Dynamic 3D clouds + shading model?

OpenGL Development
#21

Hi Mister :slight_smile:
It seems the Mega particles algorithm is made for single cloud effect. Regarding the light scattering effect, sure I’ll do that it is really good :slight_smile:

While I was surfing I found some incredible articles more or less related to this thread:

Enjoy!

WS

#22

And a video!

#23

Cool! The airplane should be obscured by clouds about a third of the time :slight_smile:

#24

Looks great - realistic! Maybe make the plane more realistic too?

#25

It’s a good idea! :slight_smile:

#26

Thanks, regarding the ship, I can’t since I’ve no pixel-art talent :’(

#27

Just watched the video, and I noticed that having fantastic looking clouds makes the actual ship and bullets look a lot more cheezy. ;D

#28

Is it a proposal to pixel-art these sprites for me? ;D

But you are right! If I get the time for that the result would be “grandiose”.

#29

What about doing “fake” lighting with normal- and specular-maps on the sprites. If you render your background and foreground to textures, you could even use the normal-maps to do “fake” reflections/radiosity to make your sprites fit more into the level theme.

#30

A good idea but I’m not yet ready for this kind of technic ;D

BTW, I’ve just implemented the Light Scattering effect.

#31

Actually it’s quite simple and the two first GLSL examples/tutorials you find will handle lighting and normal mapping. To create a normal map, just use gimp and search for the normal mapping plugin. Load in the sprite and apply it. You can play around with the emboss filter, contrast before generating the normal map to improve the results.

For the fake reflection, you can take the normals and the eye-vector to create some reflection vector to look up pixels in your background or foreground layer to mix into the color of the sprite pixel. Also calculate some kind of ambient color from the sun and overall environment theme and mix it in, too.

I would say in the worst case you need two weeks for this and the result should be great. And once you have started with shaders, think about bloom, too :wink:

#32

While overall great, I think the effect on the bullet is too much and makes the scene flicker too much. I would exclude bullets from this effect - even if only to prevent epilectic spasms :wink:

#33

Bullets removed!

For the normal map / reflection, it is maybe too much for the main sprite. Although it is a great technique, letting the ship with such a contrast will be important during the game (in which you must dodge enemies and bullets).

BTW, some pixel art to improve the ship:

http://tf4r.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/img/screenshot level 3 - styx pixel art.jpg

#34

And now a procedural thunderstorm…

#35

Nice!

I’d advice you to remove the fading gradient at the top though :slight_smile: It looks a bit fake.

How would you integrate this into the game? It looks like a front-back view, and the game is clearly side-view.

#36

Hmmm, maybe speed it a little. I think it is part of a real lightning, see this video on the left. It seems light is coming then leaving from the very origine of the lightning.

Hmmm, for me it is a side-view. I’ll just put my gray clouds at the top of the screen. ;D

#37

Cool! I like how the trunk of the lightning bolt has a wider width than the branches.

It’s nice the way it’s dynamic and isn’t just a frozen picture, it seems to actually animate over a short time.

How did you make the algorithm if you don’t mind me asking?

#38

Thanks!

Indeed, there are some quick animation since a lightning takes about 700ms to appear (800 for me).

You can find all the sources here.

It relies on GL_LINES, line width, blending, pseudo-bloom and cool sound effects :slight_smile:

The lightning lifecycle is:

-1 produce sound
-2 create lightning arcs randomly with some recursivity for smaller arcs
-3 display quickly the lines (but not too quickly in order to perceive the "animation") with bloom then growing circle flash at the origin
-4 when the whole lightning is displayed, make the screen completely white during 10 frames
-5 then display lightning again fading out (transparency increasing) with decreasing circle flash
-6 wait some seconds and goto 1
#39

Looks really sweet! I noticed the clouds popping into view in the upper right hand corner, especially the last few seconds of the video (the one on the last post of the first page).

#40

Indeed, I had problem with frustrum :wink:

It is corrected now :slight_smile: thanks!