Re: [Algorithms] It looks terrible (was: Lightmap Terrain)

[Klaus H. <k_h...@os...>]

Welcome, Ralf :)

----- Original Message -----
From: Ralf Schneider <rap...@ra...>
> Niki,
>
> well it do NOT look that terrible!
> it's a lightmap, isn't it? what du you suspect?

What I suspect is a nice image :) See, I've actually tried this shadow stuff
in my terrain engine, and in 3D it looks far worse than the lightmap. I
tried this with a hybrid multifractal, though... maybe it looks better with
real world data as show in the image. Gotta try this, but it's a bit more
work.

> shadows make scenes nore realistic, not neccesarily beautiful.

This is a good description. The unrealistic dot-product-only lit scene (in
3D) looks much better, even though it's not as realistic as the shadowed
version.

>you are loosing visual information if yo add shadows to a top down view of
a heightfield. you know that already, because you are trying to avoid it, by
using a second light source instead of ambient light (we can say the second
light is simulating the reflection of the sun at the other mountain...).

Yes, this is quite a problem. If I use no second light source, then there's
zero shading on the faces opposite to the sun, which basically means that I
lose all the nice features. If, on the other hand, I use a secondary light
source (plus shadows), then I get artifacts as the one's in the upper-right
shadow-area of the image I posted. This looks as if I used false gays (as in
false color). In 3D this becomes even worse.

> take a look at some landscape/mountain top-down photos. i guess, you will
recognice you lightmap is ok!

You should see John Ratcliff's work... I remember his moon-lightmap and it
looks great. John, are you still a member of this list? Could you please
upload that moon-lightmap of yours again?

Niki