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Lighting enhancements and fixes in Leadwerks 3


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After a wild week at GDC 2013, it's nice to be back doing what I do best...writing code!

 

A new build of Leadwerks 3 is now available. We've added light vector maps so that lightmapped surfaces can display normal mapping effects. Lightmapped materials with normal maps should use the texture "Common/lightvectormap.tex" in slot 4. (If you create a new lightmapped material, this will be done automatically.)

Screen Shot 2013-04-08 at 4.18.55 PM.png

 

This technique works by calculating the average light vector that influences each luxel in the lightmap. Each vector is weighted by the light's intensity and range to get an overall vector representing the direction most light is coming from. The light vectors are encoded in a secondary light map that looks like this:

Screen Shot 2013-04-08 at 4.24.05 PM.png

 

This effect will even work with specular reflection, as seen in this totally over-the-top screenshot:

lightvec.jpg

 

We also made about a dozen small fixes to the engine and editor. For more detail on recent issues resolved, visit the bug reports forum. Like any new software, we've had some teething problems, but it's pretty easy to resolve those issues as they arise. Bugs can be fixed as they are identified, but bad design is forever. Fortunately, I think we've got a great design and a good and stable development system.

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Hi looks good but I dont seem to have a lightvectormap.tex? Anyone else, there is a normal.tex?

 

Note this was using an exsiting project, a new project is fine. I seem to have alot of trouble with trying to use new updates on exsiting projects after updates.

 

Andy

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What we might be able to do is add an "Update project" feature that would copy over only the files that have changed since you created your project.

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The update looks really great. I can't see any lightvectormap.tex though. I see normal.tex, Lightmap.tex and lightvectormap.png, but no lightvectormap.tex

 

Edit: physics are much improved in this build!

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