Bump Mapping in HL

It has been up for a while, but I found a very interesting article
about how to implement bump mapping in Half-Life. The difference is
quite impressive.

The article: http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?doc=1091469531-97736200

To compare (look at the ceiling):

Without BumpMapping

With Bumpmapping

It's on VERC, so most of you probably already read it. Nevertheless, it's worth it.

Its certainly a nice effect, but this, and the tron glow, are just too late to make an impact. Had these shader using articles been written a year or two ago, they would have had a much bigger impact. It has, however, tempted my flatmate to rework his cel-shading shader a little to work in HL :wink:

The performance hits are too high to be realistically used in HL. The
system specs required to run the Bump mapping and tron glow are so high
that you might as well just switch over to a different engine.

They are the sort of effects its nice to see running on prior work though. I'd love to take a run through some of my levels with both the tron glow and bump mapping on, and it would be interesting to see what other visual enhancements people can come up with.

am I the only one to find that ugly?

perhaps

am I the only one to find that ugly?

no. i wouldnt have artex ceilings in my home, let alone a military base.

it has that "Doom 3 rubbish graphics plastic look" to it. instant turn
off, and kinda pointless now with TEH HL2 ! around TEH CORNER !

Feh. I think bump mapping is really no different than having a highly detailed texture. It's still perfectly flat -- untill there is actual physical difference with bump maping, I'm not to imprressed.

"I think bump mapping is really no different than having a highly detailed texture."

except you'd have to make individual textures for every different light/shadow effects throughout an entire game?

:rolleyesatlength:

The effect is over the top in that roof example, but the other examples are quite nice. I agree with Gwil that it seems to make everything overly shiney in that Doom 3 style, which means some surfaces don't suit it. All in all its a worthy addition to the engine but too little too late really.

I think they made it that blatant just for the example map. In fact, I
suggested they make the bump mapping even more obvious! Whoops! :biggrin:

I'm sure you could make it more subtle if you really wanted to. Plus, I
think it would look rather cool if you did this in, say, Natural
Selection, where the effect will look better. And yeah, these
effects aren't very practical, as they're basically just graphic hacks
since no one has access to the renderer code. But hey, it's still
impressive to some degree! :smile:

It looks pretty bad in those Collective pics- you really need decent, high resolution textures and better, smoother lighting :/

Yeah, bump mapping doesnt work on bog standard blury HL textures. Also the roof goes from being made of concrete to being made of plastic; Just because you implement bump mapping in HL, doesn't mean you have to apply it to every single surface...

"...in, say, Natural Selection, where the effect will look more natural."

"...in, say, Natural Selection, where the effect will look more natural."

I don't know what you're talking about... And who are you quoting?

If nobody has access to the render path, how did that guy make a mod that rendered the whole thing completely differently? I can't remember what it was called... Surely there's nothing to stop somebody just writing a whole new path? They could base it on the open-source quake-1 stuff, I presume?

[edit] it's called VRE, not sure if it does actually use a new path [/edit]

Yeah, but it's all TriAPI hacks or something. I don't think it's
possible to render everything completely differently. It would be
pretty cool if people made a Tenebrae-type thing for HL, though.

It's too shiny in the pics. if it was duller, it wouldn't look so plastic-ie

It's all the art, really. If someone took the time to make good textures with good normal maps, it would look much better. Newer engines really start to show off the need for high-level art content. :smile:

and without being harsh KFS, Doom 3 = high level engine, but bad
textures. the textures are monochrome/plastic at best.. but think of
the pure sex that could come from them...

the mind boggles!

The plastic appearance comes from 2 things:

1) Specular highlights, which add a certain sheen to things (but really sell the 3D illusion of normal maps) and/or
2) Textures actually designed to be a sort of polymer/molded material. Much of the Doom stuff is actually likely to be composite/plastic-like materials. :smile: Organics, rocks, metals, and polymers all work well with this - it's actually surprising how much of a sheen even everyday materials can give.

As for the bad textures - hardly. :smile: They're mostly 256x256, so imagine those same textures, but drawn with shading, in HL or Q3 and you've got some absolutely incredible stuff. Here's the problem - normal maps and spec highlights. One 256x256 texture can add up to 3 256x256 images, and in multiple texture passes at that - which doesn't even include other shader effects, glow passes, blending, etc. Suddenly you have the expense of a 512x512 map or even more! Now apply this across every texture in the map, and the texture memory adds up at least as quickly as it would in any other engine. Imagine if Half-Life 2 used this technology the same way - 1024x1024 and 2048x2048 textures in 3 passes? Yipe!

Really it's no different than when Quake came out - Doom had gotten to the point where enemies were swarming the screen in ridiculous numbers, then Quake came out with new powerful full 3D tech, but now enemies came in twos or threes at the most due to the added expense of having to render polygons on each one. It's the same thing here - the new tech adds some incredible effects, but at the expense of having to cut down a bit on what we're used to. Much of the power of this tech will be seen in the future as Carmack makes further improvements for their next title and licensees do their own work and also as systems get more powerful. You only need to look as far as the new Unreal tech to see what higher-resolution textures and models can do with this technology - there are very few differences in the actual technology there, or at least the principles on how it works. Exactly as you said, there is some incredible potential in the future. Those of you in the editor, just start scaling down some textures on geometry in texture/brush stacks to see the difference as things become higher-res.

It really is difficult to be scared by anything when you know in the back of your mind that

A: The AI is dirt stupid and can be fooled quite easily
B: The enemies can't follow you down ladders or even hit you while you're under a walkway
C: You know that at max two or three big enemies will be attacking you.

I really think that the D3 engine should have been made two years from now, which would have allowed for more dynamic shadows, allies with guns and lights, and multiple enemies...

To be honest, bump mapping seems rather pointless in any engine because it's just too obvious that it's flat from up close or from an angle. Especially in D3, where they use it to simulate things that would stick out by a few inches and have sharp edges. If it's for subtle things it's ok, but when taken to such extremes...bleh.

I didn't think Doom 3 was so bad.

Oh well, I guess HL2 will be getting the same treatment on Doom forums soon enough.

G.Ballblue said:
Feh. I think bump mapping is really no different than having a highly detailed texture. It's still perfectly flat -- untill there is actual physical difference with bump maping, I'm not to imprressed.

dude

proper bump mapping takes the light and changes its shadows BASED on the surrounding light. So infacft, no matter how detailed a texture is, it wont have that cool lighting effect. Congrats on another classic blueballs comment.

Cassius said:
I didn't think Doom 3 was so bad.

Oh well, I guess HL2 will be getting the same treatment on Doom forums soon enough.

Oh, it's not bad at all. It's the only FPS I've played since HL that I actually feel like finishing. The game is certainly more than the sum of its parts. If you look at any single aspect it's extremely unimpressive, but somehow it all works together and makes for a fun tense game.

I think you guys are forgetting that its an id game ... I mean ... come on. They've never been known for realism, Graphically or Game play wise.

id seems to be repeating itself... I mean, they never have been one to create particularily intelligent AI. Except for perhaps some of the bots in Q3.

Doom 3 is a very nice game i believe but just a bit to repetitive if you know what I mean.

My friend from school who is basing his final project for college this
year on doom3's SP engine has already started experimenting with
textures. He's doing a pretty good job and the bump mapping hasn't
gotten out of hand. So there IS hope for them.

Ferret said:

G.Ballblue said:
Feh. I think bump mapping is really no different than having a highly detailed texture. It's still perfectly flat -- untill there is actual physical difference with bump maping, I'm not to imprressed.

dude

proper bump mapping takes the light and changes its shadows BASED on the surrounding light. So infacft, no matter how detailed a texture is, it wont have that cool lighting effect. Congrats on another classic blueballs comment.

dude

the ceiling looks like rubber

Of course, it COUDN'T have been concrete!