Wolf

[quote=oluv;155168]both examples look very nice, free of any baking-artifacts. may i ask if you rendered complete-maps or only lightmaps with multitextured seperate diffuse maps?


It can do both, but i get better results by rendering texture and light as 2 passes, so you can use a high res tiling texture map and a lower res lightmap.


[quote=oluv;155168]what gi-method did you use for baking in vray and what are your settings? i am always getting artifacts,


When i started initially bringing models in, they were from various prerendered scenes i had done, and i found that you just cant get away with dodgy modeling that max happily renders. walls have to be snapped and not intersecting or the 32 bit zbuffer creates bad jaggies. I wish there was an easy way to get what you modeled into the engine no matter how you got there modeling, but ultimately you need good low poly skills to get the best quality lightmaps i found. The best results i got is when i completely poly modeled a space with no intersecting objects. other than that crank up vrays settings ie. imap -3 -0 100 hsubd.


[quote=oluv;155168]another problem i am always having is inside/outside lighting. either it is too dark inside or too bright outside. so most of the time i must divide my model into a separate inside-area, and an outside area and bake both maps with different exposures. with big models this is quite exhausting. i would hope for a better and simpler method. would like to know how you deal with this.


i guess the ideal situation is to mimic the human eye, i was considering hdri but it eats an awful lot of memory. right now i bake the lightmaps and adjust the brighness contrast levels etc in PS. this lets me try different light levels without rerendering. Another thing that may work is by using level of detail to turn lights on and off or change lightlevels.

Btw. I am looking for a few testers to make sure the viewer works ok.
email me if your interested support@lightcraftresearch.com

Clausbang

Hi Wolf

It really looks nice.

A suggestion for you is to look at what the specific user benefit of your tool is.

LOD is nice if it enables you to create larger scenes (better quality), but try make something automatic. I think you need to consider the points that sets you apart, as there are a ton of real-time tools right now.

/Claus

oluv

although there are tons of realtime engines, there is not a single one, that really can produce results with a single click.
quest's new max-exporter doesn't really work as it should, you still have to export your model as directx-file.
turntool has some limitations too...
what is still missing is an engine that can produce results directly out of max, without much fiddling.
you have a max-model *click* then you have a walk-through model.

let's see wolf is able to give us something like this.

Wolf

a few test that i have done lately, getting some very high res textures into the engine,
here is a 8192x8192 landscape.
Also a house im working on, the lightmaps were rendered quite low for testing purposes, texturing is next up.

Oluv... as you can see i am getting artifacts when i do a low res bake (-5 -3 imap) only way to get that looking clean is to crank it right up and let it render for a few hours. maybe it will be the same for the engine you use?



My main target group for this engine will be Architects and visualizers,
who will want to see what the lighting is doing in their project
and study it in realtime. I do not expect to make photorealistic scenes
that rival prerendered with it, but as a nice flyaround tool that a client can easily
take control of and get a feel for their building.
The control is super smooth with easing in movement and camera look,
its quite cinematic compared to the sharp control of fps games.

Clausbang... Im not sure of the current crop of real time tools out there, the screens i have seen look quite game like.
im not sure if it is easy to implement texture baking easily,
for this engine all you have to do is make sure the object your
baking has the word LightMap in its name. thats it.
once you have imported it into the engine, it converts everything.
to texture maps and lightmaps.
It can handle textures up to 8192 pixels for landscapes and aerial photography, has an option for flat reflections such as pool water.
Level of detail because you are loading the scene into your video cards RAM,
providing it fits you will get 75fps easily, if it doesnt it has to swap textures
from memory reducing your frame rate down to about 30 with
LOD in theory so long as you only have high res textures close up,
there is only the limit of your main memory for scenes.
32 bit alpha channels for plants etc. Instance rendering,
Proxy support, animated textures and lightmaps. and
stereo polarised projection.
more detailed news of some of these things soon, as i have a dayjob unfortunately. so only have the wee hours of the night to work.

cheers for the interest

Wolf

I have now got a demo up
if you would like to give it a try
you can download it here.

www.lightcraftresearch.com

anvaraziz

thanks for the demo,,

__________________
www.mukks.com

thomas+son

This VERY promising, we just need a simple tool like your website describes.

ChooChoo

I got into gaming and made myself a kick butt comp to play on. When I jumped in to the VR world of the game I was like "whoooaaa"

Same idea I had is what you followed through on. I was looking into HL2 engine and it was a PITA to make it plain and clear. This is quite an accomplishment. Very nice indeed.

Wolf

In the little time that i have had the website up, i have had enough sales to let me quit my dayjob and work on V2 fulltime.
A big thankyou to every one who has bought Halcyon, and i am looking forward to seeing the projects you are creating with it. I promised myself that when i had enough to cover me for a few months of work, i would reduce the price of Halcyon. Therefore i am now offering Halcyon for only $150
I will start a users gallery soon, so if you would like me to put your projects up please send me an email with some images.

thankyou again for your support

Gco808

Quite IMpressive!