Dreamcast/bumpmapping

[cloofoofoo]

I remember a while back some newer Dreamcast emulator announced that they now supported bumpmapping and showed how Rayman 2 of all games used it extensively for the levels. Makes me wonder if alot of Dreamcast games used certain features and they simply went unnoticed. Then since allot of people usually say it can't be done on the DC people just don't look for it. I mean I read on another forum how the Dreamcast wouldn't have the power to do real time shadowmapped shadows but then there's a game like Matt Hoffman bmx using it. A middle ground of some bumpmapping maybe the shadowmap and constant motionblur and cross-fades like skies of Arcadia and u got yourself games that would've resembled the other 3 consoles.

Rayman 2 with and without bump:


Video:
https://youtu.be/_4TU7juoiNs

Mat Hoffman bmx shadowmap:

[Anthony817]

Yeah Soul Calibur for sure used some bump mapping on the ground definitely. Some sources say that the Godzilla game did too especially on Godzilla himself.

[cloofoofoo]

Yeah Soul Calibur for sure used some bump mapping on the ground definitely. Some sources say that the Godzilla game did too especially on Godzilla himself.

That would be cool but I remember reading that DC bumpmapping had the limitation of being flat shaded thus not suited for characters or organic things. I wonder if they found a solution to that.

[BlueCrab]

Bumpmapping doesn't perturb the actual geometry of the underlying model, so it is always "flat", so to speak. What bumpmapping does is to perturb the normal vectors of a poygon so as to give it the appearance of bumpiness, while not actually making the underlying geometry any more complex -- it gives the illusion of a polygon that is not flat made out of one that actually is.

Flat shading, on the other hand, means that the normals of a particular polygon are constant throughout. Flat shading and bumpmapping cannot possibly be done on the same polygon, considering bumpmapping works by perturbing normals (in theory anyway).

[cloofoofoo]

Bumpmapping doesn't perturb the actual geometry of the underlying model, so it is always "flat", so to speak. What bumpmapping does is to perturb the normal vectors of a poygon so as to give it the appearance of bumpiness, while not actually making the underlying geometry any more complex -- it gives the illusion of a polygon that is not flat made out of one that actually is.

Flat shading, on the other hand, means that the normals of a particular polygon are constant throughout. Flat shading and bumpmapping cannot possibly be done on the same polygon, considering bumpmapping works by perturbing normals (in theory anyway).

I guess i misremembered something, I remember reading a long time ago something about the lighting being constant across the polygon giving it a flat shaded look not suited for organic models on when using bumpmap the dc. I guess not. Yeah I have basic understanding (used to low polymodel as a hobby. ) of bumpmapping , back when I used to model I fiddled around using a greyscale "heightmap" to get a certain look when lit.

[mrneo240]

There's plenty of bumpmapping examples for DC.

I don't get how it's surprising

[cloofoofoo]

There's plenty of bumpmapping examples for DC.

I don't get how it's surprising

That's not really the case though. Besides the coin in shenmue people generally thought it wasn't used at all. And the fact games like Rayman 2 don't have moving light sources makes it hard to spot. You have other game examples of the technique?

[Nico0020]

Didn't Sturmwind use bumpmapping? I think I remember that being the case.

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[beanboy]

Yeah Soul Calibur for sure used some bump mapping on the ground definitely.

Yep. You can clearly see it, on the floors of Hwang's Silk Road stage, and Kilik's Training ground stage.

Even some of the enviroments, in Evolution: World of Sacred Device and Evolution 2: Far off Promise, clearly have some kinda visible bump mapping. It's also possible, that some gamedevs, could have used painting tricks and cheats, to achieve the bump effect too.

Nice to see someone made a topic on this.

[cloofoofoo]

I went back to f1 racing championship on the dreamcast and replaced what I thought was the bump map for the road and grass just to confirm the game uses bumpmapping . And yes it does, the road and grass became bick like. huh, I guess many games on the dc could be using bumpmapping but we wouldnt know at all because for some reason its not noticeable . Could have been cool to see on character models.

Original:



Changed the bump map to a more noticeable texture: