Hardware shaders

[LeCroix]

Hi! does anybody know how to implement pixel and vertex shaders, bumpmapping etc...in UE2Runtime ?
Are these features new or were they already supported by UT2003 ?

Thanks!

[Vito]

These features are not supported. It's conceivable with the headers you could hook into the renderer or something, but it would likely be a significant amount of work.

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Yes. Vertex shaders are somewhat present in UT2003, as you can blend several materials together. However pixel shaders, bump mapping and other advanced graphical techniques (And also the ever popular polybump mapping) are not present in the Unreal engine, well at least at this moment.

[yoDon]

Originally Posted by [SAS]Solid Snake

Vertex shaders are somewhat present in UT2003, as you can blend several materials together.

Blending materials together has nothing to do with vertex shaders (which aren't supported in UT2003).

-Don

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Oh ok. I better look up what vertex shading is then... thanks for the heads up.

[Enzo Maseratti]

I think Epic decided to cut off that kind of hardware features because they wanted to keep the engine 3dfx compatible and with the highest framerate possible with non top graphic cards.

I wished that UT2003 could use the Rad lightning system used in MAx Payne, damn... UT would look ten times better with that kind of lightning engine.

[oneirotekt]

Originally Posted by Enzo Maseratti

I think Epic decided to cut off that kind of hardware features because they wanted to keep the engine 3dfx compatible and with the highest framerate possible with non top graphic cards.

I wished that UT2003 could use the Rad lightning system used in MAx Payne, damn... UT would look ten times better with that kind of lightning engine.

Okay, sorry but both of these statements are wildly misinformed. Compatibility with 3dfx cards has nothing to do with UT2003's lack of pixel and vertex shader support and everything to do with the fact that pixel and vertex shaders are comparitively recent developments (only GeForce3 and later generation cards support them) and Epic didn't want to make the effort to support them. The 2nd generation Unreal engine that powers UT2003 and Unreal2 has no Glide support whatsoever. Support for TNT2 and 3dfx cards was added very shortly before UT2003's release by Epic just to see if they could do it, support for those cards did not affect any earlier engine architecture decisions (and said support is still unofficial).

Secondly, Max Payne's much-touted "radiosity" lighting system only applies to precalculated level lightmaps - something that the map lighting compile tools for Half-Life and Quake3 have too. It's really not that special, and it does not have *any* effect whatsoever on the appearance of dynamic actors, ie characters, decoration meshes etc. I'm sick of hearing about this as some kind of innovation, when even Quake2 has a radiosity lighting utility now.

[Radiosity]

Radiosity? Cool, that's the pseudonym I use for mapping Didn't realise it was a 'real' word lol

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Real-Time Radiosity does NOT exist for games. It exists currently only as a graphical research program. The top of the line cards at the moment can only render less than 1 FPS for a true radiosity program at a res of 256 X 256.

oneirotekt is very correct. Radiosity can be done for games if it is all precalculated, and that's because it is dynamic at the start and then it becomes a static shadowmap for the map. Heck, even UnrealEd would be able to do it if they really wanted to.

Real time Radiosity and Photon light mapping will never happen unless hardware companies such as nVidia and ATi will build in hardware support for them.