DIrect3D Help needed

[AK-73]

Hi folks!

 

I have been trying give Vice City more of the look and feel of GTA3's Liberty City for my mod. This conveniently happens to coincide with the goals of the GTA:LC project too, so I guess any findings would be very helpful for the folks over there too.

 

The problem is that the VC models seems to have a slightly different tinting than GTA3, more yellowish, warm and sunny. I wanted to switch that to the GTA3 look and feel so I used GTA:LC's timecyc.dat initially.

 

At first I thought it all was due to a different lighting (especially the new amb_obj values) of Vice so I traced all of that in the exe. Doing so I was able to figure out the fairly precise settings for VC's obj_amb value in timecyc.dat but that wouldn't have the desired effect (these values were written straight into the material properties of an object and passed to DirectX), so something else had to be the reason. The directional light seems to have the straight values from time.cyc so no luck there either. Plus I know for sure that the ambient lighting (via material properties) and the directional light of the sun makes up the entire lighting of the player model, for example.

 

Now my question: if it is not the light nor the material what is causing the difference? I know that both setvertexshader and setpixelshader get called but createvertexshader and createpixelshader do not so there is no customization there, right? I have been modifying the spooky's speedometer to generate debug output anytime a Direct3d Device's functions is called so I can trace all those calls. I think the player model is for example rendered by calls to DrawIndexedPrimitive, there is subsequently an index buffer too. There are calls to settexturestagestate (or whatever it is called) as well as calls to texture palette and palette functions. However I cannot make sense at present of it all at the moment, so I am turning to you.

 

If anyone wants offset into the exe so they can have a look at it themselves I can provide them. But if anybody has an idea what might be responsible for the different look beyond what I have described, I'll have a look at it myself but clearly I need the advice of someone more experienced in D3D than me.

 

I just remembered a post by Modeling Man about some source overlay values... could that be it? Or would you say something else was responsible? Wouldn't a different overlay (more blue) render true white no longer as true white?

 

that's all,

Alex

 

[DexX]

I just remembered a post by Modeling Man about some source overlay values... could that be it? Or would you say something else was responsible? Wouldn't a different overlay (more blue) render true white no longer as true white?

you mean this ?

i've looked through a fair amount of the directx-related stuff in vc and sa, and if that isn't it, i really don't know what else it would be.

[Ben]

I was talking to ModelingMan about this a while back (when he had more free time). I've just been looking through my chat logs with him to try and find it, and I've got some vague references.

 

Basically, as far as he can tell, those values he changed (in the post DexX linked to) simply corresponded with the values Alex originally changed in timecyc - the whites were no longer a true white because there was more blue. He did mention though that the lighting would most likely be controlled by the Renderware functions - getting a hold of the RW SDK libraries is a big problem though.

 

So I'm not sure on what sort of solution there may be. Is there any chance of changing the lighting properties of the models to combat the problem with the whites or not really (I don't really understand/know much about how that works)? If not, I'm stumped .

[AK-73]

 

I just remembered a post by Modeling Man about some source overlay values... could that be it? Or would you say something else was responsible? Wouldn't a different overlay (more blue) render true white no longer as true white?

you mean this ?

i've looked through a fair amount of the directx-related stuff in vc and sa, and if that isn't it, i really don't know what else it would be.

 

Yes, that was the post I was talking about. I have done some extensive research in recent days and I can tell you that much: the amb_obj values get

written in the ambient reflection values of the naterial. The directional light values are used for the directional light of the sun. If you turn both off, an object

like the player appears to be pitch-black.

 

One thought of mine was to compare the vertex and texture data that is passed to rendering functions in both and see if there are any differences there (like the Vice engine preprocesses the data differently). If there's no difference, then the difference must lie with the D3D settings, no?

 

That's why I was posting in here - I was hoping someone would have some deeper knowledge of D3D than me and could guess where else the difference might be. Could it be due to different blending operations during texture stages? Or might it have something to do with palettes? I am pretty clueless. I guess if noone in here can figure it out, I will do some final double-checking of my discoveries and then turn to some forum that's specifically about D3D somewhere on the web. There's got to be a way after all.

 

Alex

 

PS Ben, I am sure I have all the lighting (ambient + directional) because the models turn black if I turn both out. If that is so, the problem is not in the lighting itself, nor the material (for the ambient lighting is actually pure white the material just reflects only parts of it). About the blue: yellow is the result of mixing red and green; if you have red 255, green 255, blue 0, as values you have the standard yellow color, So if a tinting is to yellowish, just increase the blue value. Or better yet, decrease the red and green values. So as a make-shift solution one could try this: either reduce the red and green values in timecyc.dat for ambient lighting *or* to decrease all values by some factor; the effect of the latter will be decreasing the overall saturation, I think, making the world appear to be less colourful and a bit darker.

 

Edited December 19, 2006 by AK-73

[DexX]

 

The problem is that the VC models seems to have a slightly different tinting than GTA3, more yellowish, warm and sunny. I wanted to switch that to the GTA3 look and feel so I used GTA:LC's timecyc.dat initially.

I re-read this topic, and this just occured to me. which models exactly have the tint? is it peds/cars/weapons/all dynamically lit object, the buildings, or both?

Did you remember that the static-lit object, have vertex coloring applied to them? alot of the warm colors are baked into the map objects, which would be contributing to the look (likewise for gta3 - all the gta3+ games make extensive use of vertex colors for lighting). Try disabling light, and vertex colors via the d3d setrenderstate methods (D3DRS_COLORVERTEX, D3DRS_LIGHTING, set to false) and see if you still get the effect to show up.

 

and to further help you on your quest, some Rw Function addresses:

RpLightSetColor 0x660680

RpLightSetRadius 0x660660

RpWorldRemoveLight 0x6546D0

RpWorldAddLight 0x654680

RpLightGetConeAngle 0x6606D0

RpClumpForAllLights 0x640D90

rpLightTieDestroy 0x653530

rpLightClose 0x660BC0

WorldCopyLightExt 0x654210

WorldDeInitLightExt 0x654270

WorldInitLightExt 0x65366C

WorldAddClumpLight 0x65454C

rwD3D9LightsEqual 0x65FC70

rwD3D9LightsEnable 0x679FC0

rwD3D9LightLocalEnable 0x679D50

rwD3D9LightsGlobalEnable 0x679B60

 

 

(these values were written straight into the material properties of an object and passed to DirectX)

 

If anyone wants offset into the exe so they can have a look at it themselves I can provide them.

please. any info you have.

[AK-73]

 

I re-read this topic, and this just occured to me. which models exactly have the tint? is it peds/cars/weapons/all dynamically lit object, the buildings, or both?

 

 

It is certainly the player model (actors), about cars and world geometry I am not so sure (I would have to compare LC to GTA3 and I can't get LC to run at the moment) but I think it has the tint too.

 

 

Did you remember that the static-lit object, have vertex coloring applied to them?

 

 

I certainly do.

 

 

alot of the warm colors are baked into the map objects, which would be contributing to the look (likewise for gta3 - all the gta3+ games make extensive use of vertex colors for lighting). Try disabling light, and vertex colors via the d3d setrenderstate methods (D3DRS_COLORVERTEX, D3DRS_LIGHTING, set to false) and see if you still get the effect to show up.

 

 

The actors don't have vertex lighting (at least not in their .dffs) and they are certainly different. About the world geometry I am not sure a comparison of the same models in GTA3 and LC would be in order.

 

 

and to further help you on your quest, some Rw Function addresses:

 

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

(these values were written straight into the material properties of an object and passed to DirectX)

 

If anyone wants offset into the exe so they can have a look at it themselves I can provide them.

please. any info you have.

 

Tomorrow.

 

Alex

 

[Ben]

alot of the warm colors are baked into the map objects, which would be contributing to the look (likewise for gta3 - all the gta3+ games make extensive use of vertex colors for lighting). Try disabling light, and vertex colors via the d3d setrenderstate methods (D3DRS_COLORVERTEX, D3DRS_LIGHTING, set to false) and see if you still get the effect to show up.

 

 

The actors don't have vertex lighting (at least not in their .dffs) and they are certainly different. About the world geometry I am not sure a comparison of the same models in GTA3 and LC would be in order.

That should be a possibility since ModelingMan disabled the backface culling of models in LC. I was under the impression that the vast majority of world model DFFs had been ported over to LC directly from GTA3, and I've been trying to document which ones haven't (but I'll probably have to start again - I've only been basing my comparison off the padded size of the files in the IMG, not the exact size). Obviously though, not all can be copied over because several GTA3 DFFs were incomplete (missing roofs, etc) because that didn't matter as flying wasn't something that was really taken into consideration by R* when they made it.

 

But, nevertheless, you could still do a comparison pretty easily by replacing some world model DFFs from LC with some directly from GTA3 (thanks to ModelingMan's work) . If you like, I can work through some comparisons with you (a bit like the work we did together on the animations ), but I don't know how much time I'll be able to dedicate to it until after Christmas and New Year (with work and doing the family thing). Just let me know.

[AK-73]

 

alot of the warm colors are baked into the map objects, which would be contributing to the look (likewise for gta3 - all the gta3+ games make extensive use of vertex colors for lighting). Try disabling light, and vertex colors via the d3d setrenderstate methods (D3DRS_COLORVERTEX, D3DRS_LIGHTING, set to false) and see if you still get the effect to show up.

 

 

The actors don't have vertex lighting (at least not in their .dffs) and they are certainly different. About the world geometry I am not sure a comparison of the same models in GTA3 and LC would be in order.

That should be a possibility since ModelingMan disabled the backface culling of models in LC. I was under the impression that the vast majority of world model DFFs had been ported over to LC directly from GTA3, and I've been trying to document which ones haven't (but I'll probably have to start again - I've only been basing my comparison off the padded size of the files in the IMG, not the exact size). Obviously though, not all can be copied over because several GTA3 DFFs were incomplete (missing roofs, etc) because that didn't matter as flying wasn't something that was really taken into consideration by R* when they made it.

 

But, nevertheless, you could still do a comparison pretty easily by replacing some world model DFFs from LC with some directly from GTA3 (thanks to ModelingMan's work) . If you like, I can work through some comparisons with you (a bit like the work we did together on the animations ), but I don't know how much time I'll be able to dedicate to it until after Christmas and New Year (with work and doing the family thing). Just let me know.

 

I got it.

 

Actually it's nothing in Vice. It's actually the last values in every line in GTA3's timecyc.dat. That causes the tint. Internally the values get multiplied with 0.6 and then laid over the rest of the world as a rectangle. I've written a mod for Vice already that emulates that behaviour by making use of the proc that renders the 4 block rectangles around the sniper hud.

 

Ben, I'll send you the stuff.

 

Alex

[DexX]

 

(these values were written straight into the material properties of an object and passed to DirectX)

 

If anyone wants offset into the exe so they can have a look at it themselves I can provide them.

please. any info you have.

 

Tomorrow.

 

Alex

Not to sound impatient, but...

btw, would you be at all interested in helping me revise the xbox mod for vc? in a nutshell, it adds specular lighting to any objects with normals. i managed to get it to work just on vehicles, by over-riding renderstates within VC, as opposed to within the d3d8.dll, but it could still use work. thats part of the reason i'm curious about your findings, since the specular color for the materials (and lights) still has be done externally. if we could control it/them within the game, we could sync it with other effects, like weather - turn the spec up when it rains for example

 

so yea, at least any info you have would help me alot.

 

Btw, Congrats on finding what you were looking for, i was starting to wonder what had happened. Could you do other "post" effects, like bloom, or fake hdr?

[Ben]

Ben, I'll send you the stuff.

Thanks . If anyone's interested (and doesn't venture into the LC forum at all) you can grab the "mod" here.

 

@DexX - That might help you a bit while you wait for a reply .

[AK-73]

 

(these values were written straight into the material properties of an object and passed to DirectX)

 

If anyone wants offset into the exe so they can have a look at it themselves I can provide them.

please. any info you have.

 

Tomorrow.

 

Alex

Not to sound impatient, but...

btw, would you be at all interested in helping me revise the xbox mod for vc? in a nutshell, it adds specular lighting to any objects with normals. i managed to get it to work just on vehicles, by over-riding renderstates within VC, as opposed to within the d3d8.dll, but it could still use work. thats part of the reason i'm curious about your findings, since the specular color for the materials (and lights) still has be done externally. if we could control it/them within the game, we could sync it with other effects, like weather - turn the spec up when it rains for example

 

so yea, at least any info you have would help me alot.

 

Btw, Congrats on finding what you were looking for, i was starting to wonder what had happened. Could you do other "post" effects, like bloom, or fake hdr?

 

Hi, happy new year all!

 

Well, sorry, I had no computer access over the holidays so that's why there has been no response. I just managed to make a quick post here from a friend's computer.

 

Well, I think I have too many projects going on myself to become actively involved but I could give you some helpful hints perhaps. That is I am not going to do any code writing but otherwise I am at your service. Coincidentally I have this morning discovered how the game locates an object's normals. It has to do with the +4C/+#76 entry into the actor block. I think this is the base pointer of all model data, a complicated structure.

 

I'm posting this from memory now so I might be wrong: follow the pointer and then the next ptr at +0x8 from that one. Subtract 0x40 from the address you arrive at and you have the address that game uses for the .dff data, I think. If I recall it correctly the ptr to geometry data is at +0x18 from the -0x40 address. The ptrs at +54 - +5c I think have to do with normals, faces, bounding boxes, etc. If I look it up, I surely can tell you the way how to access the geometry flags of a dff. I've done this for actors only so far so for world geometry might be a bit different but by tracking the same procs that should be easy to figure out, if there's a difference at all. I can also give you the address of the list with the ptrs of all the models that are to be rendered. Have to look it up though so it will take another day - but now that I know *what* you are looking for, it should be no problem.

 

About the specular lighting - well, I know where the material properties of objects are being set, so that part should be no problem. However don't you need a specular light source also? I fear my knowledge of Direct3D is again lacking.

 

Anyway I wanted to figure out how to produce true chrome effects in Vice someday also. Maybe we can combine one with the other?

 

About other effects - I suppose about anything could be done if one knew how to do it.

 

Alex

 

PS Ben, at present VC:Weather only supports VC 1.0 US. I thought I'd better mention that.

 

Edited January 2, 2007 by AK-73

[DexX]

 

If I look it up, I surely can tell you the way how to access the geometry flags of a dff. I've done this for actors only so far so for world geometry might be a bit different but by tracking the same procs that should be easy to figure out, if there's a difference at all.

should be. i doubt R* changed how Rw reads the geometry into memory, and there is no reason for it to be different depending on object type. checking the flags could be useful, but altering them probably wouldn't be. for the normals, if we set it to true on a static object, where normals are not present, its going to look for normal data, and not find any. Btw, does it check that data every frame, or just when the model is loaded?

 

 

I can also give you the address of the list with the ptrs of all the models that are to be rendered.

ooo, yea. would be handy.

 

 

About the specular lighting - well, I know where the material properties of objects are being set, so that part should be no problem. However don't you need a specular light source also? I fear my knowledge of Direct3D is again lacking. smile.gif

 

Anyway I wanted to figure out how to produce true chrome effects in Vice someday also. Maybe we can combine one with the other?

right, i'll address both of these at once. Specular lighting in directx (via the fixed function pipeline) requires the following data to work properly:

-material specular color

-material specular power

-light specular color

-light direction/position, where applicable (directional lights for example, don't have a position)

So yea, the light does require a specular color. One major problem with Rw lights in this case, is that Rw lights do not have a specular component (!!), whereas D3D lights do. There is what appears to be a D3D directional light located @ 78A710, and it IS used by the game, but i can't seem to get the specular color to work. also the diffuse and ambient colors on it don't look quite right if you change them - they're VERY subtle, and don't look quite right.

What i don't know, is how directx handles the Rw lights. i don't know if it just renders a Rw light as it is, or if the light gets converted to a d3d light, then rendered. if the its the latter, we can just copy the lights diffuse color into the specular component, if its the former, we're sol for in-game lights casting spec.

The xbox-mod solution to this, was simply to create one additional d3d8 light and d3d8 material, and set their values as appropriate. the problem is, the light and material and their values are only initialized once (when the dll is loaded) so it doesn't match anything in game. i'm sure there's a programming-solution to this, but i don't know enough c++ to implement that part myself. if possible, handling as much of this as possible right from VC would be preferred.

 

As for chrome, you need to understand what it is. chrome is a full-power reflection, of the surroundings of the reflected environment + lighting. It is understandably hard to replicate with static images. if you want "true" chrome, you'll need to come up with a dynamic reflection system, and that has issues all of its own

 

However, there are more practical ways to achieve shiny effects ingame. If your doing a map object, a building with a reflective material, your pretty much set and all you need is a good refmap, and be sure the object has decent normals. However if your doing a vehicle, things get a little more tricky. By default, vc limits the amount of reflectivity on vehicles, so even if you set their materials to be fully reflective, they won't be. Fortunately the solution to this is easy: the address it checks the reflectivity against is 0x699D44 - simply set that to 1.0f, and cars will be reflective up to that point. you can even set it higher, but you won't notice any difference unless you export a car with a reflection level above 1.0f.

Refer to the following image:

Image key:

1. normal banshee

2. banshee, with "full" reflections

3. banshee, with normal reflections + specular lighting

4. banshee with full reflections + specular lighting

5. banshee with full reflections + specular lighting + trails activated (blur smooths out the edges of specular lighting)

6. same as 5, but i took a picture of the environemnt in that area, and applied it as a refmap to the vehicle

 

Obviously this is very bright, and very shiny, but the effect can be accomplished, one way or another and it can be controlled, either by changing the reflection amount in the material of the asset to be exported (car, building, etc) and by setting (preferred) the material specular values to a more reasonable level (car paint is not fully reflective, nor does real light cast a perfectly white reflection). trails are obviously optional, but i think they help the reflections.

 

This is a long post, and it covers a couple topics, so if you got lost, here is what i would appreciate help with:

-any directx-related material settings in VC

-any directx-related light settings in VC

-any information on how/what/when stuff is rendered, and how the attributes for the materials/lights on those objects are set

 

I think we've both got some insight here, that the other doesn't have; your better at finding data in memory than i am, and i have, by this point at least, a fair amount of direct3d/rw knowledge. this could be mutually beneficial

[Ben]

PS Ben, at present VC:Weather only supports VC 1.0 US. I thought I'd better mention that.

Oki doke. With jarjar's help, I tried to get it to work with other EXEs using Hammer83's VC Versioning Module, but the vcversion.dll file must need the other LC launcher files to work.

 

That shouldn't be a problem for LC though .

[AK-73]

 

 

I can also give you the address of the list with the ptrs of all the models that are to be rendered.

ooo, yea. would be handy.

 

 

I can't open the rar file which contains my notes. Looks like unrar isn't installed on this kubuntu system, so I fear you'll have to wait until tomorrow when I'll try it with a .zip (I'm posting from uni). Can't upload VC:Weather to gtagarage either.

 

 

 

About the specular lighting - well, I know where the material properties of objects are being set, so that part should be no problem. However don't you need a specular light source also? I fear my knowledge of Direct3D is again lacking.

 

Anyway I wanted to figure out how to produce true chrome effects in Vice someday also. Maybe we can combine one with the other?

right, i'll address both of these at once. Specular lighting in directx (via the fixed function pipeline) requires the following data to work properly:

-material specular color

-material specular power

-light specular color

-light direction/position, where applicable (directional lights for example, don't have a position)

 

 

So you just want specular light? No light maps, no environment mapping, just that? Sounds doable.

 

 

So yea, the light does require a specular color. One major problem with Rw lights in this case, is that Rw lights do not have a specular component (!!), whereas D3D lights do. There is what appears to be a D3D directional light located @ 78A710, and it IS used by the game, but i can't seem to get the specular color to work. also the diffuse and ambient colors on it don't look quite right if you change them - they're VERY subtle, and don't look quite right.

 

 

On the latter I cannot comment but I have a proc in mind for getting in specular colour. I'll have to check it in ollydbg at home though.

 

 

What i don't know, is how directx handles the Rw lights. i don't know if it just renders a Rw light as it is, or if the light gets converted to a d3d light, then rendered.

 

 

I have inspected the D3DLight that gets passed to SetLight many times. I can tell you exactly what goes on. The world geometry has its emissive material source property turned on. To that comes the ambient light with is of course pure white, modified by the ambient material properties which are the ambient (amb_obj) from time.cyc dat. And to that the engine adds the directional/diffuse light, of course. Actors/vehicles use obj_amb instead of ambient. I know that this is all there is to it because I have been turning all of it off and then the objects appeared to be black in my search for the tint.

 

But again now I understand clearer what you need and it sounds doable. I'll have to study it a bit further though.

 

 

if the its the latter, we can just copy the lights diffuse color into the specular component, if its the former, we're sol for in-game lights casting spec.

 

 

Given that I can make all objects black by turning off the light + vertexcolors + emissive material source property, it must be the latter.

 

 

The xbox-mod solution to this, was simply to create one additional d3d8 light and d3d8 material, and set their values as appropriate. the problem is, the light and material and their values are only initialized once (when the dll is loaded) so it doesn't match anything in game. i'm sure there's a programming-solution to this, but i don't know enough c++ to implement that part myself. if possible, handling as much of this as possible right from VC would be preferred.

 

As for chrome, you need to understand what it is. chrome is a full-power reflection, of the surroundings of the reflected environment + lighting. It is understandably hard to replicate with static images. if you want "true" chrome, you'll need to come up with a dynamic reflection system, and that has issues all of its own

 

However, there are more practical ways to achieve shiny effects ingame. If your doing a map object, a building with a reflective material, your pretty much set and all you need is a good refmap, and be sure the object has decent normals. However if your doing a vehicle, things get a little more tricky. By default, vc limits the amount of reflectivity on vehicles, so even if you set their materials to be fully reflective, they won't be. Fortunately the solution to this is easy: the address it checks the reflectivity against is 0x699D44 - simply set that to 1.0f, and cars will be reflective up to that point. you can even set it higher, but you won't notice any difference unless you export a car with a reflection level above 1.0f.

 

 

Heh, the latter is what I had in mind. So another problem solved.

 

 

Refer to the following image:

Image key:

1. normal banshee

2. banshee, with "full" reflections

3. banshee, with normal reflections + specular lighting

4. banshee with full reflections + specular lighting

5. banshee with full reflections + specular lighting + trails activated (blur smooths out the edges of specular lighting)

6. same as 5, but i took a picture of the environemnt in that area, and applied it as a refmap to the vehicle

 

 

Heh, I like 3 the best actually.

 

 

Obviously this is very bright, and very shiny, but the effect can be accomplished, one way or another and it can be controlled, either by changing the reflection amount in the material of the asset to be exported (car, building, etc) and by setting (preferred) the material specular values to a more reasonable level (car paint is not fully reflective, nor does real light cast a perfectly white reflection). trails are obviously optional, but i think they help the reflections.

 

This is a long post, and it covers a couple topics, so if you got lost, here is what i would appreciate help with:

-any directx-related material settings in VC

-any directx-related light settings in VC

-any information on how/what/when stuff is rendered, and how the attributes for the materials/lights on those objects are set

 

 

Well, it's a complex issue. I think I can help you. I have a proc in mind that gets used to copy various material/light values from one addy to another, including both directional and ambient light, differrntiated for vehicles/actors vs buildings and a few more light sources that I didn't identify. The good stuff about it is that you can distinguish by the static source address alone which light data gets copied. If you hook in the copying of some spec data to a specific address in that proc and the transferral of the data into the material right before setmaterial you should be done.

 

 

I think we've both got some insight here, that the other doesn't have; your better at finding data in memory than i am, and i have, by this point at least, a fair amount of direct3d/rw knowledge. this could be mutually beneficial

 

Yeah, bear with me though, now that I truly understand what you want to achieve, it shouldn't be too difficult. A suggestion though: why not make every light pure white and then set the specular material properties to the color you want to have instead of making every light have different specular color? After all that is the way the game does it with ambient lighting...

 

Alex

 

PS Does Bloom/Fake HDR involve more than setting a custom shader?

 

 

[DexX]

 

Yeah, bear with me though, now that I truly understand what you want to achieve, it shouldn't be too difficult. A suggestion though: why not make every light pure white and then set the specular material properties to the color you want to have instead of making every light have different specular color? After all that is the way the game does it with ambient lighting...

well, they cheated with the ambient lighting. In the real world, lights emits one color, and that one color affects everything. refer to the following image:

Image Key:

1. white diffuse, white specular

2. white diffuse, red specular

3. red diffuse, red specular

4. red diffuse, white specular

Black ambient for all, with a white diffuse/specular material on the sphere.

Images 1 and 3 are lit "correctly", where as image 2 looks washed out, and the spec on image 4 looks far too bright (interestingly, the lighting model for vehicles in SA, is closer to image 4, than anything; all the lights that illuminate vehicles retain their diffuse colors, but get a very bright, white-ish specular color)

 

overriding the light color (setting it to white) will look incorrect for a variety of reasons; if you have say a red stoplight, and we give it a white diffuse color, its going to emit white, not red, light. ideally, we would let the game set the diffuse color as normal, as there are no issues with that, then simply copy that color, to the specular component of the light.

 

MSDN Doc on the "Mathematics of Lighting"

 

PS Does Bloom/Fake HDR involve more than setting a custom shader?

There are a few techniques for this, none of which i've tried. however there was a "Fake HDR" mod that was made for Oblivion via a dx hook, and some made a gtaf topic about it:

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtop...livion+fake+hdr

it crashes SA, and its for dx9, but it might be worth a look anyway.

[AK-73]

 

Yeah, bear with me though, now that I truly understand what you want to achieve, it shouldn't be too difficult. A suggestion though: why not make every light pure white and then set the specular material properties to the color you want to have instead of making every light have different specular color? After all that is the way the game does it with ambient lighting...

well, they cheated with the ambient lighting. In the real world, lights emits one color, and that one color affects everything. refer to the following image:

Image Key:

1. white diffuse, white specular

2. white diffuse, red specular

3. red diffuse, red specular

4. red diffuse, white specular

Black ambient for all, with a white diffuse/specular material on the sphere.

Images 1 and 3 are lit "correctly", where as image 2 looks washed out, and the spec on image 4 looks far too bright (interestingly, the lighting model for vehicles in SA, is closer to image 4, than anything; all the lights that illuminate vehicles retain their diffuse colors, but get a very bright, white-ish specular color)

 

overriding the light color (setting it to white) will look incorrect for a variety of reasons; if you have say a red stoplight, and we give it a white diffuse color, its going to emit white, not red, light. ideally, we would let the game set the diffuse color as normal, as there are no issues with that, then simply copy that color, to the specular component of the light.

 

 

And the specular material properties?

Anyway, the key to doing the above is the RpSetColor proc. There are various calls to them for various light types so you can even derive slightly different specular values if you was to inclined. But if it is truly so that it's best if the specular color should be the same as diffuse, it's going to be easy to code. Here are the relevant calls to RpSetColor:

 

@57FDC5 call to RpSetColor (pick-up lights, 2dfx lights, omni lights)

@580237 call to RpSetColor (sun light)

@57FB1B call to RpSetColor (ambient; world geometry) - I think this actually modifies in the end the ambient material properties

@57FAFB call to RpSetColor (object_ambient; actors, vehicles) - dito

@57FB3B call to RpSetColor (ambient color of weapons model in pick-up) - very likely just the same

@57FB7B call to RpSetColor (some tool shop thing?) - only gets called near tool shops in vice

@57FB8D`call to RpSetColor (some tool shop thing?) - only gets called near tool shops in vice

@57FC27 call to RpSetColor (marker color1)

@57FC39 call to RpSetColor (marker color2)

@57FE5E call to RpSetColor (burnt out vehicle) - presumably very dark

 

Write a dll/asi that hooks in at those addresses and copies the values to some variables of your own. Then when SetLight (I'll have to look up the address of the proc) is being called, you copy the values from your variables into the specular color component of the directx light.

The material itself gets set in the proc that gets called @678D48, I think only a single material with a static address gets used by the game. The proc that does the call is btw the rendering proc for all models:

678B2F: Renders models

@678B64: vertexcolors on

@678B70: emissivematerialsource on

@678C96: to setvertexshader

@678CC1: to settexture

@678D48: to setmaterial

@678D5E to setstreamsource

@678D75 to setindices

@678D8a first copy all renderstates via setrenderstates, then set texturestagestates, then drawindexedprimitives in there.

 

Ah yes and before I forget it - you need to set the power of the specular light (or was it the material?) too, no? I did give it a quick try before coming uni today and it initially didn't work at all before I read about turning power up, then it worked but it gave everything some red reflection or something like that. But I was in a hurry so it doesn't mean anything.

 

 

 

MSDN Doc on the "Mathematics of Lighting"

 

 

Lol, thanks but I *do* actually have the directx 8 sdk installed at home. It's just that I had so far not picked too much interest in specular lighting.

Thanks for the hint though.

 

 

 

PS Does Bloom/Fake HDR involve more than setting a custom shader?

There are a few techniques for this, none of which i've tried. however there was a "Fake HDR" mod that was made for Oblivion via a dx hook, and some made a gtaf topic about it:

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtop...livion+fake+hdr

it crashes SA, and its for dx9, but it might be worth a look anyway.

 

Well, I think your best bet is emailing the author. He'll be the authority on determining what needs to be done or can be done. If you're committed to do that mod and get some information/need some information, I'm around.

 

Maybe this might help too?

http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/archives/GD...RR_SHORT_EN.ppt

http://www.realistic3d.com/Documents/hdr.pdf

 

Alex

 

[DexX]

Behold, the power of teamwork:

No spec:

Spec:

 

The spec works perfectly, from within the game engine, off every light in the scene, with correct colors

 

Issues that still need to be resolved:

-getting spec on just vehicles. This is interesting, because i did it already earlier tonight. however when i change the same values again after a vc restart, they no longer have the same, if any effect ingame. The method is basically to enable and disable the d3drs_specularenable renderstate, when vehicles are being rendered, and then disabling it afterwards. Right now i'm trying to override the diffuse renderstate @ 6743DE, which is called when rendering vehicle materials.

 

issue 2:

The game calls d3drs_specularenable twice on its own, setting it to false. we can set it to true @ 658ed0, but it will give everything spec. this method, on this address, only works by alt-tabbing out of the game, changing the var in hex editor, and going back in game.

i came up with a workaround for this, by changing the renderstate @ 6743DE with a key stroke - i can enable it by hitting F2 ingame. but again, everything has spec.

 

This is the dll as seen in the screenshots.

Http://www.3dhole.com/gtafiles/vice_speclight.rar

Put the .asi file in the root vc folder, then start the game. press "F2" ingame, to turn on spec, it cannot be turned off once on, unless you exit the game. The effect is best demonstrated while driving at night, under as many light sources as possible. This is a test version of the dll, and needs some significant work.

 

@ Ak - thanks for the help so far, this wouldn't be possible without you

 

Edit: beauty shot w/hi poly xbox wheels

 

Comments related specifically to the file/mod, should be posted in this topic.

[AK-73]

 

 

Issues that still need to be resolved:

-getting spec on just vehicles. This is interesting, because i did it already earlier tonight. however when i change the same values again after a vc restart, they no longer have the same, if any effect ingame. The method is basically to enable and disable the d3drs_specularenable renderstate, when vehicles are being rendered, and then disabling it afterwards. Right now i'm trying to override the diffuse renderstate @ 6743DE, which is called when rendering vehicle materials.

 

 

Please note that world models from GTA3, for example, have specular lighting values in them, so why not use them if they already present? I think the sign of the amco building has spec color, for example? See my remarks below.

 

 

issue 2:

The game calls d3drs_specularenable twice on its own, setting it to false. we can set it to true @ 658ed0, but it will give everything spec. this method, on this address, only works by alt-tabbing out of the game, changing the var in hex editor, and going back in game.

i came up with a workaround for this, by changing the renderstate @ 6743DE with a key stroke - i can enable it by hitting F2 ingame. but again, everything has spec.

 

 

That is then because you use static spec values for materials. Again, see below.

 

 

This is the dll as seen in the screenshots.

Http://www.3dhole.com/gtafiles/vice_speclight.rar

Put the .asi file in the root vc folder, then start the game. press "F2" ingame, to turn on spec, it cannot be turned off once on, unless you exit the game. The effect is best demonstrated while driving at night, under as many light sources as possible. This is a test version of the dll, and needs some significant work.

 

@ Ak - thanks for the help so far, this wouldn't be possible without you

 

 

Lol, I have done my own work parallel to yours. As a result I have written my own mod - it activates specular lighting, gives all lights the same amount of specular lighting as the diffuse lighting and it activates the spec component of materials. That is in each material of a .dff, there is a lighting multiplier for diffuse, specular & ambient, usually set to 1.0 0.0 1.0 with most materials. The middle is the specular value which gets ignored(!) by the Vice engine. Now what my mod does is that it writes that value into the specular component of a material. But it doesn't stop there - specular lighting is composed from a material standpoint of a) spec reflection RGB values and b) a power value. So how to fit that in? Well, my mod does the following: if the spec level value of the material is > 10.0, it interprets that as power in the following way: if x is the to integer-converted value of the value in spec level, then power gets set to (x-10)/10, rounded. The specRGB values would be what remains, therefore choose the value appropriately. So in short a value of 610.5 would cause the material setting to be 0.5 0.5 0.5 as specRGBs and (610-10)/10=60f as power value.

And if the value is below <10.0f (it should be >= 0.0 and <=1.0 then), then the specRGBs get set accordingly and as power it uses a default value from the vc_specular.cfg file. This is then by default the case with all original VC and GTA3/LC models. Since most materials are specRGB 0 0 0, the

difference won't be that great. But one can customize now each and every model, not only that - each and every *material*. For example, I can make

Claude's leather jacket shiny - or Tommy's watch. Just need a second glossy material with the same texture.

 

What is under consideration is having several different default values for cars, world geometry, actors, bikes, boats, etc. Not only that but also for

individual components of cars, perhaps. Dexx, if you want the mod, including source, pm me an email address and I'll send you.

 

Now if you want fake hdr... well, I'm ready to help as long as it doesn't take me more than a day or a few days, like this. I think the help of the oblivion mod's author might be indispensable.

 

One question: how do you activate trails from your mod? Setting a certain variable? Calling a certain proc?

 

Alex

 

[TripleAs]

ermm... Please, excuse me for my ignorance... my DirectX coding -or whatever you call it- is null.

 

One question...

I was wondering if it's possible to add some reflection map (with a D3d8.dll or an asi file) to any cars so they reflect the map objects instead of a single pic.

 

As you may know, I'm working on a LCS Mod (based on GTA:LC) and if you played LCS you'll notice the cars reflect the real world instead of a normal reflection map (as R* did on GTA3, Vice and SA)

 

Example Pic:

Bye and... again, sorry if this is too hard/too simple for you... honestly, I have no idea

 

I'll edit this later, sorry for the poor grammar.

[Cowpat]

I was wondering if it's possible to add some reflection map (with a D3d8.dll or an asi file) to any cars so they reflect the map objects instead of a single pic.

 

 

You mean as in environment mapping or even raytracing? That would take a major change to the rendering engine - no problem for DexX though

[TripleAs]

 

I was wondering if it's possible to add some reflection map (with a D3d8.dll or an asi file) to any cars so they reflect the map objects instead of a single pic.

 

 

You mean as in environment mapping or even raytracing? That would take a major change to the rendering engine - no problem for DexX though

Well... it would reflect the enviroment so... yeah... that's what i'm looking for.

 

@Offtopic: Cowpat... I REALLY, REALLY Admire You ... your Mission Loaders are COMPLETELY a Musthave.

[DexX]

 

Please note that world models from GTA3, for example, have specular lighting values in them, so why not use them if they already present? I think the sign of the amco building has spec color, for example?

if you mean gta3-series models (3,vc,sa), which are all renderware clumps, then yes, the rwmaterial structure provides a specular multiplier, along with diffuse, and ambient. in gta3 specifically, i dont know how/if buildings use the spec multiplier, but i know vehicles use it as a reflection multiplier for the reflection01 image, in particle.txd. for whatever reason, they opted not to use the standard reflection material effect that rw provides, on the vehicles. however shiny objects like glass, and cutscene vehicles, do use the standard rw reflections in gta3. weird.

 

 

Lol, I have done my own work parallel to yours. As a result I have written my own mod - it activates specular lighting, gives all lights the same amount of specular lighting as the diffuse lighting and it activates the spec component of materials. That is in each material of a .dff, there is a lighting multiplier for diffuse, specular & ambient, usually set to 1.0 0.0 1.0 with mostmaterials. The middle is the specular value which gets ignored(!) by the Vice engine. Now what my mod does is that it writes that value into the specular component of a material. But it doesn't stop there - specular lighting is composed from a material standpoint of a) spec reflection RGB values and b) a power value. So how to fit that in? Well, my mod does the following: if the spec level value of the material is > 10.0, it interprets that as power in the following way: if x is the to integer-converted value of the value in spec level, then power gets set to (x-10)/10, rounded. The specRGB values would be what remains, therefore choose the value appropriately. So in short a value of 610.5 would cause the material setting to be 0.5 0.5 0.5 as specRGBs and (610-10)/10=60f as power value.

And if the value is below <10.0f (it should be >= 0.0 and <=1.0 then), then the specRGBs get set accordingly and as power it uses a default value from the vc_specular.cfg file. This is then by default the case with all original VC and GTA3/LC models. Since most materials are specRGB 0 0 0, the

difference won't be that great. But one can customize now each and every model, not only that - each and every *material*. For example, I can make

Claude's leather jacket shiny - or Tommy's watch. Just need a second glossy material with the same texture.

 

aha! i wondered what the arguments were, that were passed to setmaterial - pointers to rwmaterial info. i nabbed the specular multiplier, and use it for the matspecrgb, and that works like a charm. however it creates a bit of a conundrum;

vc modding, aside from a couple large projects, like LC and SOL, is not all that active. in order to take advantage of this, models will have to be re-exported to take advantage of the extra control.

 

 

What is under consideration is having several different default values for cars, world geometry, actors, bikes, boats, etc. Not only that but also for individual components of cars, perhaps.

this would be a boon, especially considering the issue mentioned above. people would have the option of re-exporting their assets if they wanted to, otherwise the default we provide could be used. For vehicles, we can easily track down glass, and primary/secondary body materials. The function to identify a vehicle material is located @ 579460.

if the diffuse color of the rwmaterial is 60,255,0, the material color is set by the first color in carcols.dat, the "primary" color.

if the diffuse color of the rwmaterial is 255,0,175, the material color is set by the second color in carcols.dat, the "secondary" color.

glass materials can be identified by having a non-255 alpha value of the rwmaterial color.

 

or yet another way, would be to check if the material has a reflection map - if it does, use the reflection multiplier for the spec, which works under the same restraints, floating point, 0.0-1.0. with this method, you can be certain that the material was meant to be shiny, and you have an author-supplied value to work with. spec would be preferred, but this could do in a pinch.

 

For peds, i would set the spec value very, very low, if not 0. low poly peds + specular lighting, looks pretty bad.

Map objects don't have normals, so they won't show spec by default, no matter what we set it to.

 

one question i have is, how do you plan to identify what the model is, when setting the material parameters? setmaterial just contains, well, material info, colors and multipliers - it has no direct model references. i'm very curious to see how you accomplish this

 

 

Dexx, if you want the mod, including source, pm me an email address and I'll send you.

will do.

 

 

Now if you want fake hdr... well, I'm ready to help as long as it doesn't take me more than a day or a few days, like this. I think the help of the oblivion mod's author might be indispensable.

um, hmm.....i'm actually more interested in the reflection issue, mentioned below. more details on that below. but i'm not picky.

 

 

One question: how do you activate trails from your mod?  Setting a certain variable? Calling a certain proc?

in the current .asi file, i dont. however its pretty simple to do, its just a boolean located @ 697D54. you have to activate it when the game starts (what i did in my old d3d8.dll) or set it while in a menu. you cannot set it while the game is rendering the scene.

 

 

I was wondering if it's possible to add some reflection map (with a D3d8.dll or an asi file) to any cars so they reflect the map objects instead of a single pic.

well...yes. but there are some issues.

 

 

no problem for DexX though

i'm flattered. but you mean its no problem for me and Modelingman. A couple months ago, me and him had this discussion, and long story short, developed a dll that dumped the screen contents into an image when you pressed a key, and applies that image to every reflective material in the scene. it had to be done on a keypress, because doing it every time a frame was rendered, was slow to the point of the game being unplayable.

 

Referring back to this pic-

in image 6, thats how that banshee got that refmap.

 

Unfortunately, MM is not currently around, so i can't get permission to post the dll, which he wrote. likewise, he has the source to it as well.

 

however, i do believe LCS/VCS style reflections are possible. i did some experimenting with PIX, and with SA; if VC renders the objects in the same way, then it renders all the map objects first, then the rest of the stuff, players, peds, etc.

in LCS/VCS, note that your refmap only contains buildings - no peds or vehicles. also note the projection of the image, you see the garage in your reflection, in roughly the same spot as where it is in the scene.

 

my theory is that when rendering the scene, it does one of 2 things:

-it renders all the map objects to a temp image, then re-renders the scene, with that image as the refmap. i've noticed in some of the cutscenes, one in particular, where Donald love has a martini glass - that actually reflects the stuff around it. this lends credibility to this theory.

-the other possibility is that after the buildings are rendered, but before everything else is, the game simply dumps the

frame buffer to an image, then continues on, requiring only the single render pass, vs the 2 for the other one. referring back to donald's martini glass, the reflection would have to be static on the glass with this method, as the refmap image, wouldn't be generated, until after the glass has already been drawn. it could apply this image as the refmap the next time the object is drawn, but that would create a 1-frame delay between updates.

 

Now that folks, is a long-ass post

[TripleAs]

Phew... That's extreme stuff, Pastor, I mean... DexX.

 

Related to the reflection thingy... I did notice it just renders the map objects so... that was the original idea

 

Anyways, is there a way to the game engine to distinguish between Map Dffs (those placed by the IPLs ) and "everything else".

AFAIK you can't put specular maps on map objects... but hell, I never tried something like that (just lousy VertexColors). So... maybe that way you could distinguish between the dffs that are everything else and can HAVE spec(Peds, Vehicles, etc) and those who can't like, Map objects.

 

Excuse me if that idea isn't even applicable.... I already said I have no idea about DirectX and not enough interest to learn NOW.

 

About the DLL you made with MM:

There HAS to be another way... I mean, if LCS that runs in a PSP wouldn't be playable because of the lag

 

What about... automatically, the game dumps a screen of just the buildings, resize it to 1/4 or 1/8 its size and then applies it to the vehicle. By the look of the Banshee... it doesn't look that bad considering that the screen has specular, which for LCS wouldn't be necessary (yeah... I noticed that looking at the couple hmyst... kinda hard to see it on Tommy.) and also, the weather is TOO yellowish-orangish whatever you call it... like Beta SA screens with lots of brightness.

Oh!... one last thing, what if the dumped image "refreshes" every... say.... 30 seconds? LC is a BIG CITY, so it wouldn't be too noticeable because its lack of green spaces... (only green space in LC i can think at the moment is Wichita Gardens).

 

 

So... I think that's everything I have to say for now.

 

Please, Don't Kill Me!

 

bye

[ModelingMan]

 

Unfortunately, MM is not currently around, so i can't get permission to post the dll, which he wrote. likewise, he has the source to it as well.

For those of you who are curious about this DLL, get it here. The source is inlcuded, but you will need RW Graphics to compile it.

Edited January 18, 2007 by ModelingMan

[TripleAs]

Unfortunately, MM is not currently around, so i can't get permission to post the dll, which he wrote. likewise, he has the source to it as well.

For those of you who are curious about this DLL, get it here (there is no password if you are prompted for one). The source is inlcuded, but you will need RW Graphics to compile it.

err... how do i turn on that thing?

 

I tested it and...

 

It doesn't work with F2 like DexX's

 

Also... some textures load and some don't... I think it's ok to it to "not load" body textures... but... why interiors/bumpers too?

[ModelingMan]

It doesn't work with F2 like DexX's

 

Also... some textures load and some don't... I think it's ok to it to "not load" body textures... but... why interiors/bumpers too?

It's F4 on this one.

 

As for the textures not loading, I can't remember that ever happening. I'll have to test it out, haven't used this ASI in a long while...

[TripleAs]

 

It doesn't work with F2 like DexX's

 

Also... some textures load and some don't... I think it's ok to it to "not load" body textures... but... why interiors/bumpers too?

It's F4 on this one.

 

As for the textures not loading, I can't remember that ever happening. I'll have to test it out, haven't used this ASI in a long while...

Nope... it's not F4

 

Sorry MM, but I tried EVERY SINGLE KEY on my keyboard and it still doesn't work... you sure it's the right ASI? Believe me... i have a folder FULL of dffs and every time I make a new car, at least once, I put the wrong dff inside the img.

 

Anyways... If this works it's gonna rock... btw, what do you think about my idea? the 30 seconds delay thingy, is that going to be TOO noticeable?

 

bye

[ModelingMan]

I uploaded an experimental one by mistake. The correct one including source can be found here.

 

And your idea with 30 seconds delay; it won't matter how long of a delay there is, the dumping of the camera raster to a texture takes up processing power and causes a pause in the game. I'm sure there is a quicker way to do it, but I've still to come across it yet.

[TripleAs]

Thanks, this one works great

 

Also... would you mind sharing info with the community if you find out something new? like... for example, how LCS does it

 

-

@Kinda Offtopic:

No offense but, DexX said you were working on this some time ago and, he didn't and you either ever posted at least something about it... it's kinda a shame such a good work has to be unknown for everybody except a close group of ppl.

Hope you understand what I mean and as I said, I don't mean this in an offensive way , and I DO understand that it isn't always a good thing to post WIP/beta stuff but... a couple pics wouldn't hurt.

 

bye and KUTGW

[ModelingMan]

The reason nothing was said is because it's kinda useless right now, although it may have been because I disappeared not long after Dexx and I messed around with it. But yeah, if I come across a proper way to do it I will obviously post it.