Ways to combine lightmaps and RTLights

[FC Zvyozdochka]

This idea had first time appeared in my head when I tried to play with MH's great colored lit-files without RTLight-files (I use DarkPlaces most of the time). DP can carry lit-files even for real-time lighting, but as number of light sources used in MH's lit-files is quite large, framerate becomes ridiculously small.

However, MH's lighting is very beautiful and contemporaneously faithful, and I prefer it to both Romi's and Inkubo's RTLights.

Many times I've drawn my attention at the fact, that scattered light (which appears when sun is obscured by clouds, especially in snowy day) produces no shadows. On the other hand, we have never seen the sun of the Quake's planet because of very dense cloudiness (just look at the sky ingame). It means that most of the light in Quake does not cast shadows - so it does not need to be realtime! The only light sources deserves to be RT are torches, flames, light-bulbs etc. Their quantity is not so large.

I tried this in the startroom - everything worked fine with RTLights turned on and lightmaps set to 1.00 (changeable via lighting options menu). The result is a bit more beautiful than MH's lightmaps without rtlights and much more beautiful than full-RT lighting (in my opinion, of course). FPS impact is pretty small and overall FPS is closer to that with lightmaps only.

The only problem is that areas near RTlights are over-brightened because both rtlight and lightmap exist there, this makes these areas too bright and causes nasty glitches when using bloom. So my question is - how can I edit .lit-files to reduce light intensity of some areas?

Here is a couple of screenshots - first is the result (notice how relief are areas of the columns near torches), second is player's shadow with lightmaps set to 0.

[Spiney]

Ideally you would use shadowmapping for direct lighting and lightmapping for indirect lighting. Having a lighting tool that would do the first pass as pointlights and subsequent passes as radiosity would be able to make that happen. Discarding the first pass in the process, so you're left with just bounce light. I guess if you had a radiosity renderer you could mod in point lights by treating them as a single bright pixel inside the texel hemisphere for each pointlight.

Global illumination really makes things shine

[FC Zvyozdochka]

Ideally you would use shadowmapping for direct lighting and lightmapping for indirect lighting.

Yeah, Spiney, isn't it what I'm talking about?

Having a lighting tool that would do the first pass as pointlights and subsequent passes as radiosity would be able to make that happen. Discarding the first pass in the process, so you're left with just bounce light. I guess if you had a radiosity renderer you could mod in point lights by treating them as a single bright pixel inside the texel hemisphere for each pointlight.

Global illumination really makes things shine

This would be cool, the only problem for us is that we haven't got such lighting tool, so I'm trying to achieve a similar result with the things I have

[Seven]

Hello FC Zvyozdochka,

I dont know how deep you looked into these tools:
- MH�s ID1 LIT FILE PACK
- LordHavoc�s hmap2

But they are pretty good adjustable.
You can use many different setting to create your .lit files.
Which will result in many different visuals.
You just need to read the included readme�s and also some source files for even more details.


I am not sure if you knew it, but you can use both in parallel (at the same time):
.lit files
.rtlight files

So you have the benefit from both files.
I personally do this for my ROGUE.
These are OLD screenshots from this thread.

LEFT: .rtlights + .LIT file / RIGHT: only .rtlights file



But I guess this is what you already knew...
I just thought I mention it, because of your threat title:
"Ways to combine lightmaps and RTLights"

Have fun playing around with .lit files.
Seven

[FC Zvyozdochka]

Hello FC Zvyozdochka,

I dont know how deep you looked into these tools:
- MH�s ID1 LIT FILE PACK
- LordHavoc�s hmap2

I'm currently using MH's pack and it is all OK; I've got hmap2 too but I don't know how to use it.

I am not sure if you knew it, but you can use both in parallel (at the same time):
.lit files
.rtlight files

Right, and I'm doing now. This is the way to avoid of use RTLights in places where only scattered light exists, which gives not bad performance increase. And it makes the whole picture looks better IMHO.

I'd like to make special lit-files pack to work with supplementary RTLights only. As far as I understood you, hmap2 can help with this. Is it possible to make scattered ambient light with this program? I mean, does this program consider lights' reflection from all the meshes, which could really produce ambient lighting for us? If it is so then there would be only two things to do: first thing is to choose which light sources will be RT and place them into RTLights file, second thing - to create lightmap with this so-RT lights only without reflections and then to subtract this second lightmap from first. That will give us ambient lightmap without overbrightened areas.
Sorry for my english if something is not so clear, I'll try to explain better if you don't understand some moments.

[FC Zvyozdochka]

I seem to understood how hmap2 works. Looks like there is no need in difficult calculations of indirect light. I've relight q1shw1sp map with "-extra8x8 -radiusscale 2 -intensity 0.25" options, after that I made RTLights file which includes only torches and lamps. Result looks good, there are dark areas in dark corners and bright areas under the skies and around lamps, point RT-lights do cast shadows and emphasize relief of the surrounding surfaces - and this combination allows to play with 4xAA and 4xAF in 1680*1050 even with my not so new GF9800 card, average FPS is about ~35-40, and without AF it reaches the average of 60FPS.
Without RTLights FPS is about 8-12. Significant difference. I'll post screenshots in about 9 hours.

The next question is - how can I color some lightmaps, as it is done in MH's lit-files? Does it need to edit bsp-files? I'd like to color some areas, delete some lights and make some other lights a bit faded before calculating lighmaps.
-----
ADDED:
Some shots are here:


This is q1shw1sp, I've done both "soft" lightmaps for ambient light and RTLights to work with that ambient light.




Here is dm456sp, nicely detailed map. FPS is pretty worse than that of q1shw1 (20-25FPS vs 35-40), but without relight FPS reaches only single-digit values and without ambient light maps the level is much too dark. Ambient lightmaps eliminate darkest areas and make the whole lighting smooth and seamless.

I'll try to make relight for original maps+episodes by using this approach. Hope they will be both faster and more beautiful than existing ones.
The only thing left for me to know is the way to make colored lightmaps (as MH's beautiful ones).

If someone has its interest, I can send these maps and their relight via email, cause I haven't got any fileserver accounts.

ADDED: Just looked at my own shots on another display, which seems to make image darker. It really needs to make lighmaps brighter and adjust their intensity via "lighting options" menu.

[Seven]

Hello FC,

I like the light ambience on your last post screenshots very much.
That is what Quake is all about: Dark, threatening and mystic

Really wonderful work !

In this condition the offsetmapping is MUCH more intense.
That is the perfect condition to see why offsetmapping is so beautiful.

I am very happy that we have this feature in a Quake engine.

Best wishes,
Seven

[FC Zvyozdochka]

If it is interesting to someone, here is what I've done in the time when I'd not been busy.

Here is pk3 file with relight (lit, dlit and rtlights files) for two great maps by Shadow - "Devastation" and "Deep Scars" (singleplayer versions both). Place it into your id1 folder and delete any q1shw1sp1(sp2).lit files.
click
If you can't download - I'll send you this pack via email.
It is better to have Romi's or Inkubo's rtlights pack with cubemap #07 and QRP retexture pack for the best visual appearance.

Here are the threads with these maps -
http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-mod...vastation.html
http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-mod...eep-scars.html

Here are the maps themselves:
Devastation ShadoW's blog
Deep Scars ShadoW's blog

If Shadow won't mind than I'll include bsp files into my relight pack.
Note: this pack is obviously for DarkPlaces only.

ADDED:
Hello, Seven! We'he posted simultaneously
I'm very glad that you like my humble work. You are right - such contrast allows to see offsetmapping better, and its style is very "quakish". As I've already said, this relight also gives us better performance and it looks better and more realistic then rtlights-only without lightmaps.
I'll try to make such relight for all original id maps and addons, but it needs to do a very special map editing. LeXa2 is trying to make a program to produce lit and dlit-files using bsp-file and rtlights as a base, because we are not able to edit hipnotic and rogue maps as we haven't got their sources.

[Spiney]

by the way, another way to get indirect lighting in Darkplaces is through r_shadow_bouncegrid. doesn't work in all builds, but does in the latest autobuild i tested. looks pretty neat, most noticable in small corridors and rooms.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

all of this work is being done in DirectQ?

[FC Zvyozdochka]

by the way, another way to get indirect lighting in Darkplaces is through r_shadow_bouncegrid. doesn't work in all builds, but does in the latest autobuild i tested. looks pretty neat, most noticable in small corridors and rooms.

Never suspected this cvar. I'll try it. But seems that it is not exactly what I want.
http://winged-doom.blogspot.com/2011/06/darkplaces.html

Look at the bottom of that big console which overhangs front door - its bottom is dark even with r_shadow_bouncegrid set to 1, while it should be lightened with scattered light.

all of this work is being done in DirectQ?

By the time this is for DarkPlaces only and is creating in DP. The subject is not suitable for DirectQ until it doesn't support rtlights.
Hope RMQ will support realtime-lighting in future.

[Seven]

FC,

I have never done something map related (other than fooling .ent files).
So my comments are most probably not helpful.

But reading many things about "light" over at inside3d, you should definitely read some blogs/threads about this topic.
This is a good start: click

Then you should know that there is also this little tool for setting lights in maps:
Bengt Jardrup�s light tool

I hope you can find something useful in above links...

Good luck,
Seven

[FC Zvyozdochka]

I have never done something map related (other than fooling .ent files).
So my comments are most probably not helpful.

Hello, Seven! Everything is helpful for me because of my low experience, so thank you very much.
GB's tutorial is very interesting (I read all GB's posts carefully) and I will use some of his tips, but not all - as I'm creating lightmaps for only environmental light, their functional significance becomes secondary. Main attention should be paid for RTLights, and I already have some experience with them.
And I don't like all that highlighted entities such as grenade launcher on your way in e1m3 or crucified zombies in start map. They should not have its own light sources because it breaks the picture.

Then you should know that there is also this little tool for setting lights in maps:
Bengt Jardrup�s light tool

Nice tool, I like its sunlight option and will surely try it out. If Lexa2 succeed with his new tool, I'll also ask him to include such sunlight option. If not - then I'll have to edit map files manually to set environmental light sources in it and then compile *.lit-files with Bengt's tool. It is still easier then to set each sunlight source manually with specific delay value and then to compile it with hmap2.

[Moon[Drunk]]

Never suspected this cvar. I'll try it. But seems that it is not exactly what I want.

The bouncegrid cvar could be useful for improving rtlights but it seems that lights shine thru solid walls/brushes with this activated!
I have tried to change this behaviour with the numerous other cvars but with no luck
Has anyone else tried to fiddle with this?
Or does it work differently in newer builds? (I'm on DP from 28 June 2011)

[FC Zvyozdochka]

I use october-2011 DP build. Have the same problem with dynamic lights (for example - with lights which are emitted by armor and power-ups).