Directional Lighting

12/03/2012

I was able to get Directional Lighting to work with our latest version of the map. I updated some changes to the skybox scale and rotation to fit the direction of the directional lighting, and also added smoke plumes to any ability scrolls or objective scrolls located around the map to help the player find where he needs to go.

Here is the map without no skymap and no directional lighting:


Here is an above view with no skymap and no directional lighting:


Here is the map with a skymap and directional lighting:


Here is an above view with a skymap and directional lighting:

Upcoming Code Lock

Upcoming Code Lock

12/01/2012

Our team has put a code lock for our Alpha version for Monday 12/03/2012. Today I re-factored some of the code with the DrawManager class and the IDraw interface. I fixed the camera projection's PerspectiveFieldOfView, which was causing clipping in the game where you couldn't see the whole layout of our level. I also updated some Effects but they still need some work.

Lastly I updated the Skybox I implemented with the DrawManager class with new images given to me by one of the artists on our team.

Long Sprint (Sprint 5)

11/29/2012

This week I continued to work on lighting with varied success. I also spent a lot of time refactoring all the partical system code to make it cleaner instantiate new partical effects. In class I showed off the different effects I had in the game and how easy it was to instantiate new ones.

Working with another student, he quickly drew up a new texture on his iPad for me to use with the smoke particle system. Here is his texture:



The particle system has the ability to modify the color of the texture on the fly to different colors. Playing with this I was able to create differnt looking effects for the the game:

Smoke with Original Texture:


Smoke with Custom Texture with red colors:


Smoke with Custom Texture, and a second effect Ring of Fire:


Landing Cloud with Custom Texture, brown colors:


Double Jump Cloud with Custom Texture, white colors:

More Lighting

11/20/2012

I continued working with some different tutorials. This time I went through Riemer's 3D HLSL tutorial. Using this tutorial I was able to give different lighting effects, directional lighting, including a drop shadow that requires drawing the scene twice, but in theory does not cause any performance issues. This will have to be tested with our game.

Here are some photos from my version created from the turorial:











In class I was able to work with another student again was able to get new models that I could use but I was unable to have any of the normal mapping to work. The drop shadow worked fine but without any light on the model it doesn't look good.

With Thanksgiving this week our sprint ended today. Our next sprint will continue until next Thursday.

Lighting / Model Problems

11/19/2012

With the tutorials I am going through with HLSL (High Level Shading Language), I am running into problems with lighting and normal mapping the models for our game. I have been working with a member on my team to get some new versions of the FBX files to do some testing in my test environment but he is currently out of town so we are going back and forth on email.

I finally was able to get his model to work, but he says that the normal mapping is missing. Here is what it looks like in my test environment:





This weeks sprint is a short one and ends tomorrow. That way we can have a long sprint through Thanksgiving.

Lighting Continued (Sprint 4)

Lighting is still not complete and I am continuing to work on it in our 4th sprint. I have been through a lot of tutorials and have made a lot of work on trying to understand Microsoft's HLSL (High Level Shading Language) shading language.

Here are some examples of Diffuse lighting I have done:









Here are some examples of Specular lighting:











Here is some examples of Normal Mapping:

Lighting (Sprint 3)

11/01/2012

Our second sprint has come to a close. I demoed to our team the Particle System I added to our game. Using Microsoft's Particles 3D example I merged it with our code where it should be easy to implement.

There are built in Smoke, Fire, and Explosion particle effects, each having multiple settings on their size, duration, velocity, etc. Some testing needs to be done to get the right feel for which works best for our game.

Here is a video of Microsoft's example:


Here it is working inside our game:


My new assignment is to work on adding Lighting to our game; Directional Lights, Point Lights, and Ambient Lights.