Looking at the fantastic stuff MGE has given over at the morrowind forums, it has come to my attention that one shader is needed for oblivion also...and that my fellow modders is godrays.

I know writing shaders for oblivion is a much more eye bleeding task than as writing shaders for morrowind but I ask this; Can it be done?

Is someone out there willing to take the challenge?

It was actually being worked on with the OVEP project, but unfortunately the mod was mostly abandoned. But it does look like Scanti might be working up some things, so maybe the project might get rolling again and eventually god rays can happen.

What are those godrays?

(I think)Dynamic sun beams. Crysis does this nicely B)

Oblivion also needs a whole load of other things, like dynamic shadow casting statics. It causes me no end of pain that you never see buildings casting a shadow. I know some guy did a proof of concept in anvil, but that didn't satisfy me.

Probably impossible to do that. When I get a bit more experienced with shaders, I too will probably look towards doing the seemingly impossible. Right now, I can't even get the should-be-possible to work.

I'd like to see the self shadows not svck so hard.

Fable 2 also did a good job of dynamic sunbeams.

Object casting shadows could be a nice idea as well.

What I really wanna see is a better watershader. One that utilizes a tweaked refraction shader (slower movement, less distortion) just above waterlevel like RPG-Black-Dragon?s Water Refraction http://oblivionmodgods.de/mrmuhs-and-rpg-blackdragons-waterrefraction-t361.html. Only prob I have with this mod is the fast, spastic movbement of the default refraction shader. It should be slower like the one from Dark Messiah (which uses it for the water)

Stalker clear skies did it the best.

IMO, I would like to see crysis water in oblivion. Or something along the lines of wave caustics and foamy waters near the shore lines.

I've been using http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?id=3525&view=OblivionMods.Detail for a while.

Not the same thing. That's a texture, what we're talking about are shaders.

As wrinklyninja said, thats a texture. The Godrays shader were talking about is better described in these pics. I took these of my morrowind.

Note the rays coming off when objects block the sun. That shader is Phals Sunshaft rays.

http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv47/AmpolX/godrays1.jpg
http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv47/AmpolX/godrays2.jpg

seroius sam didnt do that that bad either.

Those are the first shots I've seen of MGE in action - looks pretty good, I say. I'd love it if we could get something like that for Oblivion.

I'm tempted to get Scanti's debug plugin and start messing around just to see what I can break. But I'll have to wait till I'm a bit less busy, I think.

Well of course it's not the same thing but I thought it was the closest thing we have to the concept described here.

These show what im talking about way better (im sorry to say but MGE beats oblivion by far now) [strictly my opinion]

http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv47/AmpolX/godrays3.jpg

http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv47/AmpolX/water01.jpg
http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv47/AmpolX/water03.jpg

If I had any money, I'd buy morrowind! :drool:

Hmm... Never knew Morrowind looked that good with MGE...

Those MGE shots are quite impressive. Are those static shadows I see in Morrowind too? It's almost enough to want to get back into Morrowind full swing

I always intended to go back to morrowind (got my GOTY editon with all included in my bookcase) but really, I should finish Oblivion once and for all. Now it is stable and I'll be damned if I will slip this time But after that - Morrowind here I come!

But to the question at hand. How does MGE handle godrays?

We shouldn't get off topic. I was using those screens as a base to see if anyone could possibly take up the task of making shaders like the ones MGE has.

I'm afraid I have no experience with shader programming and am not likely to start. Though it would still be nice if someone could confirm that those are static shadows in the god ray shots or if they're just part of the god ray illusion.

While I only just started writing HLSL last week or so, AFAICT all that you'd need is the vector of the camera relative to an object, and the vector of the light source (sun, in this case) relative to either of them, to work out whether or not to cast godrays, and in what direction, which you can do using vector maths, and then you just blur the edges of those objects (I know you can get the edges via shader somehow) in the direction of the vector, by a degree dependant on the strength of the light source, which you can get using the brightness of the screen at the point where the light source is.

All shaders seem to be is vectors and matrices, so it's just really a load of complicated maths. If Scanti's plugin can show us how to get those three position vectors, I'm pretty sure that it's doable (though it would take me a while to get through all the maths).

EDIT:

And static shadows would probably be simpler than that, cutting out the player, just extend the position vector of the light from the static edges to the ground, and darken everything from there to the base of the static, which would be the integral of the line representing the edges of the static. OK, so it'd be a pretty complicated equation, but the maths would work. But I'm sure there'd be an easier way of finding that area than that.

EDIT 2: I'm saying 'all', but this is actually a huge amount of work. I'm just simplifying things.

Phals sunshaft rays cause a fake static shadow at the player as the sun isn't hitting that part of the object so its made shadow as the parts of the godrays illuminate around it or fill in gaps. Kinda noticable here in this screen.

http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv47/AmpolX/shadowrays.jpg

Notice how the rock makes a puesdo shadow because the rays are only piercing around it. Looks good IMO but can look weird as if objects from much farther distances cause this effect too which can look weird to have a 5 cell long shadow from one object.