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Rage Tech Questions -spoilers possible!-

polycounter lvl 15
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Skiffy polycounter lvl 15
Hello everyone,

I did not see a thread yet talking about the final resulting visuals for Rage yet and the tech behind it so I thought I would start one. I would be curious to hear from some of the actual ID software artists that might be lurking on the forum as well.

Would I be correct in assuming that most of the normal maps on the environment assets get removed in the end after lighting is calculated? This is for the static assets. I suspect this because I don't see specular highlights changing at all on all the wet or slimy assets. The sewers and nasty mutant slime nests made me realize this.

That frees up TONS of texture space. Worst case 3 passes are removed from most assets if they use Normals, Full color specular and Gloss. So right there you gain 3 times more texture memory for the flat baked texture maps.

This can work perfectly well in the end if you don't want dynamic specular reflection. The lighting is baked in on a per pixel level in relation to all the textures they are applied too which makes for some lovely crisp shadowing.

But yea so I suspect that for the most part we are just seeing what amounts to diffuse only textures with all the specular and shadowing baked in from the original assets. Looks pretty dang awesome expect for none reactive specular highlights.

I could imagine a game using this system using pure diffuse only painted textures on everything. Make it look like a Miyazaki movies full 3d backgrounds... :)

Look forward to more tech musings or some factual responses from any Art folk working at ID. Congrats to all because I think the game looks AMAZING. I cant walk for more then 10 seconds without having to fully study and scour every scene I pass through.
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