Normal mapping
by Daniel · in Torque Game Engine · 08/18/2004 (5:34 pm) · 9 replies
Im trying to convince my school to buy some seats for torque, Today I talked with the head of the game arts section, it is very probable that we will be including torque somehow in our school, at least for workshops, well see how we can fit it. anyway to the questions:
- was reading a thread from a guy comparing doom 3 to torque shading engine......someone mentioned normal mapping in torque, is this true??? will the shading engine support this? if not, is normal mapping in the works?
- Im confused about the way you update the engine, do you upgrade the engine by "adding" feautures to the existing "core" or everytime you update the engine you rewrite it from scratch? can you explain how it works?
- What kind of educational material is available for torque? I saw the game programming all in one and the torque documentation, is there anything else available for my school to get? if not, do you plan to release educational material soon or to promote people into releasing more?
I think for now thats enough, keep up the work, and by the way the head of game arts and design department told me that he met the torque staff at gamed developers conference, he said one of your programmers was really young like a kid, jeje just wanted to comment on something. see you and expect answers soon !!! jejje
- was reading a thread from a guy comparing doom 3 to torque shading engine......someone mentioned normal mapping in torque, is this true??? will the shading engine support this? if not, is normal mapping in the works?
- Im confused about the way you update the engine, do you upgrade the engine by "adding" feautures to the existing "core" or everytime you update the engine you rewrite it from scratch? can you explain how it works?
- What kind of educational material is available for torque? I saw the game programming all in one and the torque documentation, is there anything else available for my school to get? if not, do you plan to release educational material soon or to promote people into releasing more?
I think for now thats enough, keep up the work, and by the way the head of game arts and design department told me that he met the torque staff at gamed developers conference, he said one of your programmers was really young like a kid, jeje just wanted to comment on something. see you and expect answers soon !!! jejje
About the author
#2
im just asking this not because I care only in graphics, but to be able to convince the school I need more arguments, dont you think so?
other question I have, is there a polyogon limit in the engine? or it depends on your pc configuration, thanks.
08/18/2004 (6:18 pm)
Thanks luke, so it already has normal mapping, that is awesome, does it look good? compared to other games available (far cry, doom)? im just asking this not because I care only in graphics, but to be able to convince the school I need more arguments, dont you think so?
other question I have, is there a polyogon limit in the engine? or it depends on your pc configuration, thanks.
#3
Right now I'd say the differences in lighting and other still-in-development areas are fairly apparent when you compare the graphic quality directly between TSE and the engines in Far Cry/DOOM3, but once TSE is finished I'm pretty confident that that gap will narrow and there will be aspects of TSE that will surpass these engines.
Keep in mind that one of the beauties of the way TGE and TSE exist is that not only will they continue to improve and grow over time as features are added/improved by GG, but also the community will likely embrace it as they have TGE and expand it in all directions.
As for poly limits I don't think there is any hard limit, just what your system is capable of. More importantly, it runs well even on moderate hardware.
I highly recommend you download the free TSE demo application and see the normal maps and other shader capabilities yourself. Considering this is a very early example, I'm pretty excited for what's in store down the road.
08/18/2004 (6:54 pm)
I've only played with TSE a little outside of the demo app, but I found it quite capable and it is only getting better.Right now I'd say the differences in lighting and other still-in-development areas are fairly apparent when you compare the graphic quality directly between TSE and the engines in Far Cry/DOOM3, but once TSE is finished I'm pretty confident that that gap will narrow and there will be aspects of TSE that will surpass these engines.
Keep in mind that one of the beauties of the way TGE and TSE exist is that not only will they continue to improve and grow over time as features are added/improved by GG, but also the community will likely embrace it as they have TGE and expand it in all directions.
As for poly limits I don't think there is any hard limit, just what your system is capable of. More importantly, it runs well even on moderate hardware.
I highly recommend you download the free TSE demo application and see the normal maps and other shader capabilities yourself. Considering this is a very early example, I'm pretty excited for what's in store down the road.
#4
08/18/2004 (7:12 pm)
Is the TSE demo dependent on the torque engine? i mean, do i need the engine itself to view the demo? also, if not, is it in realtime? because since my computer hardware doesnt support direct x9 shaders I think Ill need to view it at school....
#5
08/18/2004 (7:39 pm)
The TSE demo is totally stand-alone, it needs no other files, and it is running real-time. It does support fallback for lesser capable cards, so give it a try anyway. If it doesn't work at all, bring it in to school; it's worth seeing. :)
#6
08/18/2004 (8:05 pm)
Alright luke thanks again, Ill check it tomorrow and come back tomorrow with my impressions
#7
I just wanted to mention one thing to make sure this is clear. The Torque Game Engine ( TGE ) is a different product then the Torque Shading Engine ( TSE ). What I mean by that is that TSE is the same engine as TGE but the rendering pipeline has been rewrote (and quite nicely I might add).
That is the basic difference between TGE and TSE. There are some others like the partical system has been rewrote and some other modifications but for the most part they are just rewriting the rendering engine.
Ben
08/19/2004 (12:48 am)
Hello Daniel, I just wanted to mention one thing to make sure this is clear. The Torque Game Engine ( TGE ) is a different product then the Torque Shading Engine ( TSE ). What I mean by that is that TSE is the same engine as TGE but the rendering pipeline has been rewrote (and quite nicely I might add).
That is the basic difference between TGE and TSE. There are some others like the partical system has been rewrote and some other modifications but for the most part they are just rewriting the rendering engine.
Ben
#8
One more thing, does garage games have a release date for the shader engine? are there gonna be more things that the ones viewable in the demo? I ask this because for some reason I couldnt read the interface it was all messed up, I guess the drivers of the Quadro where conflicting, who knows. but the graphics looked fine.
08/19/2004 (4:07 pm)
Hello everyone!!! I downloaded the tse demo at my school and saw it in action. I have to say its really cool, but about the normal maps, the character in the demo had normal mapping? It did look way better but I didnt see any signs of normal maps. One more thing, does garage games have a release date for the shader engine? are there gonna be more things that the ones viewable in the demo? I ask this because for some reason I couldnt read the interface it was all messed up, I guess the drivers of the Quadro where conflicting, who knows. but the graphics looked fine.
#9
I know of no stated release schedule for TSE, though there is a milestone plan linked off the Torque Shader Engine link on the right-hand side.
08/19/2004 (4:57 pm)
Yes, the character has some normal maps applied, but they are fairly subtle. Check the image files in the data\shapes\spaceOrc directory for an impression of what normal maps are being used. The structure has more obvious (to me anyway) normal mapping employed however.I know of no stated release schedule for TSE, though there is a milestone plan linked off the Torque Shader Engine link on the right-hand side.
Torque 3D Owner Luke D
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Up until TSE, as far as I understand it, the TGE engine has evolved over the last several years with new fixes and enhancements, so if I understand your question correctly, it has been added to all this time. The community is also continually adding improvements in the form of resources which are usually either code patches, step-by-step instructions, entire new code files, or a mix of these. TSE is a huge re-write of much of the code starting mainly with the rendering pipeline and will co-exist along-side TGE. I suspect (with no real knowledge one way or the other) that future additions will get put into TSE, and then optionally integrated down into TGE eventually. I could easily see TSE supplanting TGE far down the road, but that is total speculation.
Other than Game Programming All In One (a fantastic resource, btw) and the GG documentation there are many other smaller collections of info scattered here and there, mostly community created and supported. Much of this isn't likely to benefit a real curriculum, but it might help as a reference. Also there has been an official 'Torque Documentation' product on the Products page for as long as I've been a licensee (only a few months) with a 'coming soon' moniker. It looks like that'll be a nice, official, robust set of documentation.