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Daniel,
In the Ep2 videos shown in Leipzig, we demonstrated our new shadowing flashlight, which uses shadow depth mapping to cast and receive shadows on all objects in the world. Since the flashlight is an additive blending pass over the scene, we simply multiply the shadow map result with the flashlight before adding the result to the frame buffer. This means that light from other light sources in the scene still reaches areas that are not lit by the flashlight.
With regard to F.E.A.R., while we have of course played that game, their flashlight doesn't cast any shadows (in the PC version that I played...maybe they updated it for 360?) since it is positioned exacty at the eye point. Our flashlight is offset from the eye location and hence it is possible for the player to see shadows cast from the flashlight.
-Jason
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From: Daniel Wadsworth [mailto:***@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 11:57 AM
To: Gabe Newell
Subject: source engine shadowing
Hi,
I've got a question about the shadows, espacially those from the new ep2 Leipzig vids- Does it work like it rendered each of the shadows, computing how they look like, concerning the light sources in the enviroment, OR does it use a rather natural way of simply simulating where light does NOT go to- cause you already created flashlights with goldscr, which could cast illuminations onto dark places, and I wondered wether shadows could be simulated this way:
If there's dynamic illumination of space in goldscr and source, can't you simply put some sort of intransperence to props, entities, whatever, so light can be casted onto everything in its way, but does not go through npcs, props, the map and all that stuff. So, basically this is just an idea for the flashlight, but after all you already created your own system, but I simply wondered why doing it the way I described above would be worse/better etc.
I guess you have to learn pretty much from F.E.A.R., eh?
-Daniel
Jason Mitchell to me
FEAR uses stencil shadows, so the edges are harsh by design. We use shadow mapping, so our shadow edges are softer. We're looking at ways to soften them even more than what you saw in the trailer...
-Jason
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From: Daniel Wadsworth [mailto:***@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 10:15 AM
Sorry for waisting your time with continuing my last mail,
but I (also) read (and saw) your shadows were rather harsh. I also noted that prob in the fear engine, so though F.E.A.R. has a brilliant engine concerning the use of shadowing, I wondered wether you could do even better...by creating a natural look, where the shadows' edges are softened, depending on size and distance to the lightsource the shadow is derived from.
-Daniel