Engine with best lighting?

[IKG]

What engine has the best dynamic lighting around? I'm looking for something under 1k if possible. I know this may sound like a noobish question, but I just want opinions. It's harder than it seems to find an engine with decent lighting (realistic at that).

[dave_]

It is a noobish question, showing you don't really understand what a game engine is. So I'd hold off getting an engine just yet and perhaps ask a better question like, "what makes lighting look good in a game?" (even if it is a bit open ended), then once you understand the reasons you can identify an engine that fills your needs.

Although at 1k you may as well be spending nothing, open source engines are much better than any of the alternatives at that price range.

[GroundKeeper]

If it is realitic I would go for photonmapping. It will give you about 1 fpm (Frame Per Minute) but thats the price of realistic.

If you are more into real-time rendering the question still requires a lot of parameters to give a good discussion.

Start with: number of polygons, wanted physical aspects (hdr, refraction, opacity, material properties), shadows (and to what price), soft shadows, reflections, real-time vs. realistic, ...

Simply put one need a lot of parameters to determine what kind of engine you want. And to an high degree the parameters determines with what one can cheat.

[IKG]

It is a noobish question, showing you don't really understand what a game engine is.

I've worked with handfuls of engines over the years. I started off modding games and then moved onto programming. Ever since I've experimented with dozens of different engines, languages, and more, so you shouldn't say something that ignorant just because I'm asking a question for fun. Read my post again and you'll see that all I wanted was some opinions since there's so many other engines out there I haven't even touched yet..

I've been developing small games for years and have done my share of researching. I'm not asking how lights work and the different kinds of lighting technologies (I already know of them). All I wanted was some opinions.

[TheNut]

Any engine that supports shaders is the best engine you'll ever find for producing dynamic lighting. Using OpenGL as an example, creating and starting the shader system requires less than a dozen lines of code. Pretty neat eh? =)

Take a look at Ogre3D (http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?set_albumName=album07&option=com_gallery&Itemid=55&include=view_album.php). All the shots you see there that make you say "ohhh" and "ahhh" is nothing more than a couple shaders doing their magic. Here's the secret recipe.

per object (pre-calculated)
- 1 normal map (aka: diffuse map)
- 1 specular map [optional]

per render (post-processing effects, calculated at runtime, can be slow)
- 1 shadow map
- 1 bloom/softening effect (can be done on the GPU or CPU, optional)
- Add a dash of haze & flare to each light source (again, can be done on the GPU at the same time you calculate the bloom)

For a finally, add global illuminated texture maps to your static objects. Dynamic lighting means jack if if the world it coexists with uses... *shutter*... vertex lighting.

[greenhybrid]

If it is realitic I would go for photonmapping. It will give you about 1 fpm (Frame Per Minute) but thats the price of realistic.

No. Photonmapping is a biased technique, it produces images which look realistic, but they are not in the discipline of photometry. For pure realism the current state of the art is e.g. Metropolis Light Transport or Energy-Redistributing-Path-Tracing on top of a robust Bi-Directional Path Tracer (both are not real-time-compatible on most available hardware, for sure).

Path-Tracing might also be used for texture baking (generating realistic and stunning light maps).

Photon Mapping (which roots lie in Ray Tracing) is actually more performant than only 1 fpm (but that depends on hardware and on the implementation).


OP: What do you mean with "1k"? One 1k lines of code, or 1k executable? (At least the latter one might be impossible)

[Mihail121]

OP: What do you mean with "1k"? One 1k lines of code, or 1k executable? (At least the latter one might be impossible)

How about $1,000 ?

[greenhybrid]

mkay, makes a clue ;)

[Cipher3D]

Here's a fairly old but comprehensive list of game engines:

http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html. Some of the stuff is pretty neat...

Irrilicht is neat as well.