I would say the main difference is, that you have no texture when using fresnel, isn't it? As far as i know, you only use one color and the fresnel will use this color where it occurs. But with the lit sphere tech you have the chance to not only define a gradiant, even more you can use a real texture and define the left/right/top/bottom color of the "fresnel" effect. That's what i would suggest.
Huh. I made this same effect for an earlier environment. I had these big round paper lights and was messing around in the UDK material editor for awhile.
I used a camera vector piped into the UV coords of the emissive texture, and added that to an emissive fresnel function. I also made a lerp between two emissive colors to have greater control over intensities/hues of the glow.
Later on, I stumbled on Jordan Walker's Bathhouse scene and noticed he used a very similar method for his paper lanterns, except that he added a fresnel function to his diffuse material as well.
Neat to see how other people create the effect as well, though! :)
To do this with really low tech one could make a balloon with inverted faces as background, have all the ornaments and borders straigt in front with alpha and the glow set to cam in the middle. I can imagine this would work too.
On the other hand I remember we had an environment map setting on the shaders in Nebula1 at Project Nomads. That would map each pixel according to the viewing direction. A face pointing directly at you shows the env map center, as it bends to a direction the mapping shifts there in UV space too. So if you mapped a glow to a sphere: It looked the same from any direction.
Your low tech approach definitaly should work - of course it needs more geometry and you have to be able to define faces which always are camera oriented (a feature not every engine supports....no idea why not :,) ).
Oh nice to hear that you worked on Project Nomads. Then you might know Bernd Diemer, right?
Very interesting blog. Alot of blogs I see these days don't really provide anything that I'm interested in, but I'm most definately interested in this one. Just thought that I would post and let you know. boost wow
my best bet would be a litsphere shader
ReplyDeleteReally looks like zbrush matcaps. Interesting effect :D
ReplyDeleteFor the record, the viewport shader was written by Charles Hollemeersch - http://charles.hollemeersch.net/
ReplyDeleteso what's the difference between this and fresnel effect? Doesn't fresnel effect use normal vectors in vew space too?
ReplyDeleteYes this is called fresnel not a little sphere, but it doesn't matter. Cool blog!
ReplyDeleteI would say the main difference is, that you have no texture when using fresnel, isn't it? As far as i know, you only use one color and the fresnel will use this color where it occurs. But with the lit sphere tech you have the chance to not only define a gradiant, even more you can use a real texture and define the left/right/top/bottom color of the "fresnel" effect. That's what i would suggest.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHuh. I made this same effect for an earlier environment. I had these big round paper lights and was messing around in the UDK material editor for awhile.
ReplyDeleteI used a camera vector piped into the UV coords of the emissive texture, and added that to an emissive fresnel function. I also made a lerp between two emissive colors to have greater control over intensities/hues of the glow.
Later on, I stumbled on Jordan Walker's Bathhouse scene and noticed he used a very similar method for his paper lanterns, except that he added a fresnel function to his diffuse material as well.
Neat to see how other people create the effect as well, though! :)
You're right! I already knew the bathhouse scene but now i see that he also had this nice effect. Thanks for mentioning!
DeleteFeel free to drop a screenshot of your lamps :)
To do this with really low tech one could make a balloon with inverted faces as background, have all the ornaments and borders straigt in front with alpha and the glow set to cam in the middle. I can imagine this would work too.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand I remember we had an environment map setting on the shaders in Nebula1 at Project Nomads.
That would map each pixel according to the viewing direction. A face pointing directly at you shows the env map center, as it bends to a direction the mapping shifts there in UV space too. So if you mapped a glow to a sphere: It looked the same from any direction.
Your low tech approach definitaly should work - of course it needs more geometry and you have to be able to define faces which always are camera oriented (a feature not every engine supports....no idea why not :,) ).
DeleteOh nice to hear that you worked on Project Nomads. Then you might know Bernd Diemer, right?
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ReplyDeleteVery interesting blog. Alot of blogs I see these days don't really provide anything that I'm interested in, but I'm most definately interested in this one. Just thought that I would post and let you know.
ReplyDeleteboost wow