Blog for Ryan Mounts at GarageGames.com

Resource: Ambient Occlusion for TGEA Interiors

Ryan Mounts — 2008-07-16T17:18:29+00:00

NOTICE: Resource updated 8/4/08.

Link to TGEA AO Resource

Well, as I figured, the ambient occlusion code was very simple to port over from TGE, but the lightmap persistence and caching took a little more work. Hopefully everyone will find this useful. This is a feature that I've been wanting to see in Torque for a long time, so I'm pretty excited to see it coming together.

For those of you who have already looked at the TGE version of this resource, I suggest at least reading over the Persistence and Caching section again, because the TGEA version behaves slightly differently.

As before, if anyone finds/fixes any bugs, enhances performance, or makes interesting modifications to this resource, please share!

Pics: Side-by-side comparisons of two identical interiors, one with AO and one without. In the first pic, there are two small boxes in the Cornell box on the right, I promise! :) You just can't see them because the ambient light is constant and the textures are a single color. This just illustrates how much visual "pop" AO can add to an interior.

(Church dif created by Benjamin Naulls, of course)

Resource: Ambient Occlusion for TGE Interiors

Ryan Mounts — 2008-07-11T05:34:37+00:00

NOTICE: Resource updated 8/4/08.

Here's the resource for adding interior ambient occlusion to TGE mentioned in my last blog post. This resource details the engine code changes to enable parameterized ambient occlusion calculations directly inside Torque... no external editors or converters.

Personal disclaimer: I'm not the greatest programmer in the world, so if you have any suggestions for optimizing or otherwise improving the code, please share! :)

Obligatory images

(Church dif created by Benjamin Naulls)

Native Ambient Occlusion for Interiors in TGE

Ryan Mounts — 2008-06-25T19:52:28+00:00

If you've followed any of my blogs at all, you've probably noticed my desire to get more advanced lighting into Torque. So far I've been using 3dsmax to do that with good success. The only problem is that the process can be somewhat time consuming and complicated at times. It'd be much nicer if I could do some simple advance lighting directly inside Torque. I've noticed that ambient occlusion really adds alot to a scene, so that seemed like a good place to start.

So here's some progress from my current endeavor: ambient occlusion for an interior calculated in Torque and added to its lightmap. It's a simple AO algorithm that shoots rays out from each lexel in the lightmap to determine that lexel's occlusion. This AO value is then used to modulate the ambient light.

There are three different quality settings: low, medium, and high. Low shoots 40 rays, Medium shoots 160, and High shoots 360. You can see that there are some artifacts in the corners using the Low setting. Medium got rid of the artifacts and smoothed the result considerably. High didn't change the visual quality much, but the shadowing is slightly smoother where the taller box touches the floor. I haven't profiled this, but approximate relight times for the above images on a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop/1.5 GHz/512MB RAM were... Low: 5 seconds, Medium: 12 seconds, High: 30 seconds. Looks like Medium is sufficient to get good AO.

Changing the ray length adjusts the "size" of the AO effect. Longer rays will generally result in darker shadowing (more accurate), but will take longer to calculate.

Next I need to expose these parameters to the World Editor and make an option to lock the AO in. That way it won't have to recalculate with every relight. Then I plan on releasing this as a resource. And porting this over to TGEA should only take a few minutes. :)

Custom Lightmaps for TGEA Interiors

Ryan Mounts — 2008-06-17T23:51:18+00:00

Custom Lightmaps for TGEA Interiors

This resource builds upon the previous map2dif_plus v1.1 resource. The previous resource allows you to place custom lightmaps into your DIFs and includes the engine code changes needed to make these new "custom lightmapped DIFs" useful in TGE 1.5.2. This resource consists of the engine code changes needed to get your custom lightmaps into TGEA 1.7.1. The map2dif_plus v1.1 executable has not changed, so any custom lightmap DIFs created using the old resource will work in TGEA after implementing this resource. Of course you'll have to create the proper "materials.cs" file to port your interior over from TGE to TGEA. :)

I have to admit, this code hasn't been tested thoroughly. I've been on travel and only have access to my old work laptop, which doesn't play very nicely with TGEA (~3 fps). But I thought I'd go ahead and release this so others can play with it since there seemed to be some interest generated after the release of the TGE version. Also with the debut of TGEA 1.7.1, my next project might be to modify the new map2dif_plus_tgea to allow custom lightmaps.

Issues:
- Adding per pixel specular to interior materials doesn't render the way you'd expect.
- "UseAmbient" overrides all Torque light ambient values... need to change that to just override the sun.

Here's a couple of images showing one use of custom lightmaps in TGEA 1.7.1 (the interior was created by the talented Benjamin Naulls).

Before Relight

You can see two churches. The one of the left has a blank internal lightmap (that's why it's black). The one on the right has ambient occlusion and bounced light "baked" into its internal lightmap using map2dif_plus v1.1.

After Relight

Looking from the back of the churches, you can see the default TGEA lighting on the previously black church on the right. The one on the left has "UseAmbient" checked with an ambient override color of "0 0 0 1" to allow the custom lightmap to show through in the shadowed areas. Refer to the map2dif_plus v1.1 tutorial to see how to use these features.

Add Custom Lightmaps to Interiors

Ryan Mounts — 2008-04-03T18:35:36+00:00

Here's a new resource for adding your own lightmaps to your interiors in TGE. This is useful for getting advanced lighting from a 3D modeling package like 3dsmax into your lightmap, painting your lightmap by hand, or a combination of both.

Add Custom Lightmaps to Interiors

This is a modified version of map2dif_plus (v1.1). All original functionality remains, so you can replace your old map2dif_plus with no problem. There's a tutorial included to help get you started.

Here's a few pics showing off what you can do with it:

No Lightmap

Custom Lightmaps

NOTE: I did not change the map2dif_plus base code, so if you experience problems converting from a map to a dif, either your map is incorrectly modeled or you've encountered an existing map2dif_plus bug. I have no intention of tracking down and fixing all map2dif_plus bugs, so please do not contact me with problems like missing faces, malformed brushes, nonfunctional portals, etc. If you feel like you've encountered a problem due to the new lightmap functionality, then I'll definitely take a look at it.

Update: Max2Ctor 1.0.1

Ryan Mounts — 2008-01-24T23:07:40+00:00

The Max2Ctor macroscript for 3dsmax users has been updated and can be found at the following link:

Max2Ctor.zip

(Thanks to Orion for hosting this!)

None of the core functionality of Max2Ctor has changed... the code is now more robust, a minor bug was fixed (it would crash if a Multi/Sub-object did not have a material for each face ID of the object it was applied to), the default save folder is no longer the "Constructor\scenes" folder but the last folder you used, and an export feedback dialog was added.

Now after the scene is exported you will see a list of warnings to provide feedback on where problem areas might be in your scene. None of the warnings will keep the scene from exporting, but if you encounter problems in Constructor, you might go back and try to fix the warnings and re-export.

If you have previously installed Max2Ctor, simply save the new Macro_Max2Ctor.mcr file over the old one. Restart 3dsmax and click the Max2Ctor button. The floating dialog should read "Max2Ctor 1.0.1" at the top. If it doesn't, max is using an old copy saved somewhere else. Right-click the Max2Ctor button and select "Edit Macro Script". Look at the path in the window title bar. Track that file down in explorer and replace it with the new one. That should be it!

Tutorial: Export 3dsmax directly to Constructor

Ryan Mounts — 2008-01-10T21:10:58+00:00

Here's a tutorial that takes you step-by-step through exporting a 3dsmax scene directly into Constructor using my free macroscripts, Max2Ctor and Explode Brushes, which can be found here...

3dsmax Tools

The included example 3dsmax scene was created with version 9. For users with earlier versions, the scene is simple and can be recreated by hand in just a couple of minutes. Hope this tutorial helps people understand the workflow to get your 3dsmax scenes into Constructor painlessly.

Here's the tutorial link... Tutorial Files

Enjoy!

Free Resource for 3dsmax Users

Ryan Mounts — 2008-01-09T05:11:35+00:00

Here is a set of two macroscripts for 3dsmax that I'd like to share with all who might find them useful. They were developed out of a desire to create interiors directly in 3dsmax, where I could take advantage of max's advanced feature set, especially in the UV mapping department. After trying many different pipelines, each involving several conversions, I could never get my geometry into Constructor with the texture coordinates preserved. So I wrote my own script, called "Max2Ctor", to export a max scene directly to the Constructor format (.csx). The second is a helper script, called "Explode Brushes", particularly used to aid in texture baking. It allows you to attach multiple brushes into one object, bake the materials and lighting into one or more textures, and then "explode" the brushes back out before exporting while preserving the texture coordinates. I use these scripts in 3dsmax 9, but I think they should work back to version 5.

Below is an example of a simple house (included in the zip file) with global illumination baked into a single 1024x1024 texture. Since the lighting is in the texture, I checked "useGLLighting" in the World Editor Inspector after dropping the interior into Torque to disable its lightmap.

As a side note, you can also use max2ctor to export spheres properly into Constructor, which could be helpful since Constructor's sphere tool is not very robust yet. Feel free to add comments or suggestions. Hope someone finds these useful!!

Max2Ctor.zip