shadows
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/shadows
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| Hello Is it possible to create dynamic shadows in Blitz3D? Thanks in advance |
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| The answer is yes Have a look at (includes full source code): http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=memory04242004213434&comments=no and also: http://www.blitzbasic.com/logs/userlog.php?user=963&log=269 Plus you will find fake shadow effects in the code archives. |
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| @puki the first link doesn't work! :( ... the 2nd link is only a demo without source |
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| Buy sswift's shadow system |
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| It's possible to create real time shadows in blitz. Not particulary easy though. I'd recommend looking at sswifts shadow code. Also, have a lok through the code archives, i'm pretty sure there's some stuff in there. Rob (Bloodlocust) has a flex shadow thing somewhere too :o) |
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| @puki the first link doesn't work! :( ... Works fine here. the 2nd link is only a demo without source Correct. If you want shadows that are that easy and that fast, you buy the system from SSwift. I've seen a number of people talk about writing better/faster shadows, but no one has actually done it. "Buy SSwift's Shadow System", as Joe put it, really is all you need to say with regard to shadows. And the best thing, as with all of his systems, is that it's ridiculously easy to implement and the source is really, really well commented and easy to read. |
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| If you have Gile[s], look at the B3D Parser. |
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| thanks all I have downloaded the SSwifts' shadow System demo. It seems very good |
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| "If you have Gile[s], look at the B3D Parser." What on earth does that have to do with dynamic shadows? |
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| Hello Again on dynamic shadows What about the following proceedure ?: to create a copy of the entity to paint it black to flat it using scale comand to blend it with the terrain to orient it depending on character and light position I am making some tests,did anybody make something similar in the past? Does it work? |
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| Doing that will not look very good. For one, unless your terrain is perfectly flat, the shadow mesh will intersect the ground... half of it will be cut off. For another, if you use a blending mode overlapping polygons will create areas that are darker than others. It'll look like a bunch of triangles of different shades. |
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| Well im very close to finishing a great shadow system , its the first thing on my list if only i get a bit more time. Should have it by February, if not by then, then its abandoned. I'm talking about the stencil shadows and i've figured out a great fast way of making dynamic shadow volumes (tested). All i need now is to put it all together. |
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| i got sswift shadow system and am very pleased with it. some thing to be aware of though is your model you want to use to cast shadows (from). try to model it in real scale (the scale you intend to use ingame). the system doesnt like scaled meshes much. |
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| Keep in mind that even if Lenn makes a stencil shadow system, stencil shadows would use features not native to Blitz and that could lead to crashes or problems on some video cards. Also stencil shadows require much lower polygon characters, and I'm not even sure how Lenn would solve the problem of casting stencil shadows from boned animated meshes since Blitz doesn't return the modified vertex locations. "the system doesnt like scaled meshes much." Have you had problems casting shadows FROM scaled meshes? Because there's only supposed to be a problem casting shadows ONTO scaled meshes. |
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| it was from scaled. the receivers i have not scaled at all. the object was scaled a lot - 0.01,0.01,0.01 and the shadow cast from it was a large square. nothing like the object at all. |
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| sswift Thanks for your reply Actually I am coding a sport game . I want to cast the players' shadows on the field, i.e.on a perfectly flat and one_color (light brown)surface, so my method should work, I suppose. |
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| and I'm not even sure how Lenn would solve the problem of casting stencil shadows from boned animated meshes since Blitz doesn't return the modified vertex locations. Thats the thing, im using your trick is all i can say. You'll see either when its done or when i give up (cos of lack of time) and tell the idea to someone else to make it. And as far as I've seen the guys fixed it so that stencil shadows work on all cards without glitches. |
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| "it was from scaled. the receivers i have not scaled at all. the object was scaled a lot - 0.01,0.01,0.01 and the shadow cast from it was a large square. nothing like the object at all." Well if you run across a problem like that again, emailing me the source so I can debug it might result in a fix. :-) |
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| Hello Again on dynamic shadows What about the following proceedure ?: to create a copy of the entity to paint it black to flat it using scale comand to blend it with the terrain to orient it depending on character and light position I am making some tests,did anybody make something similar in the past? Does it work? Yes, I used it in Tennis Babes. It works, to a point, but it's no replacement for proper perspective shadows. I used it as a backup for SSwift's Shadow System, in case anyone wasn't getting enough speed and still wanted some dynamic shadows. Most people used SSwift's Shadows and a few people used static shadows. Hardly anyone went with my flattened shadows. |
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| Sybixsus I agree, It can not be a replacement for proper perspective dynamic shadows,I will also purchase SSwitt's shadows system ,for future applications. Anyway ,speed is a main issue for my game , having a lot of players on the field . I understood the method is quite fast,is it right? I was also concerned about SSwitft's remark "a blending mode overlapping polygons will create areas that are darker than others" My field is similar to a tennis court,did you get an acceptable result? |
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| My field is similar to a tennis court,did you get an acceptable result? Not with blending. Sswift is right. Where polys overlap, you get ugly changes in shadow color, so I had to forget blending and go with pure black shadows. Not ideal, but better than the alternative. Anyway ,speed is a main issue for my game , having a lot of players on the field . I understood the method is quite fast,is it right? It was better, but not by as much as you might think. Blitz is *very* slow with skeletal animation, and because you're effectively doubling the number of characters ( assuming all have shadows ) you're increasing the strain on the already slow animation. If your characters happen to be MD2's or have just hierarchical animation, yes, it's a lot faster. |
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| Sybisus thanks,I go for Swift shadow system |
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| "If your characters happen to be MD2's" My system doesn't really support MD2's because of limitiations in Blitz. I think I got it to where they cast shadows, but they're updated so infrequently that it looks crappy. |
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| My system doesn't really support MD2's because of limitiations in Blitz. I think I got it to where they cast shadows, but they're updated so infrequently that it looks crappy. Right, but I wasn't suggesting using them with your system. I was suggesting that they would be better if he was gonna mess around with his flattened out version as a backup method to your system. That would then involve exporting skeletal versions for your shadows and MD2's for the flattened version, but if disk space isn't an issue, it's a thought. |
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| I know that this post is old, but I realy want the scource of the first link in this thread. Does anyone have it so they could give it to me? Please? |
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| Here you go http://graphio.250free.com/download/B3d_test_onlySource.rar |
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| This link has the same problem as the last one. It says Hottlinking not Permitted Remote linking of files over 250K is not permitted with free accounts. Please try visiting this site directly. |
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| http://graphio.250free.com/ the link is at the center of the page |
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| Thanks! |
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| Hmmm .. I get a mav with this. |
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| ..one quality and juicy MAV here too.. |
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| Try this link for the first 'Another Shadow System' http://www.graphio.net/download/shadow.rar I changed the site but blitzcoder.com is gone in the while... |
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| I download, and run, and MAV again |
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| mmm...strange, on my system it works perfectly, both the .exe and the source. (Athlon64 3500+, GeForce 6600gt - but at the time I created it, it works perfectly on a AthlonXP 1600+ GeForce4200ti) What is your system? Maybe if the flag 256 in the CreateTexture() commands. |
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| Nowt to do with the +256 flag on texture creation as I have no issues using this. P4, 3.2 mhz, gfx 440mx It MAV's on a writepixel command ... haven't checked but you may be writing outwith the buffer? If alm>0 Then WritePixelFast(xx,yy,shadow,imgBuffer) Else WritePixelFast(xx,yy,luce,imgBuffer) End If |
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| get MAV all the time. even with +256 flag set. |
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| at this point WHEN you get a MAV? At the start, when move the light or when? I've re-checked the program and the loop where it writes on the buffer is in the limit of the texture. For me there is no error in it. |
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