bit uninspiring...but when I watched the replays of my race I was amazed. Even with all the faults in the graphics, Sega GT looked more real than even Doom 3 because they had got the lighting right. The reflections weren't too harsh, the camera blurred at just the right places of focus, there were spot on heat hazes and had a slight atmospheric fog on some smoggy tracks. The only things that took away magic was the crap art but this is a testament to how important lighting is. |
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cseger Member since: 1/8/2003 From: Sweden |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 7:53:27 AM |
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| Yann, your posts and engine being another major source of inspiration, do you care to comment abit on your shadow approach? (specifically the performance factor) I've read you use an extended version of shadow maps, Perspective-SM was it? Are those directly from articles, or your own tweaked version? Which is *the* article for PSM? Would these be good in a multi-dynamic light scene, like D3's? Could you render Doom3 scenes with the same or better performace with these PSM instead of stencil SVs? You do have to use 6 SMs for a point light (completely in the frustum), don't you? And just a little thought: Comparing the scenes of the Vtales engine and HL2 engine, wouldn't HL2 really be better off with the Vtales engine? HL2 scenes (big towns, outdoor, etc) looks perfect for Vtales. Now if we could only get a leaked VTales alpha =) |
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Yann L Moderator Member since: 2/6/2002 From: Breizh |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 9:12:25 AM |
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| Hehe, I notice the "bash the Carmack-basher" effect... Don't get me wrong, Doom3 will surely be one of the most impressive games on the market (unless it is going to transform into a DNF number 2...). The problem is, that as some people mentioned, the E3 demo (as well as the leaked alpha) looked very plastic. I'm fine with the dark and scary artwork, but there is a lack of rendering technology. I don't know, but I personally think that some parts of eg. Splinter Cell look better than Doom3. From the side of the artwork, it's probably personal taste. But from a technological point of view, ID has promised very much. Too much, I think. The game was totally overhyped, and expectations sky rocketed. Unfortunately, the game was delayed again and again. The technology it uses was cutting edge a couple of years ago, but it is not anymore. If the game was released, say, one year ago, it would have been pretty alone claiming the "best looking game" title. But today, even Carmack knows he has to be careful: trying to avoid the simultaneous market release with games like HL2 or DeusEx2 is not only commercial consideration, but also the fear that D3 might go unnoticed besides its competition. Let's not even talk about the non-existing gameplay in pretty much any ID game. From that point of view, I can't wait for DeusEx-2, and I won't care about the graphics. But for a game like D3, where graphics are pretty much its only USP, it is, well, dangerously overhyped. quote: Very good performance, but limited to shadowmap capable 3D hardware (anything above and including GF3). No shadows on hardware below that, this is a drawback. Other than that, the SM shadows are far more performance efficient than their stencil counterparts, especially on complex geometry. They don't have the fillrate hit, and they come with (pseudo-)soft shadows for free. quote: Yeah, they are a mixture of standard SMs, and PSMs. The PSM approach is a slightly modified version of the one described in the "Perspective shadow maps" paper you can find in this forum FAQ (a link, that is). Also, if you somehow manage to find them, I've explained pretty much the whole vtales engine from top to bottom, distributed over about 30 threads or so... quote: Yes, absolutely. Pretty much all lights are dynamic in our scenes, and it works rather well. quote: I guess, that the performance would be much better than with SVs. It would surely give better quality. But I haven't yet tested it on a real Doom3 scene. I guess Carmack chose SVs because of the larger range of target hardware. quote: Yes, for cubemaps. An alternative would be dual-paraboloid shadowmapping, which needs two SMs per point light. Check out Stefan Brabec's papers about shadowmapping (also linked in the FAQ). IIRC, there was a demo of DPSM on delphi3d.net some time ago (in OpenGL). quote: Heh, they are welcome to license our engine, if they want It is not yet entirely finished, that's the problem. We're still working on the SDK. As a matter of fact, we've had some major game studios contact us about details, so perhaps you'll see games using it in the future (note to A.R from R., if you read this: your special demo version is coming up soon, we had to fix a couple of things on the space scenes, was a little more work than I thought (the artists were not really amused, when I told them about the testbed scenes ). I'll get back to you by email for the download details).[edited by - Yann L on August 2, 2003 9:49:50 AM] |
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Fistandantilus Member since: 8/1/2001 From: Brazil |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 3:57:03 PM |
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quote: Wow.... stop. GI in real time?!?!? How?!?!?! |
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MENTAL Member since: 4/8/2000 From: Herne Bay, United Kingdom |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 4:27:58 PM |
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| global illumination is when not only does the light sources cast light onto the polygons, but the polygons reflect some of this light back to the world, lighting up other areas that arn't visible to the light source, like in real life. quake2 faked this by using lightmaps. notice how there are very few light/dark lightmaps on the surfaces? this is because of all the light bouncing around. the day someone does GI in realtime is the day i crap myself because i have to redo my AI-shadow detecting algorithms |
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MENTAL Member since: 4/8/2000 From: Herne Bay, United Kingdom |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 4:32:37 PM |
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| regarding doom 3's lighting. all of the levels are very grey. They only time there's some real colour in the lights is when the monsters shoot fireballs at you (it took me by surprised when i watched the e3 video - i had gotten it into my head it was a greyscale vid due to the lack of color and BAM a big orange light goes off!) Another problem with grey scenes is that the specular lighting looks plastic. I'm hoping (praying) that Raven add some more color (not just green ) to Quake IV. Not only will that reduce the plasticy effect, but it'll also make the lighting much more realisic.another reason why HL2's lighting looks better is because a lot of the action is outside (or there are windows), whereas doom3 is set inside a big base complex on mars, where there's bugger all sunlight in the first place. also, remember that the idea of doom3 is to scare you. It wouldn't be very scary if you could see the monsters comming from a mile away now would it .personally, i think the lighting is perfect for both types of games. I just hope that doom3's engine prooves portable enough to be used outside the staple corridor-fps genre. |
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MichaelT Member since: 1/5/2003 From: Stockholm, Sweden |
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Posted - 8/2/2003 5:09:06 PM |
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quote: I was not overly impressed with D3. The dark scenes were too dark and I found myself squinting more than actually enjoying the game. The shadows was not impressive at all but since it was an alpha I'll let that pass(Actually some were outright wrong). The resource consumption was unbelieveable for something that small, again because it is alpha I'll let that pass. But the graphics itself was non satficatory. Everthing looked plastic and dead. The animation of the creatures looked like something out of "House of the damned" (quite surprisingly so actually) Then when shooting the gun the added polys and lighting kept building up and stalling the computer. I assume that was still there to try and measure some good maximum value of textures that could be dynamically added to the scene. But when I recently saw the new video of the game I noticed that very little had changed to my dismay. It seemed to float better now but the graphics is still plastic, dead and uninspiring. I felt more scared playing Alien Versus Predator actually (not the 2nd version mind you) The lighting was still also the same, I guess it is because Carmack is working in a dark room (A no no as any graphics artist would no since the backlight will surpress the intensity of the screen)I saw a program once about where he was working and the lighting was far too low in that room. I just hope I am making and incorrect assumption here. When looking at Yann's work it feels much better. The lighting is much better in the Church and the Town square. I am not very happy with the giants/trolls though or the heroine and I feel that they could be altered for the better(If you care to relay that piece of advice Yann?) Of course I haven't seen the engine running so it is hard to compare with Carmacks work but the stills do look better. Although some clearly have been arranged (I can see the empty space behind the objects) A real test would be to see an actual running demo or avi that could be used as a comparison. Until then, I feel it hard to say that Yann has done better work (I am sure you'll understand Yann) Of course even if the engine is not as good as Carmacks the graphics is still way better generally. And this is something that Many games lack today. Good, proper graphics that looks believeable. Unfortunately when many games are released they have environments and creatures that don't belong together or are simply non believeable. Like what do this creature life off for instance? I may be picky but it is details like this that creates an atmosphere that the gamer will feel is inspiring and hopefully create a feeling of the need to explore and I don't get this feeling from Doom3 at all I am afraid. ____________________________________________________________ Try RealityRift at www.planetrift.com Feel free to comment, object, laugh at or agree to this. I won't engage in flaming because of what I have said. I could be wrong or right but the ideas are mine. |
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merlin9x9 Member since: 10/8/1999 From: USA |
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Posted - 8/3/2003 6:56:37 AM |
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quote: In fact, I've seen the same screenshots. With all due respect to its technicality, it looks like plastic, too. To my eyes, those graphics are about on par with the likes of say, the rendering quality of Shrek. Shrek looks like plastic. What I consider to be GI worth doing still takes a long time to render, especially with high polygon counts and large, detailed scenes. |
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