Messing about with the engine, I think. I proposed a few methods to get dynamic shadows with a shader, but they got shot down as the others pointed out the (extreme) difficulties involved in them.

When Scanti finds the surface normals, HawkleyFox can start on directional occlusion:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bRkyG3R-eI

Nice!

The current model you've derived seems to suit the project better, in my opinion. It's better to say put with OBGE and add some suffix to it than changing the whole name.

PS : I finally got around to watch Avatar and I should say it was impressive, even more so technically. And just when I was hoping to mess around with stereoscopy in Oblivion, the bloody buggers in the theater recalled the glasses :swear: After all, I payed for the damned thing.

Cheers, I'll make that the format for the next thread if I open it, unless I hear any objections.

[off-topic]The glasses wouldn't have worked anyway, unless you could get ahold of a circularily polarising display. I did a bit of research into the 3D effects after I went to see it, and while the tech they chose was the best for distribution to the masses, it makes the glasses pretty much useless for anything but the cinema. You could replicate the tech with a screen of electrolytic chiral molecules with a variable voltage for each pixel, tied to the 3D variable for that pixel, and couple that with a modified DoF, but I'm guessing that 99.9% of people (including me) are too lazy.

Interesting to note is that Avatar is pretty much the only reason 3D movies exist. They basically invented the tech, then licensed it out to studios to create a market for 3D films and raise awareness prior to Avatar so when it was released, the 3D wouldn't flop. That's pretty cunning, if you ask me.[/off-topic]

Currently I try to work on several projects, but me being a code noob does not help much at this point.

"Occlusion Detection"
I guess I have to find the info on this sins I / we need it for both:
- God Rays Effect
- Lens Flare Effect

"Shadows on Static"
I am trying to understand both the Shader method and the Direct Code Modification.
- Shader = According to the game engine documentation is it possible to activate shadows on objects true Shaders.
- Code = I have seen the code and the modifications needed to make it happen but for now its not getting implemented due to some implementation issues.

My advice would be to take those projects as eventual aims, and focus on learning the code, messing about seeing what does what. That way you slowly build up your knowledge to the point at which you can actually attempt the projects without being overwhelmed by the stuff you can't do.

It's something I'm very bad at, but hopefully I'm getting better.

@vastek:
Does the following set of commands make any sense to you on the Occlusion topic.

Command = Explanation

aOcclusionGeomD = Occlusion Geom
aSunOcclusionWa = Sun Occlusion Wait Frames
aSunOcclusionPi = Sun Occlusion Pixels
aBoundVolumeOcc = Bound Volume Occlusion Wait Loops
aBoundVolumeO_0 = Bound Volume Occlusion Pixels
aOcclusionQuery = Occlusion Query
aOcclusion = OCCLUSION

Well, occlusion it is. Yes. Especially these three:
aOcclusion
aSunOcclusionPi
aSunOcclusionWa
If those are what I think, only this would be enough at the end: aOcclusion, others can be decided by us.

But the game is already doing this, switching glare on-off depending on sun visibility, I'm sure scanti will find it in the memory when he gets better.(@scanti, Get well soon!) No need to do it from scratch.
(Again MGE experience is talking. :grad: )

Seems that SSAO is stressing my card extensively, it gets heated quite a lot when I use it. Don't know if it's just ATI's poor heating kicking in, but you might want to look into it.

Particularly I think it's related to actors on-screen, as I can hear the exhaust fans going louder whenever I talk to an NPC, entering the inventory screen cools it down again as expected. Also note that performance isn't really an issue, it's running smoothly for the majority of the time (playing in the Shivering Isles), my card is ATI HD4870x2 (2 gigs).

Tested the new timelygodraysv3.fx, and it seems great!! Im using the OBGEv2.dll.

Here is a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txHV01PaTZ8

shows the new timelygodraysv3.fx, the shader effect is much better balanced than in godraysv2.
The values within the shader are unchanged, nothin is altered.

Second part shows the shader works also really well underwater!

10/10, outstanding work, kudos @ vtastek!



PS: found out the blueish stuff is from Streamsight, setting the water fog variable in such a way, that it is applied before the PC is fully underwater.
I disabled Streamsight, and recognized this is no issue related to the shaders.

That's just a fog thing, I've always gotten it when you mess around at the surface boundary of the water. It seems that the game can't accurately determine whether you're above or below the surface at that point, and puts that in. Just like how you can get it to remove underwater fog by staying the same position, but under the boundary.

It's just a weird thing about water in Oblivion.

@ Robok: The SSAO shader is intense, and there's not much that can be done about it, unless Scanti finds the surface normals. If your card can't handle it, it can't handle it. Make sure that your PC is being properly ventilated though, hardware is made to operate within its limits under all loads, but it can't do anything about your setup environment.

Yes, thats a strange thing to occur, guess they havent really put much effort in the water shaders. :shakehead:
There is also a small space between the surface and the water, you'll have no water fog and the water appears to be clear in every distance.

OMG-Waterrefractions mod managed to remove this, together with the water-blur-0.3 mod it is very good,
but also completely removes the water ripples and it doesnt work with the DoF shader from Timeslip.

Thiis video shows the ssao_test.fx shader and its underwater glitch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZe0ueEZ6r8

That was reported ages ago, I'm not sure what HawkleyFox said was the issue, but I think it was something to do with water fog interferring with the shader and leaching all the colour out of stuff underwater. That's why when you're at the boundary where the fog disappears, so does the bug. If you go really close up to an object, you may see it colour again, if I remember correctly.

The color isnt only leeched from the objects underwater, also from above, leading to this glitch.
Someone said the OBGEv2.dll does lack retrieving certain values from obse,
so it would be still impossible to check if the view point is underwater, and in that case to completely disable ssao temporarily.


Btw, only noticed performance problems with ssao when entering dialog mode with any npc, everything seems to slow down, but is back to normal after dialog mode ends.



@wrinklyninja:
speaking of water effects, i have a question. would it be possible to implement a certain shader, lets say in case you hit a fish underwater and it does bleed?
like the voloumteric fog effect in DX10, similiar to blood clouds? as this is no fullscren effect, i am not sure bout this.

OK, I took some comparison screenshots to help you understand what's going on:

http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2010-02-0520-43-46-76.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2010-02-0520-43-30-99.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2010-02-0520-43-29-00.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2010-02-0520-43-43-56.jpg

As you should be able to see from that, the only difference between vanilla and SSAO behaviour is the fact that SSAO will draw the effect to the whole screen regardless of fog, and hence the edges of objects that would otherwise be hidden in fog are defined. The fog depth is also screwed up, because with SSAO everything underwater is approximated to have the same colour, and so close up things also appear to have the same colour as the fog.

I haven't had a look at the SSAO shader itself, but I'm pretty sure that's a rough explanation of what happens. As for finding out if the player is underwater, that's easy if the player is totally submerged, but you'd still get this large band where you can't tell if you're underwater or not, because not even the game knows.

And I have no idea about the fish bleeding shader. You couldn't do a DX10 shader, since Oblivion is DX9, but I don't know about if a DX9 equivalent is possible.

Ah, ok, didnt remember that vanilla does dim the above surface objects too.
In that case, its just about disabling ssao temporarily when your viewpoint is underwater, I guess. But this would fail due to this "band".
And what about checking if underwater fog is applied, therefore using a certain variable, which makes it easy to check for ssao to be applied or not?

thanks for the pics!

You can call the Mythic Dawn visual effect on the fish to simulate such an effect.

Breakthrough!

I've got a Proof Of Concept video for cloud shadows uploaded to Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gBQBAk5i8g. It's not exactly perfect but it does show that I've figured out how to apply a texture as if along the surface of everything beneath the sky in a relatively simple way. I think that to improve the texture projection to make it look more like all the 'cloud' is moving in one direction would be quite tricky, so I'm going to dig out a proper cloud texture to test it on now, and see if it would be worth the effort. Stay tuned.

Special thanks to HawkleyFox, who's depth linearisation method I've pinched, as it's great for large distances.

NOTE: The video is probably still processing...

Great work wrinklyninja, thank you for the video demo :thumbsup:

That's some neat stuff.

Word. Very neat! Great work wrinklyninja!

That is going to be really, really sweet.

@shadeMe:
really dont know this special kind of effect. do you have any visual example, on youtube perhaps?