DP questions: soft lights, bumpmapping and pretty water

[Urre]

DP's reflections have always had this problem, and yes it'd be cool if it got fixed.

Regarding the lighting, I think you're a lot better off looking at mapping tutorials for Quake, Quake3 and Half-Life 2 for tips on getting better lighting. It's more a tweaking issue on the mapping side than an engine issue. Also try asking for help on more mapper-centric forums regarding this.

It looks like the example pic of what you're after has a penumbra on the shadow, which I don't know if any Quake or Quake3 compilers support. It seems to also have light radiation/bouncing (whatever you want to call it), which is a more common feature. You should also consider activating more blur on the compile stage, your lightmaps look very jagged.

Also, if I'm not entirely mistaken, your screenshots look a lot like you're using 16bit rendering, which greatly reduces the image quality also.

[Freemanoid]

I have tried DP build 20090709 and water works now. I think I will use it.
About lights, as I think its all because I am newbie in mapping. I read all links, thanks to everybody. I just need to learn more about this.

[Urre]

Oh, the flickering problem? I thought you meant the playermodel triangles which touch the water looking odd, cause it is odd.

[Teiman]

[Chip]

So, after reading this post, I decided to go back and experiment some more. I chose Q3MAP2 as a compiler and I gradually got this:



Notice the "grunge" effect caused by the '-dirty' parameter. The one thing I've noticed is that Q3MAP2 doesn't work with DarkPlaces' RT World/Shadows. It's pitch black.

When setting RT to off, the result is this. However, brush shadows look very ugly with a "stair" effect.

[Downsider]

[Chip]

[Team Xlink]

[Chip]

This question fits here as it's about hmap2 and q3map2. LordHavoc might know the answer to this question.

By using hmap2* to compile a map (a simple room with a water cube), and using Urre's dpprettywater, I have a nice water cube, and hard-edged shadows. Not good.

By using q3map2 I have dirt shadows (cool), smooth shadows, but no water cube. The console says the *awater04 texture was not found. It's not supposed to be found as a shader replaces it!

Shaders are a q3 feature. q3map2 is unable to compile it right? Please help! Thanks.

* Full detail parameters are used.

EDIT: Nevermind, fixed it. Always read carefully the errors. I needed to add 'textures/' in front of water texture's name in the shader.

The water is not as pretty as by using hmap2, but it still looks great! Screens to come soon.

[Chip]