Additional shaders

[MikeClarke]

I know we have diffuse, normal, specular provided with Leadwerks 3. But it would be great to have height, gloss & alpha also provided. Take's the visuals to the next level.

[YouGroove]

What is height ?

And Gloss? you mean Glow ?

[MikeClarke]

gloss/glow yeah and height is like a displacement, v.effective for rock faces etc

[YouGroove]

For Glow i agree.

For displacement, just use normal map and just change shader when it will arrive.

You can already make a great game without displacement and beautifull

[MikeClarke]

aye you can, but it's v.helpful for csg geometry.

A normal map is great, but a normal map with a height map can add that extra touch of detail from being good looking & great looking.

Given the amount of effort it takes to produce a height map (v.little) it's a worthwhile investment.

 

Alpha as well is an important aspect with csg,

 

For example, I have a metal fence texture, it has a diffuse, normal, specular, glow, alpha & height map. It looks 3d, each bar of this fence looks 3d even on a flat 2-sided plain.

 

If i remove the additional shaders we don't have in LE3 it looks a million times worse, granted the alpha map plays a big part their since it suddenly has a grey background, but the glow/height map give it a true 3d feel.

 

From what i'm aware the engine would support these, they just need creation.

[Rick]

Do we need an alpha shader? If you make parts of the texture transparent in an image editor and check Alpha in the material that you create it should remove those parts in LE. I guess I always assumed that's always how alpha was handled. I'd rather have the actual texture have the transparent parts vs an additional alpha map if possible.

[MikeClarke]

That would be generally idea, but an advantage of an alpha map being you can have 1 texture (say a dead grass) then several alpha maps, to turn that 1 texture into a pack of 7 for detailing your maps without it being repetitive.

[Rick]

I've never ran into that before but makes sense.

 

So our workaround could be to combine the alpha with the diffuse in an image editor and then make those 7 unique textures. Should work but not the most efficient. Give and take

 

 

I also have to think this probably isn't that hard to do. I'm sure Shadmar, or maybe me with Shadmar's help, could do this. We could use one of the available texture # slots.

[shadmar]

But it would be great to have height

Parallax shading was available in LE2, but I can't think of one example where any one ever used it. It's expensive to render at you need high quality dot3 maps.

 

That would be generally idea, but an advantage of an alpha map being you can have 1 texture (say a dead grass) then several alpha maps, to turn that 1 texture into a pack of 7 for detailing your maps without it being repetitive.

 

If you download one of the terrains in the assets store, they use RGB blandmap for splatting like this.