HDR effect possible?

[luminarious]

Hi!

I'm no game programmer, rather I was/ am looking for a way to make easily redistributable architectural visualisations where one could walk around in the building/ street model. I realize a full-blown game engine would give me better graphics, more options regarding vegetation and people/ vehicles, water reflections and all that, but the files created would be huge as well. Unity is an option (it has a web plugin, making it easier to show my work to others) but I'm in a bad place financially, as a student.

I thought about maybe producing a mod for some game, but I don't even know where to begin with that. So I found ZGameEditor and thought this would be a very acceptable start as it can import 3DS files easily and this way I can achieve the basic task - walk around in models, with basic lightning.

I found this sildeshow yesterday: http://www.slideshare.net/fcarucci/HDR- ... ite-2-2006 where they describe an interesting way of achieving the HDR effect. They render the frame in lower res, then analyze the result. The exact math is in the slides, but in the end then apply a luminance map/ filter to the full-size frame and then they show it on screen.

Could something along these lines be implemented in ZGE? It has some shader support? I am not much of a programmer so correct me please if I'm wrong..

Also, if you feel that I would be better off with some other engine, feel free to recommend..

Thank you,
Hardi K.

[Kjell]

Hi Hardi,

A fellow non-programmer Welcome ~

Yes and no. The method described in the Lionhead slides requires off-screen rendering / FBO ( frame-buffer-object ) which is something that has been requested, but isn't available as of yet in ZGE. However, you can take another route.

For example, instead of sampling a texture you could use the light parameters to determine luminosity of you scene and use that "offset" the values of your textures using shaders ( GLSL ).

As you already mentioned yourself ZGE still lacks features .. but the speed it let's you develop in is unprecedented ( real-time preview / almost-instant compilation ). If you do however decide ZGE isn't for you, have a look at DX Studio. Their non-commercial license start at €55.

Kjell

[diki]

i also remember 3D Rad and OpenSim, both of which i have not tried, but which are free of charge and look like they are well suited for things like architectural simulations.