Smooth polygon surfaces?

[GcSkaarj]

It will be possible in Unreal to smooth the union of the faces of the polygons? I mean, for example when a natural (earth, snow) terrain is created, the light affects the brushes in a "square" linear lighting effects, and looks very unnatural, so It be really cool to see a natural terrain or complex curved brushes (like a curved pipe) are smoothed.
This is what i mean:

[URL=http://img248.imageshack.us/i/smoothq.jpg/][img]http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/2286/smoothq.th.jpg[/img][/URL]

[.:..:]

You mean Gouraud lighting, thats what meshes have. Too bad theres is no way to implement it with BSP.
And best off for terrains would be if we actually got some very skilled person to help us to write a Static Mesh code (but that's beyond anyone of us in the Unreal 1 community).

[GcSkaarj]

You mean Gouraud lighting, thats what meshes have. Too bad theres is no way to implement it with BSP.
And best off for terrains would be if we actually got some very skilled person to help us to write a Static Mesh code (but that's beyond anyone of us in the Unreal 1 community).

You mean that it's impossible to implement it with BSP or it's very difficult? And the "Static Mesh" its something like a terrain actor? (because the models have gourad lighting)

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

You mean that it's impossible to implement it with BSP or it's very difficult?

I would say it's impossible.

And the "Static Mesh" its something like a terrain actor? (because the models have gourad lighting)

A static mesh is basically a mesh that acts like a brush, take UE2 or UE3 as an example.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

More of impractical, I beileve most of the BSP code is in asm, so it would be harder to change. It works OK as it is and has no real show stopping issues so we don't really want to touch it

[Pravin]

Someone could write a simple GLSL vertex and frag program to perform phong shading as opposed to goraud shading (obviously this would only work for opengl). There's base code for it all over the net.

Also, static mesh collision is pretty intuitive, and I believe I provided an algorithm for it a couple months ago. Honestly, the only reason I haven't made much headway is because I'm waiting for my winter break session which is in 3 weeks; I'm currently sleeping in the fucking labs three nights a week while trying to juggle an IEEE project and honors' society process. Again, if anyone wants a layout for the algorithm I'm glad to provide it and guide them through it, but I don't have the time to code and debug it until a few more weeks.

[Hyper]

Gouroud shading doesn't look too well on low-polygon objects:
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Gouraud_low_anim.gif[/img]

Flat shading, gouroud shading, phong shading
[img]http://www.ntsc-uk.com/features/tec/BeautyPixelDeep/GouraudPhong.jpg[/img]

So, phong shading would look much better here. It is slower, tho. I think it requires a graphics card with pixel shading support.

[Pravin]

Blinn shading would be faster than phong, and it's what is used in many standard games.

[スマイル・ドラゴン]

I think it requires a graphics card with pixel shading support.

I'm *FAIRLY* sure people today have modern enough graphics cards that can handle a fragment program... And if not then 3rd party drivers for their older devices..


Phong shading would be useful for map geometry, and actor lighting when desired.

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

Maybe also an option that you can use to switch shading modes?

[スマイル・ドラゴン]

Maybe also an option that you can use to switch shading modes?

We *technically* already have that... It's called "bUseVertexProgram" and "bUseFragmentProgram", those control shaders... but there's, as of now, no point to enabling either... Until someone actually makes a way to get shaders into Unreal, those options aren't required...

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

If someone makes shaders, maybe it won't be too hard to throw in realtime shadows as well. :-?

[スマイル・ドラゴン]

If someone makes shaders, maybe it won't be too hard to throw in realtime shadows as well. :-?

As long as the shadows aren't pencil sharp... See Doom 3's shadows...

[Turboman.]

rather then actual gouraud shaded bsp, what about some kind of different lightmap setting that relies on a neighboring poly? bright corners pretty much lights up the corners of a polygon, what if a flag can smooth edges between polygons?