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Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 12 Mar 2019, 17:53
by mistermoonshine
1Mac wrote: 12 Mar 2019, 14:50 @mrmoonshine, thanks for the modlist! I notice that it lacks both Morrowind Optimization Patch and Project Atlas. Both could help with performance. Tyddy has some hires texture atlases, or you could make them yourself with the included bat files.
I tried Morrowind Optimization Patch a while ago and didn't notice any difference in performance. I have retextured pretty much everything in my game so I can't use Project Atlas, and if given the choice between a texture pack with no normal maps but with an atlas like Tyddy's vs a texture pack with normal maps but no atlas like Lysol's, I will always choose the latter. In a perfect world all modders would have moved on to OpenMW already and stopped making mods for the original game. In my opinion optimizing vanilla assets is not the way forward for Morrowind, though I appreciate why people want to do it.

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 12 Mar 2019, 21:17
by Mistahtokyo
AnyOldName3 wrote: 12 Mar 2019, 16:34 Fairly big - usually each cluster of grass is its own drawable, and the number of drawables is directly correlated with the number of draw calls, and we already do far more draw calls than we'd like.
I don't suppose the clusters could be combined into one larger mesh? Though at that point it'd be better to have a proper grass system in place.

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 12 Mar 2019, 22:03
by 1Mac
mistermoonshine wrote: 12 Mar 2019, 17:53 I have retextured pretty much everything in my game so I can't use Project Atlas, and if given the choice between a texture pack with no normal maps but with an atlas like Tyddy's vs a texture pack with normal maps but no atlas like Lysol's, I will always choose the latter.
But you can use the bat files to generate texture atlases from whatever textures you have. Normals too, if you tweak the bat scripts.

Also, DaggerfallTeam has made normals for Tyddy’s atlases, though I can’t vouch for them.

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 13 Mar 2019, 02:18
by AnyOldName3
Mistahtokyo wrote: 12 Mar 2019, 21:17
AnyOldName3 wrote: 12 Mar 2019, 16:34 Fairly big - usually each cluster of grass is its own drawable, and the number of drawables is directly correlated with the number of draw calls, and we already do far more draw calls than we'd like.
I don't suppose the clusters could be combined into one larger mesh? Though at that point it'd be better to have a proper grass system in place.
We're looking into ways of batching things automatically. Before we get that sorted out (there are reasons why it may get very complicated), manually joining things into one mesh is a valid approach, but it'll have the disadvantage that the whole combined mesh will have to share the same eight lights, so it won't look quite as good. This is something you just have to put up with in MGE XE grass mods, though, so it's not the end of the world.

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 13 Mar 2019, 03:42
by hodgicus
You guys are incredible.
I'm checking every day for .45, even though .44 is the best MW experience I've ever had.
Thank you, thank you, awesome team. This is the coolest project ever.

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 13 Mar 2019, 03:59
by mistermoonshine
1Mac wrote: 12 Mar 2019, 22:03 But you can use the bat files to generate texture atlases from whatever textures you have. Normals too, if you tweak the bat scripts.

Also, DaggerfallTeam has made normals for Tyddy’s atlases, though I can’t vouch for them.
I had a look but it wouldn't work for me, the bat file didn't do anything even though I have ImageMagick installed.
AnyOldName3 wrote: 13 Mar 2019, 02:18 We're looking into ways of batching things automatically. Before we get that sorted out (there are reasons why it may get very complicated), manually joining things into one mesh is a valid approach, but it'll have the disadvantage that the whole combined mesh will have to share the same eight lights, so it won't look quite as good. This is something you just have to put up with in MGE XE grass mods, though, so it's not the end of the world.
So does that mean native OpenMW grass won't be able to cast shadows? The FPS with MGE grass mods loaded in OpenMW actually isn't too bad, it can get as low as 30 FPS in certain areas but is usually around 60. But then again I'm on a 1080 Ti and Ryzen 7 2700X. However when I enable shadows my FPS drop to 10 :lol: It's unfortunate because it looks really good, even without ambient occlusion it can look better than MGE XE in the right lighting.

Image

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 13 Mar 2019, 04:51
by Mistahtokyo
Even if the batch file works, some replacers' (Lysol's) normal maps cannot be converted by simply using the batch file. Since there are some height maps mixed in you end up with odd errors.

What I do is use Atlas for everything except what is covered by Lysol's replacers. Most other things already have properly atlased normal maps. If you use Arkitektora textures those all have atlased normal maps.

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 13 Mar 2019, 14:50
by AnyOldName3
So does that mean native OpenMW grass won't be able to cast shadows?
Batched meshes will be able to cast shadows. That's not something you're going to need to worry about.

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 16 Mar 2019, 14:52
by darkbasic
mistermoonshine wrote: 12 Mar 2019, 01:34 I made a short video to show off the shadows with some graphics mods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtmjve8iE58

I pushed OpenMW to the absolute limit with this setup, it was quite a challenge to get recordable footage because of the extremely low average framerate, but I think it turned out okay. Good job dev team.
Wow, the video is awesome. I've also juts become a patreon thanks to it :)

Re: Followers of shadows, the day has come!

Posted: 17 Mar 2019, 23:24
by CMAugust
AnyOldName3 wrote: 13 Mar 2019, 14:50Batched meshes will be able to cast shadows. That's not something you're going to need to worry about.
This is getting off the point a bit, but is it still possible to have (eventual) grass collision with the player when batched?