Good day, commanders!
We hope you enjoyed our previous article about the game! We’re now ready to reveal more details regarding various graphical enhancements we’ve newly implemented in our GEM RTS graphics engine. We'll delve deeper into the capabilities of PBR (Physically Based Rendering) and try to explain why it was added to Men of War II in this devlog.
Physically Based Rendering, materials, and textures
Thanks to this technology and fast internal mathematical calculations, we can now render objects in the game more realistically by simulating the real-time flow of light.
Let's focus more on one of the internal methods included in Physically Based Rendering (or PBR), namely the special Cook-Torrance lighting model. In earlier versions of Men of War II and previous games in the series, our team used one of the earliest technologies on the market for reflections and highlights — the Phong reflection model, which allowed adding a substantial amount of realism to any scene. Although it made the overall picture look quite good, especially plastic objects, the technology became outdated and had several significant drawbacks we wanted to improve with Men of War II. However, any such changes and the introduction of new technologies take a lot of time and resources; but we decided to do it, based on your feedback and suggestions after the last Open Beta test.
So, what new possibilities does the new lighting system bring? We are sure that fans of new technologies, especially mod creators, are asking this question. Physically Based Rendering has four components: indirect diffuse lighting, indirect reflection, direct diffuse lighting, and direct reflection. Each introduces different features that help make the image more vibrant, realistic, and beautiful (from accurately modeling the reflection of surrounding objects and the angle of incident light to reflecting surface roughness and realistic weather phenomena).
Nevertheless, lighting can only work properly with the right materials and textures. For example, check the barrel models below: on the left is an old model, albeit with a high degree of detail but without innovations and improvements; compare it to the one on the right, created with new materials and textures processed using PBR. Their differences are easy to notice, even for an untrained eye:
But what does this all mean? In short, the old (and now rather outdated) Phong reflection model gave us and all modders only very few options to work with in terms of tweaking the lighting effects. By implementing PBR, all lighting in the game can be fine-tuned much more easily and produces better, more beautiful visuals (including ambient occlusion and much more).
[previewyoutube=-a99KxH-ZU8;full][/previewyoutube]
Updated Water and Aquatic Spaces
As we mentioned in the previous article, we managed to implement various graphical improvements related to all water spaces and for modders, a complete set of tools to edit them with. Now, any mod creator can change almost everything related to water using a convenient internal "brush," which is capable of drawing any water spaces without struggling with the original, quite cumbersome and difficult to use tools all long-time GEM engine modders are familiar with. Also, we have added more water-related settings: for example, you can change the wave size, clarity level, flow speed, direction, color, and much more exactly to your liking. You can even give the river a unique flow route, taking into account all the irregularities and bends of the landscape.
All this and more allows us to make Men of War II the most beautiful game in the series. More detailed information about the changes with various technical data, will be available in a separate manual that we will share with everyone in our beloved modding community.
However, we do not plan to stop here, and we will have much more to tell and show you about the innovations we have been working on in the upcoming articles. If you haven't yet, wishlist and follow the game so that you don't miss any of our future announcements.
See you on the battlefield, commanders!
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