113 réponses à ce sujet

[Sharpaz]

@ James Goldman : Yep path correct

. --- Problem resolved, i have uninstal and reinstall on other folder dragon age, toolset , and sqlsever... Works now, Thanks for help.

[James Goldman]

Hey everyone, the new version (1.2) is up ready for downloading. Yes, it fixes sunlight! (See updated OP for full details)

http://social.bioware.com/project/717

James

Modifié par James Goldman, 04 décembre 2009 - 01:11 .

[akaliel]

Hey James, what's the status on water?

[Redunzgofasta]

I only did a quick test and EclipseRay1.2 seems to be working just fine.

Yeah sunlight!!!



Thanks James.

[James Goldman]

akaliel: there is a workaround. You have to post from Single Player, I think. Water is not a lightmapper issue, but coming up with a better solution is on the to-do list.

[Allan Smith]

James Goldman wrote...

akaliel: there is a workaround. You have to post from Single Player, I think. Water is not a lightmapper issue, but coming up with a better solution is on the to-do list.

This is documented on the toolset wiki under "water"

http://social.biowar...index.php/Water

[FalloutBoy]

Using the new version I still don' t get sunlight in my lightmaps. I updated to 1.2, loaded an existing level file, clicked off Display Lightmaps, clicked Render Lightmaps. When it was done I clicked Display Lightmaps and I still only get ambient and the little point light that I placed. I tried adjusting the sun direction and rendering again, but same result.

[Redunzgofasta]

Did you try a "Do all local posts" ?

My lexisting ightmaps don't seem to be updating unless I do just that.

[BioSpirit]

Thanks for fixing the sunlight from most parts. There are still some problems with shadows near chunk boundries and there are quite lot of black spots or triangles everywhere. Also there is no ambient light effecting in characters when runing a module in DA. The "Affects characters" property of ambient light is hardcoded to "False" and can't be changed.

Few other things:

- Model placement tool is badly proken. It's difficult to place any models in exterios levels. (Haven't tried interior levels). A model can appear very far from the place where it was intend to be placed.  The other tools, (Scatter, Deform...) don't have any problems to map the position of the mouse pointer into a surface. 

- Ugly lines appear around a blend textures. The lines will get less jagged when the resolution of blend textures is increased. I didn't notice them when playing the official DA campaign but the lines are there. They are not a problem as long as you don't notice them but in some special conditions the lines will become very well visible.

[Trampzabout]

Ive also noticed the black triangles, but I havent done enough playing around/testing to be able to say if its just a setting causing it or the lightmapper. Im guessing its a setting at the moment, possibly the mapping resolution or the raycast setup. They seemed to be less pronounced and less of them when I upped the ray length and minimum/maximum casts and the mapping resolution, but that may just be my imagination lol



Anyway, Great Job Guys and Thank You This tool is coming along very nicely, please keep up all your hardwork it is really appreciated.



@BioSpirit - Have you tried using the 3-axis movement tool to get your model roughly into position after you spawn it into your level ? Personally I find the 3-axis translate tool very comfortable to use with it being so similar to 3DMax, I found myself getting frustrated trying to place and move models by the mouse with no axis control especially at shallow camera angles.



The lines around the blend textures that you are seeing, is that after the level is lightmapped or is it just around certain parts of certain textures all the time ? Im just curious, I havent noticed anything really bad with textures, a few seams here and there is about it but nothing that jumps out at me.

[James Goldman]

Thanks, Trampzabout, always nice to hear



BioSpirit: The seams around terrain chunks should be fixed since the 1.1 release. If you are still seeing it, can you please send me your level at toolsetsupport@bioware.com (attn: James Goldman) and I'll take a look. As to the black triangles, it seems that there are some art assets that have overlapping texture coordinates, and that breaks a key assumption of the lightmapper. It doesn't show up in the game because we used different software in-house that uses a different algorithm. I'm trying to gather information on how prevalent the problem is and how it shows up so I can determine a solution (I already have four possibilities in mind). If you encounter these, please do let me know which models they are and I can examine the source art and also make sure that it's not a new bug in the lightmapper itself.

[FalloutBoy]

Redunzgofasta wrote...

Did you try a "Do all local posts" ?
My lexisting ightmaps don't seem to be updating unless I do just that.

A thousand pardons. Apparently I didn't. That fixed it. Thanks.

[BioSpirit]

I made some testing related in these problems.

Shadows at chunk boundries:
The edge of a shadows is not sharp they are blured as they should be. It looks like when a shadow will fall within a chunk but the blur effect should continue into a different chunk the problem will appear.

Black spots and triangles:
If I remove every model and vegetation from the level witch will leave only one ambient light source and a start location. The spots will still appear the same way as before. One thing I don't quite understand: there is no ambient light in these spots. Shouldn't every light map contain atleast full ambient light level in every pixel ?
 
Here are some screen shots.

The shot 1 (users.kymp.net/p501474a/Shot_1.jpg) shows many of these spots near Morrigan's staff and the lines related in blend textures. One pretty strong line will begin from Alistair's head and will continues to the left. Also the moutain between the wagon and minimap is full of these lines. Nothing is effecting these lines like Graphics configuration options (Antialiasing, supersampling, filter settings) or editing tools like (Relax texture, smooth texture, tessalation). Only a resolution of blend texture will effect in density of these lines and how jagged they are but not how visible they are. When the camera is moving these lines will become more alive.  I suppose a broken transistor in somewhere in a GPU could easily cause symtoms like this.

The shot 2 (users.kymp.net/p501474a/Shot_2.jpg) is showing a lightmap problem in a boulder (cav_caiboulder02_0) and a missing ambient light of the characters.

In a shot 3 (users.kymp.net/p501474a/Shot_3.jpg) Morrigan is standing near intersection of four chunks. Witch is showing a shadow problem in a chunk boundry, a black triangle and a blend texture lines below inventory icon. 

Have you tried using the 3-axis movement tool to get your model roughly into position after you spawn it into your level ? Personally I find the 3-axis translate tool very comfortable to use with it being so similar to 3DMax, I found myself getting frustrated trying to place and move models by the mouse with no axis control especially at shallow camera angles.

Yes, I have. That's the only way to get them in place.

[BioSpirit]

I stumbled across into a DA Toolset article in a wiki that states: (social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Level_tutorial#Creating_Terrain_Worlds)

The first thing you will notice after creating a new exterior level is that there is an "Advanced" button when you are picking the size of the area. These greatly effects how your textures look in the area. We have been advised to use the following settings for ALL exterior levels until further notice:

Cells Per Sector: 16
Base Cell Resolution: 8
Blend Texel Size: 320
Cell Length: 128
Cell Width: 128
Tesselation Level: 4

So, I created a test level with those settings except that the 320 was replaced by 100. And I was not able to reproduce the problem with the black "spots". However, the black lines in a boulders did appear the same way as before. After that I created a new test level with the same parameters as the initial level was created and the black spots re-appeared.

The paramaters ware:

Cells Per Sector: 8
Base Cell Resolution: 4
Blend Texel Size: 50
Cell Length: 32
Cell Width: 32

An other article in a wiki states: (social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Level_editor#Creating_a_new_level)

Chunk size - chunks are the basic simulation unit used by the engine. The default 32m is a good chunk size. You'll probably not want to reduce it smaller since you can't have the terrain mesh overhang from one chunk into another; smaller chunks could place limits on the sorts of terrain warping you'll be able to do later.

Witch is in a conflict with the other article.

Modifié par BioSpirit, 09 décembre 2009 - 11:03 .

[BioSpirit]

It looks like it's tessellation that will break the lightmapper and is causing a black spots in the lightmaps. It's not up to a chunk size.

[Redunzgofasta]

Tessellation seems to "leave" a visable grid also.
But that is not a lightmapper issue I presume.

Modifié par Redunzgofasta, 09 décembre 2009 - 10:23 .

[iw4o]

[malicious content removed]

[Trampzabout]

Hey, any news on the black poly's on the lightmaps ?
It does seem to be tesselation related at least for the terrain mesh, the black "spots" are poly's of the terrain mesh, and for me at least, it seems to occur quite badly in exterior levels that have more than 2 levels of tesselation. Also, Ive been playing around with ambient occlusion settings and the lightmap settings, and upping the res of the lightmap to 512x512, removing soft shadows and increasing the ray length/num of samples seems to decrease the black poly effect and also seems to reduce the size of the artifacts. It doesnt remove it completely though.

The only way I have removed the black artifacts completely is to remove all tesselation from the parts of my levels that are viewable and playing with the sunlight & ambient, basically trial and error lol... and I have a feeling that was more in the way of a one off lol (only completely custom exterior level I have finished atm so cant test properly)

Anyway, even with these little things, toolset is awesome, great work bioware.

EDIT : Sorry, one more question, the 512x512 size limit on the lightmap texture's resolution, is that hardcoded into the engine ? or is it something that can be changed ? I always get the "resolution clamped to 512x512 maximum" when I try to increase the res over that.... I was thinking that more resolution means sharper images, mapping time isnt really an issue for me lol I dont mind waiting for quality lol

Modifié par Trampzabout, 20 décembre 2009 - 12:47 .

[BioSpirit]

James Goldman wrote...

If you are still seeing it, can you please send me your level at toolsetsupport@bioware.com (attn: James Goldman) and I'll take a look.

Did you got the Level I sent ? Were you able to reproduce the spots ? I suppose that's the most critical problem with the light mapper at the moment.

I wrote...

So, I created a test level with those settings except that the 320 was
replaced by 100. And I was not able to reproduce the problem with the
black "spots". However, the black lines in a boulders did appear the
same way as before. After that I created a new test level with the same
parameters as the initial level was created and the black spots
re-appeared.

I just didn't have tessellation used in the test scenario. That's the reason it worked.

Modifié par BioSpirit, 20 décembre 2009 - 08:52 .

[dorotea]

Reinstalled the latest patch and latest toolset into C:\\Program Files\\Dragon Age\\



Now I am having the same problems as oni - eclipseRay process just hangs forever never actually submitting the job to the lightmapper. I had to force-register the Engine.dll via safemode again btw. And yes, I am still on win XP 64 with activepython 2.5.4 32 bit installed...



So the latest incarnation of the toolset still des not work for me but I verified what I suspected before - something somewhere is hardcoded to look for the "C:\\Program Files\\...\\ installation path.

[dorotea]

Btw - just to let you know I am still trying to render the simple 3 walls and a floor tiny cube room with 1 barrl prop and 2 lights - done exactly as per online tutorials. Cannot do this. Lightmapper does not work on 64 bit XP systems.

[BioSpirit]

I am not sure is this problem related to the black spots but it would be good idea to take a look. Here are two screen shots taken form the toolset. (users.kymp.net/p501474a/tessellation1.jpg)  in that screen shot some parts of the terrain's mesh are highly "stretched". Usually this kind of problem can be easily fixed by using relax texture tool but in this particular case that won't work. Only way to fix this problem is to increase the tessellation level, in this case below the triangles, and the problem is fixed. After that the tessellation can be reduced back to the level where it was. Here's a screen shot after the operation. (users.kymp.net/p501474a/tessellation2.jpg)  If this is a source of the problem causing the black spots in that case the problem isn't in the lightmapper. 

Modifié par BioSpirit, 21 décembre 2009 - 06:12 .

[Trampzabout]

ive noticed that the black polys on the lightmap(they are part of the lightmap texture and are caused by the lightmapper) are only present where 2 differing levels of tesselation meet.



Ive managed to work around the problem, to make it unnoticable, by strategic vegetation and prop placement. Also keeping the "metting area" where differing levels of tesselation meet square and as clean edged as possible it reduces the artifacting. What I am seeing is definately coming through in the lightmap texture and shows up ingame. Although there may be causes other than the lightmapper its definately part of the lm texture.

[BioSpirit]

I took a closer look into the problem and it seems that there could be a workaround to remove the spots. I removed some of these spots by manually editing the light maps using GIMP.  It's not difficult but it's taking a lot of time so it's not much an option. But it would be possible to write a software that would automatically remove the spots. Such  software could use a values of nearby pixels to interpolate the missing data. It's not a perfect solution but it's better than nothing.

Of course, it would be better to solve whatever is causing the spots from the first place. But that would require someone who's familiar with python and that's probably a rare thing.

[JasonNH]

In addition to these problems, a couple of us are noticing that ambient lights are not acting in the way that they are described on the wiki for exterior areas. My understanding is that ambient lighting allows you to modify the color of shadows, and it does. The problem is that it also immediately makes the entire area much brighter regardless of your sunlight values in the exportable area properties.

This makes it impossible to have a less than brightly lit exterior area with anything but the pitch black default shadow color. This is extremely limiting. Could someone from Bioware either correct our misunderstanding of how ambient lights function in an exterior area, or verify that there is currently a bug with ambient lights? Thank you.

Modifié par JasonNH, 23 décembre 2009 - 01:21 .