Hello, I am wondering about plans to include a couple of features I think are important.
The first being a self illumination map. What I mean is a map that allows a texture to ignore lighting and appear as though it is a light source. It does not actually have to emit light in any way.
Recently I wanted to make a building with an interior that has baked in lighting, and then specify the areas which are to be ignored by lighting and shadowing in the engine so I can just use the map. I can't see any way to do that now, which is why I think a "self illumination" map will be handy.
It could also work for defining windows on buildings so they look like they glow at dusk/night. Same with dials on a vehicle.
It could also be set where the brightness can be a value higher than 1 (representing full self brightness) and then combined with bloom it will exaggerate the glowing effect.
The other feature that I think will be handy for Outerra is a indirect lighting shader and sky lighting. After studying GTA IV ENB series more, I saw how huge of a difference it made in realistic lighting. Here are some screenshots of the effect:
Indirect:
Sky Lighting:
Open these two to compare:
http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r55/luishi5000/gta4_50.jpghttp://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r55/luishi5000/gta4_49.jpgI know AngryPig is/was working on AO, and that's a good feature to have too, but IL and Sky Lighting have a much bigger effect on buildings and environments.
I hope with the combination of all of these effects plug ray-traced or real time reflections, Outerra can look like these GTA screenshots one day!
Also you can go to the GTA IV gallary to show some of the effects more:
http://enbdev.com/ss_gta4_01_en.htm
