Im so busy today, and we needed to get this finish today , so i dont have time to do a proper presentation, so for now you can GUESS what this is about, and tomorrow i might have time to do a proper video,screenshot of what this is







https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/pull/290

awesome work! I like the sound of this I read github which explains in much detail. I may have to hit that donate button.

nice one Preben, this look excellent.... Donation time I think, pay day end of week so will make a nice contribution

Are you on the latest beta? I'm think i saw someone posted that a lot of the issues with light mapper are fixed in beta. Also, if you mean by broken the fact that pbr models aren't being light mapped, then apparently it's not a bug or broken, pbr apparently isn't supposed to be light mapped (kind of the part of the point of pbr) or so someone posted the other week, i forget who.

I just posted about the lightmapper on Github…
Not working in latest beta and kills EBE models ..

Normal Model



EBE Model

Ooh, that's a new one, not seen that before.



If that's what i think it is (i might be thinking of something else though), Preben explained that a while ago, there are a couple of settings in settings.fx that you can fiddle with to change that (i forget which ones), it's not a bug, it's a preference.

Edit:

Try adjusting -

Already merged. Amazing work.

Outstanding work again, preben.

Thank you.

I must be thinking of something else then, shame.

I played a bit with it and think someone with some moddeling skills should create a spotlight-item.
It is a bit more user friendly to guys who not always visit the forum and the item could show the direction.

And I have a question (sorry for being off topic). Is there any way to unlock items? I clicked by mistake the light to lock and then I can not use them anymore. If I create a level and at the end I add an item and instead of deleting it, locking it, I would throw my pc out of the window

Drag the mouse over the locked item and press " space " whilst keeping the LMB pressed
It will then unlock

If you try the merged branch using the master on GitHub you should edit the setup.ini and set:


Bod: Lee is working on the lightmapper as we speak, last version i seen had PBR support and everything , but a lightmapper is kind of "rocket science" so please be patience! Thats the good part of GitHub we can work on different stuff at the same time

Corno_1: Yes there need to be a "pointer" on the light object to make it more easy to hit your direction , but it do follow the light object in the editor , so its just a matter of making the object point in the direction. or texture it so you can see what the spot light is pointing at, thanks for testing it , but set maxtotalmeshlights=38 in the setup.ini

I am 4000 miles away from my PC this is fantastic thank you so much Preben I cannot wait to try it on my Sci-fi corridor

Some lighting work at last It's really one of the last areas GG needs big improvements in.

@ Bod. Strange how people differ in how they work. I gave up with the lightmapper a long time ago, too ropey and mostly way too much memory use. I definitely prefer having real-time upgrades myself than any baking updates. For me GG has actually become of interest again since DX11 or at least more than the zero interest I had for the last 12 months on DX9. Still, I defo understand about projects breaking, don't think I have any now that haven't been broken at some point.

@Preben - Wow awesome stuff! Gob-smacked is the word I believe!

When is this cool stuff coming to the Public Preview?

Reliquia....

I missed this. Hmmm it still worked.

Is it intended that all lights are spotlights now or is it just my merge? Every light has its property "spotlight" set to "Yes"

With the new spotlight entity, you are right and I see the light, but my request with creating an entity has more to do with advertising a new feature instead of a use case If someone opens GG he should see it and instantly could try it out.

Preben, waaaayyyyy cool, again.



OMGosh. I don't think I could stand that. You must be halfway around the world from home.

Corno_1: Ohh well yes thats also true , but i think it would be more easy with a mark on the light object to point in the directions that the spot is pointing , so you can see where its pointing , if you try to point it up , well it can be hard to see where you currently have it

"maxtotalmeshlights=38" well it was meant to be 38 , but ... so at some point without it you would notice why.



Only if you create a new light it will have it ( if the last one was spot) , if you set it to point , and then create a new light it will be set to point , so it just use the last one you set. (i hope or do we have a bug) ?

reliquia: Think Lee will try to do a beta tomorrow , or ....

For lightmappers use showstaticlightinrealtime=1 to see your static light when you edit , it will try to match the lightmapper intensity so you get a idea how the light will look after you lightmap your level, also if you run a lightmapped level using real-time it will actually light all your static lights using dynamic light. Just another choice for you!

Good to know and great job Preben! Thank you.

awesome stuff Preben. Proper lighting at last.

Good to know and great job Preben! Thank you.

Sure it is and you got the #1 Lee working on it , so please be patience, as i say it is "Rocket Science" , to lightmap a object you need to transform the object just like a "converter" think about it how many converters are able to import/export your models with no problems?, the lightmapper need to do this no matter what kind of strange object you through at it so ... it will take some time to perfect , and we need the Intel black belt to do it

To clear this , the problem started with the DX11 upgrade , where the DX11 SDK (Microsoft) have problems with regenerating normals/tangent/binormals , that leaves the lightmapper in a mess, and that is what we now need to solve (somehow). and here we are ...

interesting! can this spotlighting work with static lighting and casting shadows??

I'm speechless here

Though really, please dont deter based on any of our feedback, on the work you are doing and how you priorities or choose what to work on. Its always such a blessing seeing what sprouts with the work you do. Its very motivating!

As for my past projects in GG, ALL of them now work in DX11 so I personally have no issues anymore. The community is very supportive in analyzing all issues and finding ways to resolve them. So you won't hear any complaints from me there. I also was going in knowing that if i were to upgrade to the DX11 version of GG id be creating maps from scratch. So by default i expected a bit of legacy issues anyways. Despite that I've been able to resolve all issues with the help of the members around here. Thanks everyone and thank you preben for your continued work!

@ Preben thanks this looking great,

Awesome developments!

One inquiry though... Since the weapon muzzle flash dynamic light update, it looks fine in night time settings (low ambient, low surface light) but in day time settings, the dynamic light is blindingly intense on the player weapon model. It feels like the light is being added/boosted in an unrealistic manner. Will this issue be addressed? I can tweak down the RGB values of the light in gunspec down to 1/3 - 1/4 of normal value and it looks good in daylight but is, of course, quite weak at night.

This is outstanding !!
One question ..
Now we have almost unlimited dynamic lights if real time shadowing gets thrown into the mix would we need the light mapper ?
If its required for more subtle aspects that could be added when creating a standalone perhaps ?

Create Standalone ( Low Quality )
Create Standalone ( Medium Quality )
Create Standalone ( High Quality )

Kind of what classic did … But i'm theorising here and really have no idea

Thanks for the kind words

Errant AI:
Weapon muzzle flash tweaked to same intensity like in old light system.

About real-time dynamic light shadows , we are "slowly" moving to a point where it will be possible to do this , last update we released shadows using less cascades , but left them there for this purpose , this update we got the spot light that are going to be used for this as this will be the fastest , remember shadows from dynamic lights will give you a FPS drop , think about it like this if i do a shadows from a point light , i would have to generate 6 renderings of the scene to get a shadow from each direction this would give you a huge FPS drop , but a single shadow camera pointing in the same direction as a spot light will not hurt your FPS that much so i think we will start with that , but that is something for another update

Heheheh - yes death to the light mapper mooawwhahahaha

You Preben are the man!

Really looking forward to this stuff - there have been no updates on steam my end for some time now, do you have to use the Steam beta to get this 'monster update' or do we just have to wait till it gets pushed to Steam Public Preview?

Reliquia....

As preben says, no, the light mapper should still be faster and you would mostly just want to use the dynamic lights for lights that change (flickering, on and off by switch, swinging etc - hence the name dynamic)
but of course you may still want shadows from characters moving in lights etc, this is where the compromise will need to be.

once real time shadows get added I think GG will really be able to create great scenes - especially horror

I reiterate, can these spotlights be baked as static lights??

You need to be a part of the beta testers to get it now. However, the subject line in Lee's last email to all the beta testers, "Final Beta Build Before Next PP Build." So if it passes the beta testing (shouldn't be too long) a PP build will be provided.

@Preben Awesome - Thanks!

I'm looking forward to seeing these improvements come to the the flashlight... hopefully along with the tech to attach a light to a player weapon or entity so that we can see some great night time dynamic shadow play. Nothing quite like running through the woods with a flashlight and having the beam throw creepy shadows about.

also can they be moved around via lua like the normal lights can?
and the angle/direction changed via lua?

I notice when you place lights … run it …. Then create a new blank map the highlights of the lighting stay on the ground .
Can anyone else confirm before I report it as a possible bug ?
Actually you don't even need to run it … Just add lights then create a new blank map

That's been doing that with ligets since the first public preview of dx11

Hadnt noticed it before .. Has it been reported already anywhere ?
Im guessing it must have been if its been there that long … I don't want to double up if it has .

@Bugsy:
The new spot lights can not be baked at this time.

The spotlights work really well so far, just had an idea for enhancement, don't know if this is even possible as yet. Posted on Github also.

Now Preben has and is working on the lighting, which so far has given us spotlights, it would be great to have sliders in the Tab Tab panels for

Sunlight Shadow amount - which would be just the shadows we have now.

Dynamic Light Shadow amount - new shadow option for the dynamic lights.

Dynamic Shadow Fade - Distance from the player that the dynamic light shadow is visible.

Secondly do we now have more than 4 dynamic lights available?

Now that we have spotlights, this is the thing i'm really interested in knowing now, if we can have more than 4 the possibilities are endless

I'm saying yes by what I'm reading.

[quote=]A new dynamic light that run using a mesh based system, what this means is that lights is now always lit
nomatter how many dynamic lights you have, each mesh on a level can have up to 40 light calculations.

It work by ignoring lights that do not reach a mesh , so on a per pixel basic it know how many lights the pixel have and ONLY process those,
So if you have a screenshot of you level , only the pixel that are actually lit by dynamic lights will do the calculation the rest dont make any calculations,
so you can have one mesh sampling lights from 40 sources and many that have zero light sources , so overall this will be faster and everything will always be lit.

The terrain could get lights comming in from all lights placed on a level, so the terrain ligth is by default set to use a way faster vertex light, but also have a fading system running where it will fade out the lights on the terrain at a distace you can define , this is by default set to the same range as the shadows, but ALL lights within this range will always be lit on the terrain. Also added the possibelity for you to enable the old fading system on the terrain , and also a option to set the terrain to use per pixel lights if you prefer this.

Everything is real-time so all lights on a level can be moved around with no fps drops, if you have moving lights you might consider to use per pixel terrain lights terrainusevertexlights=0 for a more smooth movement.

A new spot light type has been added to the GUI so you can set a dynamic light to a spot light, use "rotate" on the light object to set where the spot points.

The system is made so you can define how you like it to work Speed vs. Visuals. with no shader changes needed.

Added: All per pixel lights now use PBR light reflections.
Added: Setup.ini - maxtotalmeshlights , allow you to define the max number og lights a single mesh can have lit at any time.
Added: Setup.ini - maxpixelmeshlights , allow you to set how many per pixel lights a single mesh can have lit at any time, when this number is exceded everything will switch to way faster per vertex light.
Added: Setup.ini - terrainoldlight , allow you to switch terrain to use the old fading light system, can be faster in some cases.
Added: Setup.ini - terrainusevertexlights , set the terrain only use the way faster per vertex light system.
Added: Setup.ini - maxterrainlights , allow you to set how many lights the terrain can have lit at the same time.
Added: Setup.ini - terrainlightfadedistance , set the fade distance for terrain lights. terrain light fade is only active if you use more then the total , if you use less then all light is always on withut fading at this distance.
Added: Setup.ini - showstaticlightinrealtime , possible to enable static light to always light unless in prebake mode, so you can see the static light while editing, range and intentity is decreased by 30% to try to match lightmapper.
Added: Spot light to all shaders.
Added: Spot light selection box to GUI.
Added: Support for "gun flash light","fireball dynamic light","explosion light". Now use the new light system.
Fixed: pbroverride=0: all those shaders also got support for the new light system.
Fixed: Allow dynamic light to remove shadows.

Default settings:
maxtotalmeshlights=40
maxpixelmeshlights=12
terrainoldlight=0
terrainusevertexlights=1
maxterrainlights=20
terrainlightfadedistance=4500
showstaticlightinrealtime=1

Yes you can have ANY amount of dynamic lights that are ALL lit at the same time (they can even be moved around, everything is updated real-time), but hey light do take time to process , so if you add 10.000 i think you will suffer from a low FPS , so use it wise-lee

A second light upgrade is already planned to come after this, so i will note what you write here and perhaps it will be in the next light update, so keep the suggestions ... coming

Check this out and tell me if it can be incorporated into the editor. un official Spot light marker.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219861

I am looking for the FPE statement that will make them spotlights from the start of picking them, and not have to set it in the properties panel.

I have also noticed that nothing new can be added to the _markers folder that shows up in the editor.

Flickering lights without a script ? is that a possibility. Another dropdown in the properties panel? fluorescent striplights etc.

This is really awesome, and congratulations on the hard work.
And please don't take it as criticism or negative remark when I say: "It moves into the right direction, but it's not there unless the dynamic lights placed cast shadows"

How about updating the flashlight as well? It's about time that worked properly. It looks very old now and in honesty did even when GG was brand new. I can't tell you the number of Let's play video's I've seen where they instantly mock the flashlight on GG games.

I also agree we need shadows to work with lights somehow. If lights move around, but cast no shadows it will look pretty nasty. I'm not sure how it could be done as I have heard the speed issues mentioned above. In the end to get good performance and decent shadows I suspect baking will have to be used at some point for certain areas. I'm not a huge fan of baking in GG, it never looks anything like the real time version, so it's guesswork until you bake and of course the biggest issue is, map size. I believe the bloated map size has been addressed now and possibly the look? Not sure, but obviously baking has many issues to fix also. When baking worked though, it always looked pretty nice

Pirate Myke: Looks like Lee already added that:
"* Added new 'usespotlighting' to FPE to allow light markers defaulting to spot"

Tarkus1971: Default animations for lights are already on my list for update 2

Ertlov: baby steps , i try to not set my update goals to high so im able to finish them without spending half a year for each update and dont get disappointed when no progress is made. but i can promise you it will be added at some point , first as a spot light parameter, "Spot cast real-time shadows".

DVader: Yes there is plans to add the flash light into the new system until that are ready you can use:
#define REFLECTIVEFLASHLIGHT
Enable this in settings.fx to give your flashlight PBR reflections ( this is not on by default, as it has been a wip. ).

As said, not meant negative in any way, it's impressive what you are pulling off here.
It's just that any indoor scene (or any outdoor with darker settign and artificial lights) has to be baked currently or doesn't make much sense. And as we can't bake "indoor grids only" and switch between those at realtime, we are currently quite limited overall.

Thanks for the info.

Ah, cool, I'll give that a try Thanks!