Realistic flare texture

[gtpdzbiz]

just did a new texture for light flares, should be more subtle than the original one~

P.S. Thanks Mr.Whippy for the new lambo~

 

[Alexander Knoll]

THX dude, looks great!

 

[FiftyOrange]

This looks far better and is more realistic for clear air. Thanks.

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Thx gt,

About flares, Shift, FM3 & other games use to create a bunch of flares, mostly on the rear lights to simulate 'somehow' the leds.
Racer cars could look better, the only pain, is 'transferring' the flare positions in car.ini. So for example, a round rear light could be made of 10 to 20 little planes...Didn't try this yet, but I'll definitely try, that means x2 so 40 custom flares to set for the back side.

Is there any limit for creating flares ?

Was also thinking, to put them inside the car to the display gauges & all the other buttons on top of a light dof which illuminates also the cockpit & other wanted parts. I guess somehow then, the light.tga from car.ini should be edited too...

 

[KS95]

I agree with what you said about positioning in the car.ini. It's a huge pain when you have multiple lights or LEDs. I don't know how there could be an easier way of doing it though.

 

[QuadCoreMax]

I agree with what you said about positioning in the car.ini. It's a huge pain when you have multiple lights or LEDs. I don't know how there could be an easier way of doing it though.

I create a locator or just a simple box at origin & then move it to the desired position (near the lights, HUD...). Then it's just a matter of reading from your 3D app the x/y/z values & swapping the y/z values + adding or subtracting the y offset, if there's one in your body {} or graphics {}.

Was thinking about a real Racer Blender/3DS Max/Maya plugin that sets all the flares, the aero, the cams, the steeringwheel, everything really...Would be so handy !

Hope it helps...

 

[KS95]

That would be easier.. except I'm a zmod user (sorry, but I work best in it) and I'm not sure if you can even find out the x/y/z values in it.

And yes, that plugin would be brilliant, is it actually do-able?

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Theorically yes...

& yes I know 2 good programmers from Crytek, I'll get in touch to see if they can help out, they created the Maya plugin (MayaCGF) for it & is still in development there...on crymod.com.

 

[Mr Whippy]

There are lots of visual effects that we are starting to maybe mix up.

Lens flare is reflections of the lenses themselves inside the lens. This is caused by light that doesn't pass through the lens properly (ie, through all the elements), and so illuminates intermediate elements and they are reflected in other elements etc etc... ie, the sun or a bright light just outside of the lenses field of view.



Then you have glare. The 'flare' on our headlights is actually glare. With an ideal lens and sensor and optical properties, glare would be super smooth, and, assuming we had a really high resolution 'bloom' map in Racer, then the look of headlights with just the bloom map would be correct to real life with an ideal lens/sensor etc.

However, real lenses are not ideal. We have vignetting, distortion, chromatic aberration, and primarily for the 'flare' look, we have the cameras aperture...
A lens with six blades for example, with rounded edges, will give a soft 6 star shape to the bloom. An eight bladed aperture, with straight edges, would tend to give a sharp star with 8 sides.

The 'flare' posted above is probably more for what you might expect from a camera with a relatively non-uniform aperture shape.

In theory, if you squint your eyes while looking at lights, you get a random looking bloom/glare with spikes coming out top and bottom, due to the two horizontal blades across your view (eye lids)


Afaik, lens flare is generated more when the light is out of view but pumping light into the lens. It's probably still evident when light enters the lens properly, and it is heavily over-exposing the image (otherwise you expose down and the lens flares will be much less evident)

The bloom map is done fairly accurately now. Ideally what we need to do is process the bloom map appropriately.

Maxwell Render uses an obstruction or glare map to process the bloom in the scene to make a soft blob look like a cool six sided glare, or whatever you want.
They even provide an 'eye' glare map, so you get the random scattering caused by the eyelids and eye lashes etc.

What Racer NEEDS to do, is have camera types. Each one should use it's own fs_filter, which is set up with it's own properties for blurring, blooming, glare map adjustments, auto exposure speed etc... to better simulate different cameras, or eyes as is the case.


Right now everything is a compromise.


However, to get onto topic properly, the 'flare' map provided by Quadcoremax is ultimately a better all-round compromise, as it looks ok for what you might get with your eye, but also has enough of a look to look correct for what you might see with a camera!

The default one is very 'HQ SLR lens look', but doesn't look anything like an eye glare pattern, or a cheaper camera pattern.


Dave

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Is there any limit for creating flares ?

Yeah sure, I'll answer my own question since nobody knows....

I've tested on my updated F430 GTC car with 72 flares (2 front, 4 brake + 2x32 rear)...haha
At 60 it's over, so I lost time, at least I know now...

Actually speaking, I've implemented 2 FR, 2 BR + 2x18 rear lights, hehe !
Someone else, driving with that amount of 'leds' ?

I'll post later pictures...it's looking always better !