Island - BGE Demo Scene

[vitorbalbio]

Hi!
Was a long time without post my works in BA, but is nice to be here again
The winter is coming here in Rio de Janeiro (not as in Game of Thrones i hope ) and the beach is not so nice now, so why not make a paradise Demo Scene in BGE?

Actually it´s a thing that i really want to do already but the low available time for that stopped me. I think that will bee a good study and i hope you enjoy it too.

My inspirations are the great Unityand UDK demos and of course Crysis ( not guys, i don´t think i will get that quality, but lets see what we can do )

I posted a video in youtube, but it´s outdated now, a will do a new in a few days.

I´m using my own SVN Blender/BGE but that don´t have nothing special, only one or two patches of my to see the debug Fps better and a custom splash with Ruínas image. For general proposes download the SVN of day in graphicall and you will have the same version.

In time i will posting more informations about what a want to do.

Images:

Fps and performance:
For now 140~180 (1280x720) AA,AF off/ 60~90 (1280x720) AA 4X and AF16x
booth in my Geforce 9500GT DDR2, without terrain optmizations.
In my final scene 20~30 in i hope

Sugestions, Comments ?
Bye! :rolleyes:

[Laxwolf]

Looks really nice, get some textures on it! Good luck.

[gizmo_thunder]

the water looks amazing…

[leonnn]

for now I have no comment, youd didnt showed anything special, but as on your previrous works I expect a great project. I really want to see it done!

[ShingWanTin]

the island looks nice! add some textures now!

EDIT: what all is going to be on the island? if there is a lighthouse there should be some houses/village on the island…

[vitorbalbio]

Hi!
Thanks for comments.
Past week i worked in two things that are essential for this project , one for graphic and the outer for performance. For now i only implement in final scene one of that and i will talk some words about it, i hope can be useful for someone.

Terrain Texture Based in Vertex Color Mask:

Make good textures for large scales is really complex, BGE don´t have a good suport for large size texture loading to enable us to use Texture Atlas, what´s a bad thing in some cases. The alternative is use tiled textures and repeat it for all terrain, what make visible problems in graphic of scene.
In Appricot project they make a smart solution using tiled textures with two Stencil texture maps to mask the areas. But i think the most of you know it. Of course we can to cascade stencil maps to enable more than only two textures.
but in time the problems return… In my case i will have a lot of terrain objects not only one. So how to apply the same material in all terrain objects if the masks are based in own UVs and textures?

My solution: Make vertex color as Stencil Channel for the textures:
How: making some good Nodes

The idea is use a range of color as mask to a texture. So separating the RGB we get mask to 3 Textures and separating the sub colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow ) we can get more 3. The transitions colors between they we don´t can use cause it will have a little marge to blends. I´m using now only 5 textures.

Shadows: For now i will use only “baked” shadows. But not texture Baked shadow maps, i´m using vertex based shadows. Manually painting the projected shadows in ambient. It can not be perfect but is fast and works good for now.

We need too add a Lambert (or outer that you want) shading, that we get in material base. And a Fog, it can be made with camera distance/depth.

This is the node Config and results:

More Updates:

-> I did a shader (2D filter) to control many camera properties as RGB correction,film grain, vignette, levels and contrast

-> some changes in clouds too, now its animated and looks better

Video:
if you can watch it in HD, always is better

It´s all for now.
Bye :rolleyes:

[Ace_Dragon]

Nice work so far (despite the fact that the island idea for a graphics demo has been done quite a few times )

Theoretically you can also use a colorband node to tighten the color values required for a certain texture (so you can apply 12 textures to the island by splitting each color mask into two more (ie. light yellow and dark yellow)).

Though I can see why creating an island demo is so popular they can easily be expanded if needed while bordering the scene with a natural barrier is easy (just use water)

[vitorbalbio]

Theoretically you can also use a colorband node to tighten the color values required for a certain texture (so you can apply 12 textures to the island by splitting each color mask into two more (ie. light yellow and dark yellow)).

We need all grayscale range to make the shadows… so a bright Yellow is a bright sand and a dark yellow is a shadowed (or darker) sand… We can try cap it and normalize the values (0.5~1.0 = 0~1.0) but while i don´t need so many textures for terrain let´s keep it simple

would be great if we can make two or more vertex color channels, as we have with UV. but it don´t work in BGE, only in Render.

Though I can see why creating an island demo is so popular they can easily be expanded if needed while bordering the scene with a natural barrier is easy (just use water)

I think you´re right

[Ace_Dragon]

@vitorbalbio

We need all grayscale range to make the shadows… so a bright Yellow is a bright sand and a dark yellow is a shadowed (or darker) sand

You talked about wishing you could use multiple Vcol channels though I think I recall seeing more than one vertex color channel rendered in some of my own scenes where I used it for the BI renderer, the only thing needed was more than one geometry node.

EDIT: Okay I stand corrected, multiple channels work in the viewport, but not in the BGE itself, this may or may not be a bug because I thought the initial design for Apricot was that the viewport and the BGE shared the same shading code for WYSIWYG editing, however in this case it’s not entirely true.

If its not going to take a lot of effort then it may be worth resolving before the 2.58 release.

[skykooler]

Looks nice…any thought to breaking waves?

[vitorbalbio]

skykooler: not really “breaking”, but i´m working in some stuff

Outers mini updates:

• Playing with vignette values, i think now it´s better
• Some work in wet sand
• Take off film grain for now ( yet in shader but off in control)
• More work in water Node config.

This is the actual Node Config for Water:

I will work too in a “Dev Mode” with a HUD to control all params of shaders in realtime. Nice to config the scene and to play
Bye!

[leonnn]

now Its getting better, i think that the materials are looking like toys so far, not very realistic but I think too that you are just working on setting up the textures at first. Well its getting better, congratulations!
After this project that you made I can expect high quality graphicshttp://www.tramaecologica.org.br/VitorThings/memories.html

[vitorbalbio]

Updates:

Modular Lens Flare

Yet not integrate in Island scene but working good
Unlike the most of BGE lens flare, it´s based in Overlay Scene what able to make it all modular. You just need one script in Sum Object and one in active camera and it´s done.

All math of camera is based in Screen Space so you can rotate, scale, zoom, whatever-you-want, and the lens flare still work…

Screen:

Vídeo:

in video the visibility have some flicks, it´s caused by fraps recorder only. No record, it does not
Please if you can watch in HD

Next:

• Add this in Island Scene
• modelling some props ( plants, palms, rocks etc)

Comments, suggestions?
Bye! :rolleyes:

[skykooler]

The sand looks too perfect…Perhaps add some seaweed or something? See this:

[JohnnyBlack]

@vitorbalbio

Updates:

Modular Lens Flare

Yet not integrate in Island scene but working good
Unlike the most of BGE lens flare, it´s based in Overlay Scene what able to make it all modular. You just need one script in Sum Object and one in active camera and it´s done.

All math of camera is based in Screen Space so you can rotate, scale, zoom, whatever-you-want, and the lens flare still work…

Screen:

Vídeo:

https://youtu.be/UbUJn2b7TYw

in video the visibility have some flicks, it´s caused by fraps recorder only. No record, it does not
Please if you can watch in HD

Next:

• Add this in Island Scene
• modelling some props ( plants, palms, rocks etc)

Comments, suggestions?
Bye! :rolleyes:

Looks very nice. Maybe you will share a .blend file.

[andreola]

nice work, I wanted to know how do you did that lens flare effect , looks amazing.

[torakunsama]

Fantastic project indeed! Could you share an example of your shaders? I’ve been trying to use vertex color as stencil masks for a long time and was never able to get the results I need! You have done it with 5 textures! Keep it up!

[vitorbalbio]

Thanks for the comments and sugestions.

Week Updates:

• Added Modular Lens Flare in Resource forum and in Island Scene, more work is yet need in Halo textures in Island Scene
• Start Sketch of Control Pannel. in GIMP yet
• Done a template to slide barr for HUDs, i will post it in Resource forum too.

Screens:

Control Pannel ( in gimp yet )

Lens Flare

it´s all for now.
I hope have more updates in the next week.
Bye!

[Karakasimov]

Excellent work vitorbalbio.
The water quality is superior. i’d like to see some coconut trees near the beach.
The lens flare looks great too. Reminds me of nfsuc.

[micah702]

lol, don’t take this the wrong way saga, but “coconut trees” ? xD