Monday, June 18, 2012

One last visit to the forest

Here is a slightly old video I took from the voxel forest. This one has a radiosity solution. It is still not there for me, it may be too dark, also it also has some bugs in the lighting of grass and canopies that I fixed after doing the video. Anyway I thought it could be entertaining to some of you.


16 comments:

  1. A little too dark might be advantageous. Are you able to detect an enveloping region of light patch? If so, constructing light shafts back will help balance the scene and give it more volume - so plus for dark.

    P.S. Are all the boulder/rock formations we see still part of the underlying terrain mesh?

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    1. I want to have some sort of volumetric lighting effect, basically the same effect as the shafts you suggest. As you say it would lighten the image.

      I'm also planning on some form of automatic exposure control. When everything is too dark your eyes would adapt and detail would slowly start to emerge. If you went quickly into an intensely lit area, you would be blinded for a few seconds.

      So yes, this is far from a final lighting solution. I actually improved on this look after doing the video.

      The rocks you see are part of the underlying terrain. The grass is just some form of material.

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    2. Automatic exposure control would be amazing, I think. Anyway I really liked this video. I kept wanting to steer the camera.

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    3. The forest looks about as dark as a real world forest does before my eyes adjust, so I think you're heading to exactly the right solution with exposure control!

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  2. very nice, great work. don't think it's to dark...

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  3. Oh SHUCKS that's really pretty :3


    Do you plan on making caves at some point? I've not seen them done that well (when procedurally generated) and I think you could change that ^w^

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    1. No plans for caves yet. I'm already biting more than what I can chew...

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  4. I agree with Anonymous above, doesn't look too dark to me.

    It's amazingly beautiful. The point where the video reaches the edge of the forest is just jaw-dropping. :)

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  5. At this point, what would up the quality of these previews much more than another radiosity quality increment would be to put some smoothing filter on the camera movement. ;)

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    1. I'd like to see it raised a bit higher off the ground as well, but I don't guess that really matters a lot.

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  6. Yep agreed with above. Leave the darkness alone. Consider that the lightness and over-all color of the scene should be directed from shaders. Once you put in HDR, Bloom, etc it all changes.

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  7. I personally agree with MCeperoG with that it is slightly too dark, there should be a little bit more light coming through the leaves (making the bottom of foliage be a bit more bright) I am not certain whether the grass is too dark though (Normally grass doesnt even grow in forests, or only in small patches where there is a small clearing)

    I will have to agree with some of the people above in that the edge of the forest looks amazing. I would like to see a screenshot or video from above though, see a forest as you would from a mountain or something, because I believe we have only seen the forest from the floor =3.

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  8. The darkness is fine. It would be great when paired up with HDR Rendering to ge that smooth adjustment of the eyes as the player/camera moves through different area of light.
    But thats polish for another day. This looks very good but I agree it still has room for tweaking.

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  9. Wow, lookin' good. I guess my comment would be that things look too still for a forest- a few falling leaves or something would go a long way towards livening up the place without being a terrible drain on resources (plus it's easy to make effects like falling leaves optional, for low-end computers).

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  10. I think you are very close to the correct radiosity solution, if you feel you can't up the bounces processing wise... You can probably fake it a bit, via gamma, or other hdr techniques like others have said.

    I agree that it is a touch too dark, though very dense forest is dark too, it's just rare that the darkest light levels are so prevalent within any forest... much more light reaches the floor and keeps the ambient light levels up during the day.

    In game, it's not always going to be high noon, so the radiocity map that you are baking in should be the foundation upon which the dynamic lighting system functions. I really think this will be how you achieve what you are looking for.

    Your realtime lighting engine will have to work with that radiosity map to render realistic dawn an dusk and -- to render me sneaking stealthily, in the dead of night, behind a picket scout and cutting his throat. So he doesn't alert the army camped just outside the forest, of my presence. ;)

    My suggestion would be that something in the actual dynamic lighting system, in game, should "push" a bit more light from the highest brightness areas to the surrounding low ones... almost like a rough gamma map.

    This would help simulate secondary bounces where the light pools at full brightness on the forest floor, surrounded by lowest darkness areas and trees around it... there would be more of a glow to the surrounding geometry around that pool of light, and perhaps that glow could be something done by the lighting engine, since it knows that the radiocity map says there at high brightness near low ones.

    Anyway, all this talk of improving things is refining something that is already 95% awesome to 98%... it's already freaking awesome! If you don't put another day into your radiosity solution you'll have achieved better, and more realistic, results than most gamers have seen in a game.

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