Shadow Fix

[wacampbell]

Here's a little graphics improvement for TS2016. Its a very unofficial replacement for the sunlight shader provided in the Railworks\dev\Shaders folder. Here's what it does:

1. Fixes a shadow bias problem that was causing light to leak through overhanging eves when you pull back a certain distance from the building:



2. Enables blending on cascaded shadow maps to prevent sharp cutoffs of shadows at distance:



3. Enables screen-space ambient occlusion to improve the looks of models on their shadowed side:


See the readme for installation instructions. Its just one file to copy into your shaders folder.

Also, this worked OK for me, but these features must have been disabled for a reason. So your mileage may vary. Be prepared to revert back to the original shader if things don't look right.


Wayne

Download here http://www3.telus.net/wacampbell/downlo ... dowFix.zip

[deltic009]

Very interesting, both the shadow and particularly the AObseem very good.

[bremen]

I tried it and the results are awesome.
Wacampbell, you have done a really wonderful modification.

My FO HGe 4/4 before your fix.


After it.

[wacampbell]

Its good to see its working for you. I have had some reports that it doesn't well work for everyone. It must be hardware dependent.

For reference, I am running a GTX970, Driver Version 10.18.13.6869 on Windows 10. 4K Resolution - 3840 x 2160

Good luck with it!

[TrabantDeLuxe]

Hi Wayne,

First of all, impressive work. I never knew that we where able to compile our own shaders. Would it be possible for you to do a bit of a write up of the changes?

I've tried your patch, and probably due to my low shadow settings (I'm running a Core2Potate E6600, 6GB ram and a GTX275, so anything else kills FPS...), and the result sadly is the dreaded banded shading. I suppose this is not a bug.

[deltic009]

I tried it and the results are awesome.
Wacampbell, you have done a really wonderful modification.

My FO HGe 4/4 before your fix.


After it.

Wow, would I be correct in saying your models textures don't currently have the ambient occlusion used within them? The difference between to two shots is amazing because of the difference represented, it's as if you no longer need to worry about baking AO maps to bake textures off anymore.

I cant wait to try this out.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

I'd always bake AO. Preferably from high poly, so you can have much more detail than just flat colour. To be fair, the example above looks impressive.

[deltic009]

It may well be a graphics settings thing for the nVidia control panel, but I noticed very little change to the shading of the shadowy side, perhaps because it was dark, but I did notice the shadow banding mentioned by TrabantDeluxe. Below is a comparios, click for full size for like for like 100% crops of larger screenshots

[bremen]

Hi Wayne,

First of all, impressive work. I never knew that we where able to compile our own shaders. Would it be possible for you to do a bit of a write up of the changes?

I've tried your patch, and probably due to my low shadow settings (I'm running a Core2Potate E6600, 6GB ram and a GTX275, so anything else kills FPS...), and the result sadly is the dreaded banded shading. I suppose this is not a bug.

Unfortunately i have to report the same problem.
Yesterday night i was too impressed by the shadow side to look at the bright side.



It affects the terrain too but only at a distance.


My rig is composed by an AMD 8350 and an AMD Radeon 7970 gigahertz edition with 16.8.3 drivers. Full HD and win 7 64bit.

I have checked some of my 3Ds and the only objects unaffected by the black bands are the 3D sleepers placed as middle object in the loft blueprints.
I'll see if i can find some differences.

Wow, would I be correct in saying your models textures don't currently have the ambient occlusion used within them? The difference between to two shots is amazing because of the difference represented, it's as if you no longer need to worry about baking AO maps to bake textures off anymore.

I'm using 3Dcanvas 7.12, which has no shadow backing option and, even thou i defined a custom shadow map for some of my 3Ds, i never achieved something as good as the SSAO of the modified shader.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

The SSAO aspect does interest me as well. I don't quite understand how it works, but still, interesting stuff. It would solve a lot of situation where you simply can't bake shadows on textures, such as where two assets intersect/meet. This deserves a lot of exposure imho.

[wacampbell]

Its too bad about the banding. I don't see it on my pc, but certainly others are. I think the banding comes from the shadow bias adjustments and is not caused by the AO. I wonder if it would have value for me to release just the A O part of the fix?

[TrabantDeLuxe]

Don't worry, I know there's not much you can do about the banding. I'd love to see the SSAO only bit, and I'm sure others will too.

[JamesLit]

The SSAO would be great to see on its own. I'll have a look myself, and see if I have the shadow banding, too.

[bremen]

Its too bad about the banding. I don't see it on my pc, but certainly others are. I think the banding comes from the shadow bias adjustments and is not caused by the AO. I wonder if it would have value for me to release just the A O part of the fix?

Yes it has value alone.

The SSAO is a base feature in most modern games.

[wacampbell]

For those who are experiencing the banding problem described above,here is a version of the shader that enables SSAO, but reverts out the shadow bias and cascade blending fixes.

http://www3.telus.net/wacampbell/downlo ... ksSSAO.zip



Wayne