Is the shadowVolume still necessary ?

[zgmrvn 95]

Hi,

I have noticed that since few Arma updates most of the objects shadows are based on the resolutionLOD.

Is the shadowVolume still necessary ?

[Jackal326 1181]

I can't say I have noticed this, however, if true then I would say yes for the sake of performance still create a shadow lod. A low-resolution shadow lod is going to be better on performance than the game calculating shadows from the first resolution lod.

[zgmrvn 95]

Here is a comparaison, as i said, not all objects' shadows are rendered with resolutionLOD.

Also, it's only supposition since i'm not an RV4 engine devloper nor 3D rendering expert.



Looks like it's based on Alpha. Of course, it's not really noticable on box-like objects but you can see the difference on the trees

 

Hope for a dev explaination/confirmation

 

[da12thMonkey 1943]

Doesn't mean they're not using optimized shadowVolume LODs meshes instead of the full resolution LOD.

 

It just means they're using shadow buffer for all terrain objects now for the sake that the new lower resolution shadow buffer performs better than CPU shadows. This was mentioned in a SITREP, and they explained why weapons, vehicles etc. still use GPU stencil shadows.

 

Shadowbuffer can be generated from LODs specified with the sbSource named property

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Oxygen_2_-_Manual#Properties(scroll down a bit)

 

Trees etc. used hybrid shadows to generate shadowbuffer for the foliage alphas even if they have a shadow LOD but the hybrid property generally isn't used on objects unless they have a specific need for it. Old example of using hybrid: https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/104643-camo-net-shadow-lod-problems/

[lappihuan 178]

 

 

One change in 1.56 is to disable stencil shadows in the Video Options, and to replace the lowest quality setting with lower quality shadow buffer shadows. Programming Lead OndÅ™ej Martinák shines a light on this tweak: "Stencil shadows are still present in the game for certain objects (characters and vehicles). The reason is that they look better in some circumstances such as first-person view. We have removed the option to force stencil shadows for all objects as it didn't help performance nor quality (which it did in the past). This removal also allows us to automatically generate shadow LODs (using shadow maps) for objects. This lets us speed up building art production, and might help community terrain creators in a similar way."

 

https://dev.arma3.com/post/sitrep-00143

 

Sounds more like they actually generate a shadowLOD, so Artists do not have to bother with it.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

Sounds more like they actually generate a shadowLOD, so Artists do not have to bother with it.

 

The way I'm beginning to interpret this from the wording used is that BIS do generate optimised shadowVolume LODs (i.e. they're still kind of needed for the sake of performance rather than using complex res LOD geometry to generate the ingame shadow) but because they are using shadowbuffer all the time on terrain objects and not stencil shadows, they merely don't need to carefully (manually) generate meshes that are closed, sharp, triangulated and closely follow the geometry of the visual LODs.

 

Automated optimisation tools in 3D software are often rather bad at generating clean, closed topology since they merge verts. But IIRC shadowbuffer has never really shown up problems like this that you get on stencil shadows when a mesh isn't properly closed and triangulated. So it's probably easier to optimise a mesh for shadowbuffer than it is for stencil shadows.

 

But still could do with a proper explanation in terms from the art team or something.

[x3kj 1247]

what i've interpreted from the article is that they disabled the option for the user to enforce stencil shadows, since assetts no longer all have stencil shadow LOD.

While on the subject of ShadoLOD - Does anybody know if Shadowvolume Gunner/Driver/Cargo/Commander View is still working in Arma 3? I couldn't get it to work at all, maybe i'm missing something...