BlueLightSFM

April Update Week 4

Added 2019-04-26 21:56:03 +0000 UTC

This is going to be a rather short update as technical issues impeded the build completion. Although the build is nearly complete, there's a problem with a fair amount of the models. I've mostly build the scene without any lighting as it's much easier and performance is better. With lighting enabled though, a decent number of models have problems with their normals. Without being too technical, it basically has to do with how light interacts with a model.

I thought it was going to be just flipped normals, which is rather common when importing models from other games and programs, and it's also quick to fix. It seems to be a couple different problems.

This is one couch model with poor normals. The lighting looks awful. This is why it's important to fix.

This is with a GIMP plugin to create a new normal map based on the model's texture. It's easy to setup and it looks quite good.

That wasn't the only problem with some models however.

These are some of the concrete pillars. Lighting does not work properly with them.

This is with a new normal map. The awful outline is gone, but the shadows are still strong around the edges. After enough research, it seems to have to do with the model's geometry. The pillars are very simple models with only 8 vertices, one for each corner. The normal for each corner averages out for each of the 3 faces connected, and so the lighting looks poor around the edges. The simplest solution seems to be beveling the edges of the model in order to add more vertices and make the normals more accurate.

It seems to help, so that may be the fix I need. The horizontal pillar is the model I edited. The vertical pillar is a separate model so it still is the same. They share the same texture and normal map, so that is why both applied for the other picture.

That has basically been the scenebuild work. For the whole build, there's about a dozen or so models I'll need to fix. It should be fairly simple to do now, but it'll just be tedious.

There's other plans I want to talk about too, but I want to get the scenebuild done. If it goes well, I will try to push for two posts next week, so I can give each the spotlight.