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The water reflections on Risa don't make a lot of sense
kirksplat
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
http://starbaseugc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/036.jpg
I don't understand what I am seeing here. Where is this reflection coming from?
I don't understand what I am seeing here. Where is this reflection coming from?
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Post edited by kirksplat on
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(no, the reflections, while looking cool, don't make much sense at all)
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Clearly the resort was handcrafted from fine vampire bones.
Anyways, reflections are only a vague approximation of what's being reflected. In that case, I think it's simply offset. on the left side I can see what looks like a building... a distant building.
My character Tsin'xing
You are seeing what's called a Cubemap. It's a method to fake reflections. (Real time reflections are still very expensive, and not something we do).
All of our reflections in game use cubemaps. It's essentially a texture of everything around a certain point in the map. The problem is that that cubemap is only perfectly accurate when you are standing in the point it was taken from. It becomes less and less accurate the farther you get from that point.
In general, this works well for small maps, interiors, etc. because you're not generally too far away from that point. However, the distortion occurs on every map.
The issue here, is that we have one cubemap for the entire Risa Island map, and since that is only accurate for a single point on the island, everywhere else will technically be wrong.
Still, overall, it's better now, than when Risa's water was reflecting the Golden Gate Bridge. . .
Perhaps it's a problem that the cubemap is most inaccurate at the most populated spot on the island world. It seems like no reflection would be preferable to a reflection that is always disorienting and inaccurate. I will search for a spot where the reflection makes sense.
My character Tsin'xing
They're based on the lighting scheme you select for the map.
In general, the cubemap is taken from a central location, so as to be most equidistant from everything. I don't know where this one was taken, but given it's an island, it's a fair bet that the center would be under the island, and unusable. We could have taken it from in front of the resort, but it seems to me that it would be just as distracting (if not more so) if you saw the resort reflected in the water around the rest of the island, even on the far side, no where near the resort. Again, I'm guessing, but I'd say the image was taken somewhere with few buildings in view, because 90% of the island is plants and hills and rocks, and so, even if you're near a building, there are still plants and hills and rocks around.
There is a default cubemap, set by the system, so that there is always SOMETHING to reflect, even if we environment artists don't manually set a cubemap for a given map. That default cubemap (if I recall) is mostly sky, and vague, blurry shapes. So it *kind of* works wherever. However, it's also fairly bright, and can be more noticeable on darker maps.
We (Env Artists) set which cubemap to use, within the skyfile. I'd guess that some of your backgrounds (which call on our skyfiles) will have non-default cubemaps assigned to them.
My character Tsin'xing
It's too bad that you guys are stuck with cubemaps instead of proper reflection tech.
You guys do such beautiful things with what you have; I'd LOVE to see what you could do with a proper engine that's not rooted in 15 years ago.
(This is more of a complement and a wistful "*sigh* if only" than a knock on the game. Like I said, you do beautiful work.)
Have to agree. For all the badmouthing I do on the forums about the devs, they do release some beautiful work. Just imagine what they could do if given a million or two in funding to upgrade their engine.
*Sighs*
Go away imagination...
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My character Tsin'xing
Yes, I'd say that's a substantial improvement over Golden Gate.
I find it odd, I was doing some high flying heading to build a sand castle and I had this beautiful shot (wish I'd taken a picture) of the moon reflecting off of the water and it looked real time and amazing.
And as always thanks for the educational since I had no clue what cube mapping was.