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Some features that I believe would be great

srfstudio
Registered User
Quote
2019-09-09 22:04:21

I never posted here before because, I guess, all the features that I wanted were already mentioned here, but I didn't see much of these features as requests and I think they could be extremely useful from a visual point of view:

1. Possibility to have point lights and directional light shadows affect light-mapped geometry.
I know that dynamic lights can be used together with light-mapped geometry but that's only possible if the geometry is doubled. Also shadows can be active on light-mapped geometry only if light-mapping is baked into the textures which means texture's UVs must not be overlapping and that's a whole lot a work that, I'm sure, no one wants to do in 2019 :)
The visual impact of well light-mapped world together with dynamic lights and shadows is something that could change CC visuals completely. All current shortcomings of CC's point lights and directional light shadows could be 'patched' if combined with light-mapped environment.

2. Possibility to have normal-mapping on light-mapped geometry.
This is only possible if No.1 is there but it would be extremely useful for creation of, at least, semi-realistic environments.

3. Normal-mapping for animated models.
This has already been requested multiple times so I guess I just wanted to be +1 for this feature :)

All these are not really new things but they can have enormous impact on game visuals. Some of the lightweight engines had these features for more than 10 years but, to be honest, those engines were Windows-only engines. I realize that making a feature in CC must take into account Windows, MAC, WebGL & Android but I don't think these particular features are too problematic to be implemented cross-platform. But then again I'm not really familiar with this kind of hard-core-programming so I could be wrong.


j9907
Registered User
Quote
2019-09-10 01:28:30

Agreed, but I think a whole new renderer based on either D3D11 or Vulkan which can use point-lights to cast shadows (like Unreal Engine 4 does) would be better than working on the lightmapper.

I think, to future proof this application, the following should be done:

1. New renderer with PBR

2. 64 bit version

3. More up-to-date JavaScript API. I heard this uses ES5. Maybe change it to ES6!

4. Extend the VR feature so it can use more headsets than the DK1 and 2 development sets...

I think the lightmapper should just be discarded completely and stripped out of the application's code, along with any crap / legacy stuff which is no longer in use. This application isn't bloated by any means, but I'm sure lots of gunk is in the code!


srfstudio
Registered User
Quote
2019-09-10 21:14:10

+ 1 from me on all these things, especially D3D11, Vulkan, PBR, ES6 & point light shadow casting. I can see that in the future of CopperCube but it seems like I will have to wait around 7-8 years for these to kick in :) Maybe not for point light shadows or D3D11 but Vulkan and PBR seem like a long way to go, especially considering that WebGL 2 support was introduced in CC6 :/
The lightmap/lights thing should be something that can be implemented maybe even in CC6 or CC7 without too much trouble because it can already be achieved with double geometry. Normal map for lightmapped static models is also something that I manage to patch but it was very weak & only worked in OpenGL builds.

You have much more experience with CC lightmapper, I never really used it, just experimented with it a few times, so if you think that it's not good I believe it should be discarded.

The ability to render models with lightmaps, that is models with second UV set, is something that almost every engine has, from low-end engines to Unity & Unreal, even Sketchfab has it, it's very widely used in game development, so I think that attaching the ability to have lights affect lightmapped geometry shouldn't be too much of a trouble :(

Even big AAA games use lightmaps, mostly just as a primary light-tone of environment so that dynamic lights & dynamic shadows can make everything more realistic once they become active.


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