Hi. I have a few questions. I want to create what appears to be a light
shining (wherever you place it.) While having an actual light source visible
(pretend you're looking at a street light) seems to not be a natural feature,
therefore I presume perhaps one can do the following...
put up a shiny object, make it pure white, then shine a light onto it directly,
then place your light behind it. That object should then glow pretty brightly.
The downside is that the dynamic lighting will pass through objects in front
of it- indefinitely. Possible to block out the light with objects?

How does one work with .dbo files? Is that the texture?
Also best way to edit .fpe? -- Windows 10 will not associate notepad with
the .fpe-- tried many times. So I change the file to .txt, modify with notepad
and change it back. Perhaps this is not working too well for the engine?

Also, any chance that a dynamic light will cause objects to cast shadows...?
Not in my tests, but I found this thread anyhow... https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220160

I changed the .fpe on 2 items as mentioned above to cast shadow = 1
but they don't cast them (with dynamic lights). Suggestions?

As yet there is no way to cast shadows using dynamic lights.

Hello!

This is a pretty comprehensive guide on all things lighting about GG. However, features work or don't work depending on what version you use so you have to experiment.



The dbo file is a model. GG automatically converts .x files to .dbo and I recommend working with .x files as there are very few programs that can open and properly save a .dbo. You will find the textures in .dds or .tga format. (usually)



Hmm! It does for me. How exactly are you trying to associate the file? notepad is pretty much the only way to edit .fpe files.



Not yet, this has been a severely lacking feature since day 1.



Dynamic lights don't cast shadows as of yet, there is nothing you can do for now.

I hope this cleared some things up! Happy developing.


-Wolf

If I understand what you're suggesting, there's no need to make it that complicated! Just give your model the right shader and texture and it'll look like it is illuminated all on its own. In the fpe file, change the 'effect' to effectbank\reloaded\apbr_illum.fx then make sure your object has a _illumination or _emissive texture. These are usually black, with only the bits you want to appear lit having any colour. In Game Guru, simply add your dynamic or static light to the scene as you normally would.

Here's an example of an _emissive texture in action, along with a load of dynamic lights (one under each ceiling flo tube)


AE

Just to add:
You also need either an illumination or emissive map in your texture set - eg mytexture_emissive.dds.

Use the bloom slider to get more glow. At present there is only so much you can adjust this without washing out the whole level.
Perhaps one day we will get a decent emissive slider, one that only boosts the emissive\illumination map, rather than everything in the level.

Also be aware that emissive\illumination maps will be tiled over your model if you light-map the level.

In my experience you can just use apbr_basic.fx in the FPE as using apbr_illum.fx makes no difference.

Reliquia....

You don't meed to use a different shader for illumination, if i rememver right preben added the illum shader as a quick fix because we didn't have illumination in the first itteration of pbr, since then illumination had been added to the basic shaders so it's not needed.

As far as i know the _emmissive prefix for textures only works on one of yhe shaders, whereas _illumination should work on them all.

Note that illumination doesnt work unless you turn bloom on.

Great info everyone. Thanks for posting that piece you put together
a while back Wolf. A couple things right off the bat that I noticed-
maybe you can clear up my ignorance-- which is certainly deep!

Blocking light?? Wolf, your article said; "As game guru does not support directional lights (although if you absolutely must have this feature you can easily do it by hand by adding invisible meshes to direct the light.)"
Does that mean there is a way to block out dynamic (or static) lights?
Can I do it without modeling?!?

Shadows?? -- which seemed to be not possible as mentioned clearly above-
but you said "its best to keep the light a bit away from the light source. (i.e. lamp or fire)
This will make sure that the shadows will look more natural and don't generate
any harsh black spots." Just clarifying- not critiquing your article (I am the noob.)
I've put dynamic light into a test level, certainly no shadows. Then I set them
to static= yes, tested again- still no objects are casting shadows...

What does the emission one do? I've only been using *_I.DDS

@Teabone:
_I is for DSN
_emissive or _illumination (you can use either of them) is for PBR
Of course all textures should use .dds to be best utilized by the engine.

hth

Reliquia....

Does the emissive texture emit light to surrounding textures? Curious what it does?

unfortunately not no... I use dynamic lights of the same colour as my emissive texture if I want it to cast light

here is a weapon with an emissive texture https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=13#msg2610448 it does not cast light on anything but if I did it static like my fluorescent tubes I would add a dynamic spot light the same colour as my tube to fake the light cast

To me the emissive\illumination is pretty flat atm, you can enhance it using the Bloom slider, but the problem with that is it affects everything, and you can only go so far before it will wash out everything else.

And when using lights you get more brightness on the side where the sun is if the light is near a wall for example.

I think overall GG lighting is OK, but nothing like PBR should be as yet.

It would be nice to have a glare slider adjust the glow like you can in Substance. Perhaps one day.

gg:
Light source below each main light
Light radias 60
Lense Flare 20
Bloom 60
Notice light from sun on right wall


Substance:
No light source all glow is from emissive
Glare set at 0.16


Reliquia....

Left pic looks brilliant nevertheless

It does look brilliant - very clean and soothing

Hear is a couple more shots with more adjustments to the sliders for more immersive atmosphere.
This looks nice in-game except for noticeable banding which doesn't show in the pics.
While runs fine on my machine, but on a less specked machine it would studder like mad.

Bloom 65
Shadows 30
Lense Flare 20
Brightness 50
Contrast 40
Global Specular 30
Fog: Near\Distance\Intensity 0\2\70




Reliquia....

The lightmapper is broken and dynamic lights don't cast shadows.
Please explain this statment to me.

@Wolf
Well as you know I have been rather critical of TGC of late, and to be honest I was just trying to be a little more positive toward GG.

I am also referring more to the illumination\emissive functionality, so probably not worded too good there

I think the GG shots I posted above don't look too bad considering they are in-door environments - for me I find inside environments rather difficult since PBR was added.

Illumination of course relies on post processing to bring out the glow for lights on the illumination map, and that is nothing like how it could\should be. You can't for example get anything like this shot:

Again this is just post processing. In GG you have to use lights as well as bloom, but you won't get anywhere near that kind of effect.

Honestly it just irks me no-end that features like PBR are added but just aren't polished. And they just move on to other bells and whistles.

And I still can't get rid of banding which doesn't really show in screen-shots - but moving around in the level it is very noticeable.

With out-door scenes PBR looks much better.

Elsewhere I have stated that the lighting is abysmal for the following reasons:
The light-mapper is broken.
Simply can't light-map if you have illumination maps - the map will be tiled over you models - been that way since DX-11 was added.
Dynamic Lights don't cast shadows..
Sun affects interior walls even when turned off - wall opposite sun will be brighter, especially when a light is used (see previous post pics)
Example:

Note the signs on left and right walls - they are the same sign!

Reliquia....

I still love the top screenshot ..
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220778?page=1#msg2615968