DIF, DTS, Shadows, Lightmaps... and confusion
by Tom Dowd · in Torque 3D Professional · 06/09/2009 (3:02 pm) · 6 replies
Howdy!
I was talking to one of our instructors (Columbia College Chicago) about our program's eventual migration from TGEA to Torque3D and as part of our discussion we confused ourselves mightily about the consequences of the deprecation of the DIF format and the reliance on DTS, mostly with regard to lighting, lightmaps, shadows, etc..
Can someone enlighten us (pun intended) on the status of light/shadows in T3D/Advanced Lighting, and perhaps provide some insight and experiences on what you are seeing with the DIF -> DTS migration with regard to light and shadows and how you are adapting?
As always, much appreciated.
Tom Dowd
Columbia College Chicago
I was talking to one of our instructors (Columbia College Chicago) about our program's eventual migration from TGEA to Torque3D and as part of our discussion we confused ourselves mightily about the consequences of the deprecation of the DIF format and the reliance on DTS, mostly with regard to lighting, lightmaps, shadows, etc..
Can someone enlighten us (pun intended) on the status of light/shadows in T3D/Advanced Lighting, and perhaps provide some insight and experiences on what you are seeing with the DIF -> DTS migration with regard to light and shadows and how you are adapting?
As always, much appreciated.
Tom Dowd
Columbia College Chicago
About the author
Tom Dowd is a 25-year veteran of the game design business with credits on the PC, Xbox, PS2, NES and Genesis. He is an assistant professor at Columbia College Chicago in the Interactive Arts and Media department teaching in their Game Design major.
#2
06/09/2009 (7:26 pm)
Just a quick clarification, T3D's basic lighting should be getting light map support, pureLight will be an add-on which they say will enhance the engine's light maps, but the engine's basic lighting should have a least basic light mapping support akin to TGEA's. 
#3
06/10/2009 (4:30 am)
Unfortunately I can't find any good pipeline from map to DTS. I've heard people suggest Ultimate Unwrap, but the program does not work on Vista. We have a DIF in game that is just under 10,000 polygons and when viewing it our frame rate drops dramatically. Meanwhile we have other buildings in DTS that are 5000-10,000 polygons and don't seem to have much effect at all. I'd love to be able to convert that DIF to a DTS shape and see how it performs. If anyone has any suggestions pipeline wise, I'd be interested in hearing them. 
#5
Have you tried exporting the DIF/mapfile from Constructor as a Lightwave object, then import and "fiddle" with the mesh (get rid of unseen faces etc) in a modeling program?
I know/think it's possible but haven't tried it.
06/10/2009 (6:09 am)
@JCHave you tried exporting the DIF/mapfile from Constructor as a Lightwave object, then import and "fiddle" with the mesh (get rid of unseen faces etc) in a modeling program?
I know/think it's possible but haven't tried it.
#6
@jc - I am running Ultimate Unwrap under Vista Professional. Have you seen these instructions - Ultimate Unwrap/Vista? I was able to get it running just by doing the standard compatibility steps: run as admin, compatible with XP/SP2, disable Aero, etc.
Thanks again!
Tom Dowd
Columbia College Chicao
06/10/2009 (8:37 am)
Thank you very much for the information - seems we were not as confused as we thought, which is always a good thing.@jc - I am running Ultimate Unwrap under Vista Professional. Have you seen these instructions - Ultimate Unwrap/Vista? I was able to get it running just by doing the standard compatibility steps: run as admin, compatible with XP/SP2, disable Aero, etc.
Thanks again!
Tom Dowd
Columbia College Chicao
Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]
The T3D beta does not currently support lightmaps, so your DIFs will look bad without Advanced Lighting. Advanced Lighting is all realtime, no baking.
DTS does not have inbuilt lightmapping properties - that's what the Advanced Lighting is for. Advanced Lighting should fulfill (sp?) all of your shadowing needs, though if you want it to look real nice and get a good frame-rate, you need a decent PC/GPU.
There is a proposed (I say proposed only because it is not yet available) lightmapping solution as a commercial add-on - linky.
Migrating from DIF to DTS: Mesh based DTS is a lot nicer to model that brush based DIF, and a lot easier to come up with none flat shapes. I've always found polysoup collision works fine (I've heard of complaints, I've never experienced them apart from the fact that blast radius is not stock set to check for collision/occlusion).
I much prefer using DTS now than DIF now, and I've spent years doing serious modding with the BSP format.
It is still possible to come up with a custom lightmapping solution for DTS using a workaround (I've been practising with one idea recently), but it's probably best to wait and see what PureLight comes up with.
Advanced Lighting is awesome, just performance expensive on my older PC (nvidia 7900 creaks). Hopefully they'll be a few performance improvements to come so I can screw a few more fps out of the sleepy, old dog yet.