Mount & Blade Panoramic Mod v 2.0 [RELEASED] (updated 25/01/09)

[TheWitcher]

Whoa! Soil That looks awesome! It is a good method indeed! I like it a lot! Way better than painting a skybox. 
If you could upload those brfs/obj files I can play with the textures. I have a lot of source material on my HD to get things done right with your method... No performance drop I assume?

In other words - we can dump skydome painting idea. I can focus on lighting and on adding new sky textures and fiddling with weather conditions. Absence of proper fog on the maps is still bugging me.

Gohda: Yeah. That thing happened after expanding the skydome mesh. It's because in M&B sky mesh is a full sphere not a dome really. Funny enough - on some generic maps you can't see this effect at all... Skycubes are so much easier to texture...

 

[Soil]

PM me your e-mail address and I can send it to you via e-mail. The only thing you have to do after backing up your original files and copying my files into your commonres folder is putting a texture called plainlandscapefar into your texture folder. I'll probably try the sloped version now, let's see if that helps.



EDIT: Any clue why using a skycube could cause problems?

EDIT 2: Ok, after testing a sloped outer terrain texture ring I noticed that this really makes the lighting look better. Depending on the texture one can also achieve an effect of depth.
A not so awesome thing I found out was that at a certain distance it became invisible. It has probably something to do with the shader, so I either get into theses shader thingies or someone helps me with it(in brfedit I can't use the fancy shader and material stuff because of an overlaying panel ) or I'll have to make that thing smaller. Which means less distance to the player but also less space to texture. I hope I find a way to solve this problem because otherwise I was very limited when I come to the point where I modify the outer terrain meshes.

 

[TheWitcher]

PM me your e-mail address and I can send it to you via e-mail. The only thing you have to do after backing up your original files and copying my files into your commonres folder is putting a texture called plainlandscapefar into your texture folder. I'll probably try the sloped version now, let's see if that helps.



EDIT: Any clue why using a skycube could cause problems?

PM on the way.

There shouldn't be problem at all actually. It's just the case of changing shape of the mesh and getting proper textures.
My only concern is that generic maps are quite small and things may look a bit funky from that perspective... There are two schools actually - one is saying that skydome is more efficient in creating overall "sky above us" experience. Other - that skycube is easier to texture - which is true. It's difficult to find proper textures for skydomes and any added features can be easily distorted when size of the dome is changed. For cube - there's just need to cut your sky/landscape photo to 5 pieces and align them properly. And you can use any kind and any resolution you want then...

But - I would go with your method of making an illusion of space and vast land and leave skydome textures for only depicting the skies. I'm wondering also is it possible to create two spheres - one with the sky texture and other with semi-transparent clouds texture? I bet it is - but the inside sphere should have to be settled in outer terrain brf. If we could move it (vertex animation?) we could achieve a moving clouds effect...

If we could also find a way to change textures or meshes on the fly - we may create at least an illusion of dynamic weather...

 

[Soil]

[quote author=TheWitcher]PM on the way.

There shouldn't be problem at all actually. It's just the case of changing shape of the mesh and getting proper textures.
My only concern is that generic maps are quite small and things may look a bit funky from that perspective... There are two schools actually - one is saying that skydome is more efficient in creating overall "sky above us" experience. Other - that skycube is easier to texture - which is true. It's difficult to find proper textures for skydomes and any added features can be easily distorted when size of the dome is changed. For cube - there's just need to cut your sky/landscape photo to 5 pieces and align them properly. And you can use any kind and any resolution you want then...

But - I would go with your method of making an illusion of space and vast land and leave skydome textures for only depicting the skies. I'm wondering also is it possible to create two spheres - one with the sky texture and other with semi-transparent clouds texture? I bet it is - but the inside sphere should have to be settled in outer terrain brf. If we could move it (vertex animation?) we could achieve a moving clouds effect...

If we could also find a way to change textures or meshes on the fly - we may create at least an illusion of dynamic weather...
[/quote]

Well, I don't know. I thought the sun changed its position depending on the time of the day...

I guess that's what I've already said in this thread or at least what I meant

By the way, please check out the edit in my last post.

 

[TheWitcher]

No. It's not. I told you before how it works - for every skydome you have just set up things like sun elevation, ambient light, sun colour, fog colour and density etc. Check this thread for more: Data folder modular

Now - to have sun actually moving - it would have to be painted on the skydome, and somehow animated I guess. But what to do with lighting and shadows? I don't have a clue.

So in my opinion the only solution is to double or triple number of skyboxes and sun settings for every time of the day and let the system pick them up at certain times - at least to give some kind of illusion of passing time (now as you know we have just only 4 skyboxes for 8 or ten day phases - and what's more one skybox is used twice - for dawn and dusk).

About your edit - I'm assuming that material you've used isn't casting shadow nor reflect the light so it might be the shader causing this problem, or maybe outside ring is overlaping with dome? Is the edge of the ring appearing when you zoom? Or is it still invisible? I had something like this when I made sky sphere model too small - it just kind of covered the outer terrain, cut it off... Don't have a clue now. I'm going to check your meshes and play with them a bit.

(damn - this thread is getting quite brainstorming  )

 

[Soil]

I know that
I wasn't really sure about the stand of the sun but I had the feeling that the sun came from a different angle in the morning than in the afternoon... Anyway, let's simply try and see what happens if we make a skycube?


No. It appears when I come closer. It might be 'z-fighting' but I doubt it... I'll try if the problem still occurs with a greater skydome.

By the way, the meshes I sent you are already corrected so you won't have to deal with that. I also quickly created one for every outer terrain mesh. More details on that in the email.

 

[TheWitcher]

I know that
I wasn't really sure about the stand of the sun but I had the feeling that the sun came from a different angle in the morning than in the afternoon... Anyway, let's simply try and see what happens if we make a skycube?

It does. But it's not dynamic. Sun position is pre-defined. Also - take notice that the whole skytexture is turning all together with the sun. I will look in to the skycube idea tomorrow or so because now I'm already drunk as f***k. (hey! it's New Years eve, right?)

No. It appears when I come closer. It might be 'z-fighting' but I doubt it... I'll try if the problem still occurs with a greater skydome.

I don't have a clue what might be the problem. We'll keep digging

By the way, the meshes I sent you are already corrected so you won't have to deal with that. I also quickly created one for every outer terrain mesh. More details on that in the email.

They're cool. I'm thinking about creating two circles - one lower for closer objects (like trees, forests, small hills etc) and the other for more distant landscape (like snowy mountain range) to create more depth. What do you think about it?

 

[kgable10]

I think I'll wait for a bit before using this one

 

[TheWitcher]

Damn Soil! Your method is perfect!

Only thing I need to find out now is how to create proper fog effects for dusk and down and for cloudy/rainy sky. Playing with those values is still a trial and error process.

I found a solution to your problem with land disappearing at some distance and jaggy textures - it's the material properties - have to be set to 4552.

Anyway - I'm doing new textures for every type of land now. It's really a ***** to find proper source photos to be easily made seamless and didn't show up too much tiling at the same time. I'm hoping proper release of Panoramic will be ready within few days.

For now, three WIP screenies (DX7+HDR+GE2.51+some of my texture tweaks and):

Spoiler

 

[Soil]

I know that
I wasn't really sure about the stand of the sun but I had the feeling that the sun came from a different angle in the morning than in the afternoon... Anyway, let's simply try and see what happens if we make a skycube?

It does. But it's not dynamic. Sun position is pre-defined. Also - take notice that the whole skytexture is turning all together with the sun. I will look in to the skycube idea tomorrow or so because now I'm already drunk as f***k. (hey! it's New Years eve, right?)

Tisk tisk tisk. I was still partying at that time, how can you be at this forum half an hour after the new year started!

No. It appears when I come closer. It might be 'z-fighting' but I doubt it... I'll try if the problem still occurs with a greater skydome.

I don't have a clue what might be the problem. We'll keep digging

By the way, the meshes I sent you are already corrected so you won't have to deal with that. I also quickly created one for every outer terrain mesh. More details on that in the email.

They're cool. I'm thinking about creating two circles - one lower for closer objects (like trees, forests, small hills etc) and the other for more distant landscape (like snowy mountain range) to create more depth. What do you think about it?

[/quote]

Pretty nice idea, it came to my mind when I was thinking how you could get things to look properly with a fairly small texture, I think that making a few bigger but blurry mountains in the background and hi-res, but more often tiled forests and small hills in the foreground. In steppes the foreground circle can be used for creating the illusion of a very big flat area.

I'm sure this will look fairly pretty with edited outer terrain meshes and these two circles. And from what I've tested so far there probably won't be a really big performance drop.


Ahhh. A new reply

Heh, thanks. But I'm sure it can look even better with two circles and edited outer terrain meshes

I can quickly make meshes for fog effects and include them into the skydome meshes later today... I gotta sleep now again

And woohoo, that fix really made my day! Awesome, thanks.

These screens are very sexy. Good job!

 

[Letum]

Is it just me, or does this mod have a hint of terragen?

 

[Gohda]

Here's a question we should probably ask - is it possible to make Soil's kind of distant land cast shadows, and what is the result of that kind of experiment?

 

[Soil]

Cast shadows on what?

 

[Gohda]

I don't know, that's why I used the word experiment.  I figure, if it works, then the side with the sun will be dark, and the side of the ring without won't be.  At worst, it will cast ridiculous shadows over the map's arena itself.

 

[TheWitcher]

I'm quite a party person myself but due to some personal stuff I couldn't get wild too much this year... Rather sad story tbh.

@ Soil If you could do all modelling stuff like terrains(maybe add some trees, bushes and stones?) and two circles (the inside one more sloppy and the outside one a bit more straight) that would let me to focus on textures for it, adding new skies (3 for every phase of the day) and fiddling with the light/fog settings.
I don't think model for the fog is necessary - amount of fog needs to change every time of the day - if we fit the fog in land models it will be stuck there forever no matter what are the weather conditions.

@ Gohda I know what you're thinking about. I was playing a bit with specular light and sun level to see if hills from the background could cast some nice shadow on the main land area. Unfortunately it looks a bit funky - like a piece of cardboard set up against the Sun. So I've dropped this idea for now.

Guys - I just want to say it at this stage: I'm very happy that my small idea of improvement has evolved to some serious project. Thank you all for assistance!
I think we're getting somewhere with it.

Happy New Year!

 

[Soil]

Oh, sorry then.

Yes, I said I'll include fog meshes into the skydome meshes.
And yes, I can do all the modelling related jobs.

Yep, happy new year

 

[TheWitcher]

Oh, sorry then.

Yes, I said I'll include fog meshes into the skydome meshes.
And yes, I can do all the modelling related jobs.

Yep, happy new year

No problem. It's just life, you know. **** happens.

Ah! Had to missed that - if that's the case - I would go for it!

I was thinking also - is it possible to pack all our new textures/materials into separate brf file or our terrain_borders files to avoid any conflicts with mods using new materials and textures? So the people wouldn't need to merge brfs and they could use Panoramic with other mods simultaneously?

Cheers!

 

[Soil]

Textures and materials into seperated brf files, sure thing. Having all materials and textures in a single file keeps it organized, though.
As for the skydomes and terrain borders-I don't think so, unless you scripted something and let the people include it into the mod's .txt files.
The brf files don't work like textures, mod ressources can't have the same name like native brfs because it will then try to load a mesh with the same name twice which will give errors.

I don't think backing up the brf files and replacing them is that bad, though.

EDIT: Typo.

 

[TheWitcher]

Textures and materials into seperated brf files, sure thing. Having all materials and textures in a single file keeps it organized, though.
As for the skydomes and terrain borders-I don't think so, unless you scripted something and let the people include it into the mod's .txt files.
The brf files don't work like textures, mod ressources can't have the same name like native brfs because it will then try to load a mesh with the same name twice which will give errors.

I don't think backing up the brf files and replacing them isn't really bad, though.

Well... I haven't seen any mod altering skyboxes.brf or skyboxes textures - so that can be easily replaced with ours. But I was mainly thinking about materials.brf and textures.brf - almost every mod is adding something to those two. So my idea was - if it's possible - to store all info about textures and materials for terrain meshes in our terrain_borders.brf. This way we could make Panoramic compatible with virtually any mod - because we would replace files no other mod is changing (I haven't seen any other mod changing terrain borders tbh). And our textures for outer rings have their unique names anyway.

 

[Soil]

Yes, this is possible. I'll handle it like that when I make new brf files again.