Yandros on 6/4/2009 at 14:48
That may be. I think 3ds2bin offers Phong, Gouraud and Phong Gouraud. Perhaps NV can shed more light on this.
ZylonBane on 6/4/2009 at 15:06
The Dark engine absolutely does not support Phong shading. Phong is a per-pixel technique. Dark only does vertex-based (Gouraud) shading.
At least it does it really well. I've often wondered why the object lighting in Deus Ex (which also uses Gouraud shading) looks so awful compared to the Dark engine's implementation.
Speaking of which, does anyone know if there's an easy way in Anim8or to evenly split the faces on an existing object into a uniform grid? This is a great way to improve the visual quality of Gouraud shading, but Anim8or's "Subdivide Faces" command does horrible things to anything that's not a plain square.
Ottoj55 on 6/4/2009 at 16:43
There is a clear difference between no shading and phong, phong and gouraud, gouraud and phong gouraud. Each seems smoother than the last. So how does dark not handle phong, or is it a hack of true phong shading?
LarryG on 6/4/2009 at 16:54
IN that case is there ever a reason not to specify phong gouraud?
Ottoj55 on 6/4/2009 at 18:41
I mostly model box stuff and use phong, on a statue once i used phong gouraud and it really smoothed out. Seems how smooth you want the object to be would determime tje shader you want.
R Soul on 6/4/2009 at 18:50
Quote Posted by LarryG
IN that case is there ever a reason not to specify phong gouraud?
Large surfaces sometimes look really bad with Gouraud shading, especially as the player looks around, changing their view of the object.
Compare the original GiantPort model (in Thief2\res\obj.crf) with the one for the patch (in Thief2\obj.crf).
ZylonBane on 6/4/2009 at 18:55
Quote Posted by R Soul
Large surfaces sometimes look really bad with Gouraud shading, especially as the player looks around, changing their view of the object.
This happens to Gouraud-shaded polys when any of their points moves offscreen... an unfortunate bug in Dark's renderer. It's another area where having high surface detail really helps Dark out. Alternatively, don't apply smooth shading to surfaces that are actually supposed to be flat.
R Soul on 23/11/2009 at 18:41
That's good to know, but I'm surprised a 3ds export doesn't work.
p.s. the second link didn't work.
