   Lighting in Doom 3 and HL 2.....Few questions
  As much as I have read on these to games, I still have no idea exactly what type of lighting systems each one is using. I am looking for someone/ones to clear this up for me and give me a detialed answer on which type/types of lighting they are using and how it works.From what I understand Doom 3 is using some type of real time radiosity lighting system, but not sure exactly how that is possable. HL 2 to me looks like it''s using standard precalulated radiositylightmaps with some per pixel lighting on the models, anyone know for sure? Any help would be great, thanks. 
  Doom 3 uses simple perpixel lighting with stencil shadows, nothing fancy (only direct illumination, no GI)HL light looks like precalculated light maps ;  Ahh ok thanks man, if anyone else has anything else to add I am all ears ;  Doom3''s lighting was always a big inspiration for me, and I''ve read alot of the post/interviews about the subject.Here''s what I know:Doom3: Per-pixel bumpmaps, diffuse, specular, and light-filter cubemaps. Stencil shadows volumes for ALL lights. While this is not that impressive in itself, the most important thing is that it is _unified_, i.e. everything in the world is exactly the same. So you get no differences between the world and the objects/characters. I guess most of carmack''s work has gone into optimizing and making sure the shadows work in ALL cases, which is easier said than done.Half-life 2: Lightmaps on world, 1 shadow map per object/character. Which is the old way of doing things, however, from looking at the E3 films, it seams that most of Valve''s work has gone into FX-shaders, and making the world/surfaces very flexible. And also the characters of course.Pros and cons for either strategy can be argued, but I believe that Doom wins in the graphics area, and Half-life wins in the game-play and world-dynamics area.;  "Doom3: Per-pixel bumpmaps, diffuse, specular, and light-filter cubemaps. Stencil shadows volumes for ALL lights. While this is not that impressive in itself, the most important thing is that it is _unified_, i.e. everything in the world is exactly the same. So you get no differences between the world and the objects/characters. I guess most of carmack''s work has gone into optimizing and making sure the shadows work in ALL cases, which is easier said than done."That kind of detail is more along the lines of what I was looking for, thanks. But about the bump maps, everything I have seen on Doom 3 points to normal mapping and not bump mapping. Please don''t tell me normal mapping is a form of bump mapping, I know this And can you expline a bit more about light-filter cubemaps, I think I know what they are, or at least somewhat, but not 100% sure. "Pros and cons for either strategy can be argued, but I believe that Doom wins in the graphics area, and Half-life wins in the game-play and world-dynamics area."Yea I fully agree with that, I saw HL 2 up close at E3 and the graphic engine never impressived me. It does a few things nice like water, but over all nothing to impressive. Its physics, AI and world-dynamics are a diffrent story though, very very impressive! Many games look better on PC then HL 2, but none come close to gameplay from the looks of it. ;  Does no one else think that the lighting in Doom 3, as clever as it is, just doesn''t look real? Everything kinda looks plastic and each object doesn''t really blend into the overall world. ;  Actually it''s the other way around to me - I watch HL2 and it looks fake, but I watch Doom3 and it looks more real(obviously still a long ways to go, but it''s the better of the two). ;quote:Original post by AN_D_K  Does no one else think that the lighting in Doom 3, as clever as it is, just doesn''t look real? Everything kinda looks plastic and each object doesn''t really blend into the overall world.   Yes, I agree with that.;  you''re looking at still shots... trust me when you actually play the game you will be blown away by the lighting. It''s all dynamic, you''ve never seen anything like it before so why are you dissing it? The plastic effect is not from the lighting, it''s the bumpmapping which has always been a problem. It''s hard to simulate a rough dull surface with a bumpmap unless it has extreme resolution.I like the way HL2 looks also, but I think they have their advantages in different ways. HL2 seems to rely on huge photoreal textures while doom3 is more of a "game art" style, but the engine is clean and precise. ;  [offtopic]quote:Original post by y2kiah  trust me when you actually play the game you will be blown away by the lighting. It''s all dynamic, you''ve never seen anything like it I have, trust me Actually, as you said, the D3 engine is clean and precise. Much too precise to be realistic, which is mostly due to the hard stencil shadows, which are unrealistic per-se (lack of soft shadows). The other very important thing is the lack of a pseudo-dynamic GI. When I look at D3, I feel like I''m thrown back into the times of 3DStudio 4, with simple pointlights and hard, raytraced shadows. You can do so much more on todays hardware. I think that D3 was in development for far too long. When it was originally being designed, it was surely revolutionary. But today, it is pretty much outdated before it even ships. I think it is overrated, by far. I seriously don''t know what Carmack was thinking. OK, he chose shadow volumes. Would not have been my choice, but OK. What I really don''t understand though, is the lacking support for advanced pixelshading capabilities. Where is the soft shadow option ? Where is the GI ? Carmack & friends get very early access to future hardware and specs. Had he designed his 3D engine in a more extensible way, adding support for the newest features would have been a piece of cake.Anyway, it might also be my aversion against Doom/Quake-sytle "artwork". I guess that thrid party licensees will surely use the D3 engine in a far more impressive way.[/offtopic]