Doom3world

This has actually been sitting for a while in a pile of things i've tinkered with,
but because some people have been asking for something like this, i decided to release it on it's own now.

It's a modified version of the default Doom3 interaction.vfp that makes Ambient Lights look less.. not so nice.
After lots of experimentation and some luck, it turned out that it really only takes a few changes and additions in the vfp
to change the way Ambient Lights are handled.

This should make them a lot more viable to use .

If there are any Problems etc, post here or Mail me at the Adress on the linked Site.

http://www.trisoup.net/temp/d3ambient/

This is fantastic Rebb. Finally, ambients can actually be put to better use.

Thanks so much. Our team is going to do some ATI tests to see if it works.

Looks really good, experimenting with it now.

Cool! so cool!
Am i right saying that you removed the bumpmap pass for ambient lights?
(i'm not a coder, but it's what it look like)

Looks that way to me too, and makes perfect sense really. An ambient light is supposed to uniformly light all surfaces, so you don't need bump maps. All I can say is, this has improved the look of all our maps.

Rebb, we have had one ATI user report that this works for him. I'll let you know how the others fare.

Works for me as well (nv geforce 7900). Thanks for leading the way!

-

Thanks for the comments guys .

The Normal-Maps are actually still contributing to this, altho in a different way to standard Lights - otherwise the Hands in the Comparison-Image would look really flat for example. There's some materials in the game that look more "flat" than others, like ones that have very few shading in the diffuse, or shallow normal maps, or some that have harsh diffuse detail painted in areas where the shading is supposed to be.
It's possible to change the look of the Ambient Lit Surfaces some more, but that also needs more changes and additions to the vfp.

@New Horizon :
Good to hear that is works on ATI cards too .

Tnx I'm going to test it right now!

Yes, this is definitely a great improvement over Vanilla D3. We can finally use the ambient now. You mentioned that some things do look flatter, we've noticed that too. I think the general look is fine, but is there any way to make everything a tiny bit more pronounced?

We've had one ATI user who has had some issues...everything turned really bright and strange looking, but he's having some other glitches at the moment, so we're waiting until he reinstalls his drivers.

One intel chipset user has had a complete failure with it...everything is black on his end, but he does have another computer.

Hmm, its weird that it glitches, since it doesn't use any super-involved Instructions.
I have an Intel-Chipset too, iirc, and it works fine, odd - what graphics card does he have ?

There are some additional things i've been fiddling with to improve the ambient shading in my "test vfp" where this fix is taken out of. It improves the flatness but needs more shader instructions and can make the ambient light look a bit less "ambient" under certain circumstances.

Honestly, I don't think it's really worth buggering around with too much. If the level is lit properly and only uses ambient to lighten the shadows, everything looks fine.

The team member with the intel graphics posted this as the type (Intel 82915G/GV/901GL Express).

Don't know if that helps. Maybe it's just a driver issue again.

I'll keep you posted.

N.H.

Yeah i hope its "just" a driver issue, and not something more hardwired in Intel Graphics Cards.

Here's 2 Images that show how the Ambient Effect looks with some additional shading - best switch back and forth with your browser tabs between them :

Actually, that looks pretty good from the pics Rebb. Would it be possible to get a copy of that version so I can test it with our current maps? That does seem to give things just a tad more form. My main concern would be that it would look like the fixed lighting again. So if I understand, this is still non-directional light?

The additional shading there is a bit of a tradeoff - its not "static" tho, its based on the player's position.
This causes things to darken a bit at grazing angles, but it does help against the overall "flatness" of things.

If anyone has any experience writing these doom 3 shaders, advice would be welcome The fix seems to work fine on all the Nvidia cards, but several ATI cards are causing issues. Some advice from anyone who had similar experiences with ATI might help out.

There is now a more up to date Version on the Link in the first Post.

Some ATI cards are having some issues with it - while other ATI cards work fine.
Hopefully this is not caused by some hardcoded Behaviour of Doom3 handling things differently when ATI Cards are detected, or some other obscure problem that can't be adressed with a Shader alone.

Arf! Did the first one was more ATI compatible?

No, the current Version has some Changes that *should* be more "ATI friendly" ( *grumble grumble* ), but some people still have problems. It also adds additional Shading to the look of the Ambient Lighting.

The problem is that i can't see what Doom3 is actually passing to it's Shaders, and if that is inconsistent or not, because thats not exposed in the SDK.

There is now an updated Version on the site that fixes problems with ATI ( and some other ) Cards.
It should now work the same for everybody .

Thanks a lot to New Horizon and the DarkMod Team, Neuling, chumbucket91 from the TTLG Boards and everyone else who helped testing.

Great work, thanks!