Shelter from Magnus' Blaze : III - Morrowind

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 7:15 pm

I used his link, but there must be something happened, while i downloaded it... because after installing it, nothing changed.
after using the setup from the magazins DVD (out since wednesday) everything was right

it's really a cool thing. (would like to see the shadows of barrels, too. but i think create a DistandLand with so small objects is deadly for my PC.)

Maybe we can introduce some advanced LOD for that.

Now I wanna see some exteriorized interiors.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:23 am

Maybe we can introduce some advanced LOD for that.

Now I wanna see some exteriorized interiors.

Yea, i've thinked aboud that, but I'm just a normal modder, never worked with MGE, just use it. So i don't know if this is an impossible idea and i didn't say anything ^^ don't want, that the masses will throw with stones after me.

but if it's possible, it would be cool. then a solution for volumetric lights everywere and it would be still perfect. (i love to play with light and shadows, so this was one of my biggest wishes.)

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:55 am

The shadows look good, I tried it out and am very impressed. The only improvement I can think of is perhaps softening the shadows the further the shadows falls from the object that cast it, like in real shadows. But I guess that might kill performance.

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 7:34 pm

(would like to see the shadows of barrels, too. but i think create a DistandLand with so small objects is deadly for my PC.)

Add the barrels to the statics override list, it will show up. Small objects don't cast very dark shadows though, see how it works.

The shadows look good, I tried it out and am very impressed. The only improvement I can think of is perhaps softening the shadows the further the shadows falls from the object that cast it, like in real shadows. But I guess that might kill performance.

Yes, exactly. I'm trying to find a good fast solution, but I seem to get big shadow blobs instead of smoothness.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:26 am

Yea, i've thinked aboud that, but I'm just a normal modder, never worked with MGE, just use it. So i don't know if this is an impossible idea and i didn't say anything ^^ don't want, that the masses will throw with stones after me.

but if it's possible, it would be cool. then a solution for volumetric lights everywere and it would be still perfect. (i love to play with light and shadows, so this was one of my biggest wishes.)

It wasn't targeted to MGE developers. It was a request to our ~~normal~~ hugely talented modders. You. Converting an interior to exterior with real windows and we can see how it plays out with shadows.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:32 am

Realtime shadows is great achievement for Morrowind visuals. Its the one of main features of game engines, where Gamebryo felt so miserable. Thanks a lot for your hard work, Hrnchamd. Any chance to see realistic shadows for static in Oblivion with your help?

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:18 am

Realtime shadows is great achievement for Morrowind visuals. Its the one of main features of game engines, where Gamebryo felt so miserable. Thanks a lot for your hard work, Hrnchamd. Any chance to see realistic shadows for static in Oblivion with your help?

I think that would be animations actually. It's hilarious how the upcoming Fallout game's animations still look as bad as morrowind's.
and I think there'll still be no animation for moving diagonally :lol:

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:26 pm

Gamebryo never failed at static shadows they where just never implemented.
Morrowind is a very old game, so probably graphics weren’t up for it at that time I think.
Look at Oblivion it had full shadows on everything and then it was removed by game designers.

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 8:20 pm

I think that would be animations actually. It's hilarious how the upcoming Fallout game's animations still look as bad as morrowind's.
and I think there'll still be no animation for moving diagonally :lol:

Todd Howard said they they are fully aware that animations are one of the weakest points in there games, so they will probably try to improve that for the next Elder Scrolls game.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:25 am

Todd Howard said they they are fully aware that animations are one of the weakest points in there games, so they will probably try to improve that for the next Elder Scrolls game.

I know the Bethesda team aren't very good at animating since the public routinely come with improvements, but is it to do with the engine aswell? Fallout New Vegas isn't made by Bethesda after all, but they probably recycled Bethesda's animations...

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 9:04 pm

Video Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ZEvxwq_F8

Download Location:
http://unity3d.com/support/resources/unity-extensions/locomotion-ik

Now, this doesn't have to do with shaders, but you can download it for free, and it works with key-framed animations (which Oblivion uses). I wonder if it's possible to utilize this with Oblivion somehow?

It works by changing the bones and such on the fly.

I know it’s a bit off topic but here a Quote I found some time ago.

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 11:01 pm

I know the Bethesda team aren't very good at animating since the public routinely come with improvements, but is it to do with the engine aswell? Fallout New Vegas isn't made by Bethesda after all, but they probably recycled Bethesda's animations...

I guess they just use the F3 animations indeed. I heard a year ago or something that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae3fgj2x1aI has been made compatible with Gamebryo, so there is hope

I don't really think the animations themselves are extremely bad (though they certainly aren't good either) but it is mostly the way the animations (and therefor the characters) don't blend in with the world. The characters feel placed on the world instead of being part of it mostly because the animations. Euphoria can fix that and make the animations themselves better too. Because I totally agree the animations look terrible. (but like I said it's not just the animations by itself)

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 1:19 am

Some changes from SVN 178

Distant land and grass culling is not delayed by a frame any more.
There is no alpha-to-coverage. Personal opinion; alpha stipple is too noticeable.

I was excited to try this not only for the shadows, but for the two line items I've quoted. I feel that the frame delay and alpha to coverage have been a step backwards for MGE from a visual quality perspective.

Unfortunately, my game just crashes on load with this. Here's what was in the log file:

Spoiler

MGE XE 0.6
>> CreateD3DWrapper
-- CreateD3DWrapper calling Direct3DCreate9
<< CreateD3DWrapper
>> D3D Proxy CreateDevice
-- D3D Proxy Factory OK
<< D3D Proxy CreateDevice
>> CreateInputWrapper
<< CreateInputWrapper
-- Proxy Keyboard OK
-- Proxy Mouse OK
-- Proxy Mouse OK
-- Proxy Mouse OK
>> Distant Land init
>> Distant Land init shader
-- Shader compiled OK
-- Shadow map shader compiled OK
-- Depth shader compiled OK
>> Distant Land init post shaders
>> Post Process shader init
-- Post shader data files\shaders\default\GIMP_HDRBloom_v1_3.fx loaded
-- Post shader data files\shaders\default\sunshaft_v002a.fx loaded
<< Post Process shader init
>> Distant Land init depth
>> Distant Land init shadow
>> Distant Land init water
>> Distant Land init world
>> Landscape Load
-- Landscape textures loaded
-- Landscape quadtree filled
<< Landscape Load
>> Distant Land init statics
Cannot load texture ndib_f_leaves00_lega.tga
-- Distant Land finished loading distant statics

I did follow the directions. Installed latest DirectX dist, based off of SVN 178, shaders where they should be, no MWSE, exp. fog, dynamic water, recalculated distant land, etc. Would any other debugging info be useful?

Thanks for your efforts, the videos really look excellent.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 1:22 am

I was excited to try this not only for the shadows, but for the two line items I've quoted. I feel that the frame delay and alpha to coverage have been a step backwards for MGE from a visual quality perspective.

Unfortunately, my game just crashes on load with this. . .

Someone else had the same texture show up in a log file, there's something about the texture path handling I may be missing. First try building distant land with only the base ESMs, see if that works. Then, could you identify which mod ndib_f_leaves00_lega.tga is from?

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:54 am

Someone else had the same texture show up in a log file, there's something about the texture path handling I may be missing. First try building distant land with only the base ESMs, see if that works. Then, could you identify which mod ndib_f_leaves00_lega.tga is from?

Deselecting all mods except the three .esms, recalculating distant land, and starting a new game worked.

Tracked the texture back to Stomper's Mournhold Expanded. Reselected all mods except that one, recalculated distant land, cleaned my save, and I was able to load the save just fine, no crashing.

I'll post some thoughts once I've spent some time with this. Thanks for the help.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 9:19 am

Looking pretty good here =) Finally got home from Finland to try this out.

*There's some flickering that seemed to appear at a certain time of day. I will try to reproduce it and post when and if I find it again.
*I can get SSAO and Sunshaft to work pretty well but neither of the two Bloom shaders bundled with this seems to be working at all. I tried placing them in different places in the chain, no success.
*Water up close looks a bit odd. I don't know it just looks like it's moving very unnaturally. Like the very very old MGE water.

I'm considering staying with this build. These shadows add a whole lot to the game's atmosphere =) Looking forward to future improvements.

http://i29.tinypic.com/5m094y.jpg

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:41 am

For the most part: wow. Don't make me go back to how it was before.

The shadows are for the most part excellent looking. Some odd shadow wobbling sometimes occurs when the PC is moving.

Major performance improvement for me. On the order of 30 to 50 percent (one example place was ~15 fps with SVN 178, ~22 fps with this build).

Some oddness where different things overlap.

http://img825.imageshack.us/i/mgexe1.jpg/
http://img837.imageshack.us/i/mgexe2.jpg/
http://img716.imageshack.us/i/mgexe3.jpg/

I miss the fancy water - waves and caustics. Aside from that I'd be perfectly happy with this as my MGE build of choice.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:02 am

I do plan to try this as soon as I have a bit of time and the will, though I am still quite turned off by the loss of exp fog and mwse, the main reason I've been so lazy about getting into this. Without MWSE, I can't really justify switching to this permanently, so I'm really only interested so I can do some benchmarks/tests and share my findings with the dev.

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 5:28 pm

http://img837.imageshack.us/i/mgexe2.jpg/

I think SSAO has always done that. http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot197.jpg

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:42 am

SSAO always does that.. Also, SSAO looks awful outside, the grass especially + you get a very visible black line where the SSAO ends, imo its better to just use SSAO for interiors where it looks really good.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:27 am

I thought SSAO http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/57416-1270647926.jpeg back then but I agree that SSAO does not look very nice with your grass Vurt. But I like your grass more and the performance hit from SSAO in exteriors was kinda bad anyway, so I've disabled SSAO in exteriors too. And underwater.

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:27 am

I never liked it on vality's grass either, that black outline the grass gets always bothered me.. in that screen it looks good though, are you sure SSAO was even enabled there? And yeah, underwater looks bad too..

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 8:06 pm

I think SSAO has always done that. http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot197.jpg

Although I do have SSAO in my shader list, I have it flagged as disabled in exteriors and interiors behaving like exteriors. Hrnchamd had made a comment about mucking about with grass lighting and shadows (which I think I can see quite clearly, but I didn't think to make a screenshot before I switched to his build), so I thought that was the source of the anomaly.

EDIT: vurt, while I agree with your assessment of SSAO in exteriors, I think grass looks splendid in this build.

» Thu Apr 07, 2011 9:08 pm

I cant make an extensive testing but with a couple of loads and some play under the trees i must say i fall in love with this MGE version.

For the moment no one problem arise, no crashes.
-My extensive problems with alpha showing some transparent lines have disappeared.
-The enervating poping of grass when turning has also disappeared.
-A huge gain in fps in every condition.
-The only problem is the commented problem with overlapping alphas like the ghosfence but also waterfalls in vivec.
-In a moment the shadows make a quick transition but nothing that bothers me.
-I cant test the SSAO shader cause i get the message 'that shader does not currently compile' (using the included in the package)

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/8509/mgescreenshot1.jpg
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/1912/mgescreenshot17.jpg

» Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:36 am

I really like how the shadows looks from my animated leaves. The leaves animation itself might not be that good but watching the shadows from it on the ground is awesome