Shaders Necessary for Sunlight or not?

Shawn Basnett

Discount Dev
For an upcoming project, we've been thinking about adding in sunlight. Something that would give the game more depth; light shining off of the player, light shining through holes in the wall. Something of the sort. I imagine Shaders are necessary to accomplish this, but I have absolutely no experience with shaders. I've taken a look at the light engines in the marketplace. Being that I'm low on money I was only able to try the freelights extension. This extension looked beautiful in the test project, but i noticed it had only physics based objects in it. I couldn't quite figure a way to implement it into a non physics room. IS this the only way to accomplish this? If not, how exactly would we go about creating a sunlight effect in a non physics room?
 

kamiyasi

Member
For an upcoming project, we've been thinking about adding in sunlight. Something that would give the game more depth; light shining off of the player, light shining through holes in the wall. Something of the sort. I imagine Shaders are necessary to accomplish this, but I have absolutely no experience with shaders. I've taken a look at the light engines in the marketplace. Being that I'm low on money I was only able to try the freelights extension. This extension looked beautiful in the test project, but i noticed it had only physics based objects in it. I couldn't quite figure a way to implement it into a non physics room. IS this the only way to accomplish this? If not, how exactly would we go about creating a sunlight effect in a non physics room?
Shaders could help but are not entirely necceaaary. One common method uses only surfaces and raycasting for lighting and hard shadows. Shaders would be needed for more complex effects like normal mapping.
 

Shawn Basnett

Discount Dev
I think it's actually much easier to just learn how to use shaders than going with raycasting :)
I guess I'l do some more hunting around. I have almost no knowledge on shaders. I guess I'll just have to keep searching :p

Just to clear up, Lighting does not require physics objects, right?
 
Just to clear up, Lighting does not require physics objects, right?
There are lots of different ways to make lighting effects, and none need be related to physics. You'll have to be a little more specific about the exact effects you want. You could browse youtube lighting tutorials and see if anything there catches your eye.
 
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