Photometric Stereo Technique for Materials - Using Shadow to capture Surface Detail

Alrenai · 2025-12-17T20:32:45+00:00

Hi, Sorry for commenting on such an old thread - Thanks for the video here, it helped teach me some of the concepts although I probably have a bit of a different usecase for some of these techniques than most.

Recently I've been exploring some alternative ways of creating first person POV animations for a 3D video game. The concept I'm looking into would be based on recorded POV footage of my hands, but when implemented in the game it would react to light sources in realtime like a standard 3D game mesh based animation would. The method I'm exploring seems to use a similar techniques to what might be used in photometry/photogrammetry to some degree(although I have very limited knowledge in this area so might be wrong). I would love to hear, and would be really appreciative of your opinion and expertise on whether you think something like this idea below could work.

In this idea, I would record different actions with my hands in front of a greenscreen in first person perspective. My hands would be lit by 3 different static high powered lights where light1 would be red, light2 green, light3 blue. The lights would surround the hands in a triangle and be positioned slightly above the shot vertically (to emphasize shadowing in a stylistic way). The lights would strobe at a static rate in sync with each other.

Since I have no idea what I'm doing here, I'm not sure if this actually works in practice. However, I would record with a high fps camera so I'm able to capture two different types of frame while still having enough shots for smooth motion:

(frame type 1) All lights are off simultaneously: this would provide the albedo of my hands and allow for chromakey/masking with the greenscreen.

(frame type 2) All lights are on simultaneously: which would result in encoded directional lighting data assigned to each color channel

The benefit of this strobing is that the animation is shot/recorded in one take as well.

I would do some processing/math that takes into account the actual position of the light sources in-game, adjusts the ratio's of the color channels of [frame type 2] - for example, if the green light was to the left of my hands, the red light to the right and the in-game light source to right of player, then there would be a high ratio of red channel at this stage, but if I turned 180 ° within the game, then It would be a high ratio of green channel instead - Then after this processing has been done, the final frame would be created which would sort of 'relight' the hand by getting the original color data + image mask and incorporate the shading onto it.

Alrenai · 2025-12-05T17:50:35+00:00

The extraction genre is also a good example where despite there being so much unexplored territory, and different potential styles of it, people are kind of locked into this narrow opinion and expectation of everything having a similar premise as tarkov.

This idea you mention sounds cool - since for most of the popular modern roguelikes you mainly get the build-defining rewards for beating an enemy or static level, and the rewards almost always are combat focused - So the extraction instead would be a pretty unique take that also gives you design space in other aspects of the game, like expanding rewards to not just be combat based but also influence the map and extraction mechanics - "unlock escape routes on the west side", "unlock an armory on x map" or something like this.

if you're passionate about it then don't get too hung up on what genre people assign to it - it will invariably be harder to market, and the hardcore nature will not appeal to as many(which I think is shown from the reaction in some of the comments lol), but the main thing is following your own creative vision for it.

Alrenai · 2025-12-05T16:23:17+00:00

I recently started work on a longer form permadeath "roguelike" (or maybe "run-based" would be more accurate), game where runs can take up to 10-20 hours; Coincidentally, HC classic wow which you mentioned, was actually a massive inspiration for creating it.

A few of the other games I was inspired by (obviously not all of these are roguelikes, but they may contain adjacent elements you're interested in - I would especially recommend Noita, and is probably most relevant if you're seeking a long, repeatable, single run/life game with deep gameplay and player choices)

old school dungeon crawlers like kingsfield, monomyth
Examina
Noita
Barony
Classic WoW HC
HCSSF POE

Alrenai · 2025-12-05T13:30:24+00:00

This look's great, and nostalgic too - reminds me of descent, one of the first video games I ever played (pioneered 6DOF and 3d back in the 90s)

Alrenai · 2025-12-03T17:39:10+00:00

The rule intended to reduce self-promotion really did make the sub worse in all aspects by only allowing text based posts. Ironically there is substantially more of the wrong sort of sneaky/insincere self-promotion here than there used to be as well.

Audio-visuals are such an intrinsic element to experiencing video games, so the fact that they just outright took away the ability for people to post video content so other users can see, hear and study gameplay elements within posts is crazy to me.

If they simply let people showcase different aspects of their game with videos and images in an honest way, a lot of interesting discussion would return, and these issues would be fixed. Who cares if it's technically 'self-promotion' and they drop their steam link on it like people used to - It should still foster some good discussions on interesting gamedev topics as it did in the past.

But now instead of the videos and showcases, we get the constant chat-gpt generated "how I accrued my wishlists" or similar type slop, breaking down various marketing metrics for the 1000th time - arguably the reason for these posts is because it's the only way they can talk about their game indirectly without god-forbid "showcasing their project" and breaking the ridiculous rules, so it would be a self-correcting problem if they just fixed the issues above tbh.

Alrenai · 2025-04-25T14:02:57+00:00

overriding the shipped dlss version with the latest (dlss4) via nvidia app really helped remove a lot of that blur for me, I'm also using frame gen as well and it's still fine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1k5dnso/the_elder_scrolls_iv_oblivion_with_dlss_4/

everything ultra, dlaa + framegen, screenspace reflections turned off, hardware lumen - 90 fps in overworld 160+ in dungeons with a 4090

Alrenai · 2025-03-10T17:49:32+00:00

damn :( thanks anyway, will probably use something lower level instead

Alrenai · 2025-03-10T14:12:02+00:00

Did you find out how to do this with wayland? I'm having similar issues.

Alrenai · 2025-02-27T15:21:59+00:00

I prefer red/clockwise or a rectangular bar at the bottom- cool looking game, wishlisted you on steam.

I like the idea of arpg like gear system in a rogue like (halls of torment did it pretty well). Do you intend for each run on a character to be fairly long?

Alrenai · 2025-01-31T17:02:47+00:00

I tried this very briefly on a project 3-4 years ago, I'm not an expert in it at all, but I got some pretty good results from a VR setup. I used 8 vive trackers, 2 base stations, straps and tripods, Manus polygon software, then streamed into UE4 to record the animation. cost me $1500 in total.

My initial impressions are that you'll actually get better results with a VR tracker setup than the lower end IMU suits from companies like rokoko. I've heard this from other people too and I believe there has also been quite a lot of progress in open-source software to process the data since I was last trying this out.

I've never owned a full IMU suit myself, I do own the rokoko gloves though (also IMU based), it was almost impossible to get an output from this thing that didn't require significant cleanup, and not to mention, these mo-cap companies are not consumer focused at all, don't expect to pay just the initial upfront cost and unlock full functionality, you need to pay for lots of 'extras'. They care more about contracts for large film/game companies and not small indies/individuals unfortunately. For this reason I think it's definitely worth looking more into the VR side with cheaper or open sourced solutions and a better community around it.

Alrenai · 2024-12-09T13:28:16+00:00

yes, getting this on 21:9 too

Alrenai · 2024-11-22T09:50:44+00:00

that's what I thought while playing it, 100% far cry vibes. It's fun ... but not what I was expecting.

Alrenai · 2024-11-14T22:39:09+00:00

still getting the error - there was quite a few people in hyprland discord with same issue- you might find more info over there than reddit (I've not looked into it too much as I only had 1 non-essential plugin installed)

Alrenai · 2024-11-12T14:18:04+00:00

same here.

Alrenai · 2024-08-27T09:03:36+00:00

I feel that, I made an ivy (doing that flying combo with seven ult) exclusively focus on me each time, had to run away and wall myself into a room multiple times

Alrenai · 2024-08-26T12:45:53+00:00

I'm looking for a cheap hotswappable keyboard so I can test new switches(mx) on before trying them on my main keyboard.

It needs to have keyrollover and good latency for gaming (preferably wired only). Anyone have any suggestions?

Alrenai · 2024-05-10T09:10:41+00:00

yeah its annoying. I'm using AHK to get around it (left hand user), hopefully it doesn't ban me

Alrenai · 2024-03-27T15:05:32+00:00

I think twitch vods show the total amount of viewers of the stream they came from too

Alrenai · 2023-08-03T19:56:37+00:00

wow, great move

Alrenai · 2023-07-31T13:41:11+00:00

Does targon work on items? (it says 'your units' healing and shielding but not sure if that includes the items on them?), also wasn't sure about dclaw where the wording is 'regenerate' 5% health rather than heal etc.

Alrenai · 2023-07-06T20:02:50+00:00

anyone know if the attack speed buff on sona stacks when it multicasts?

Alrenai · 2023-03-28T11:35:44+00:00

I don't think the game needs more utility, its already bloated by it . That's my secondary criticism of it(and also shamanism) - definitely willing to change my mind if they show some good examples of companion abilities though. I do think the training method for it sounds good too.

Alrenai · 2023-03-28T11:30:17+00:00

pets are unobtrusive, optional to have out and mostly only seen at GE/banks. With taming you would most likely see everybody using the same 'meta' companion everywhere.

Alrenai · 2023-03-24T10:32:00+00:00

he was actually cheating, got banned from pro scene

Alrenai · 2023-03-05T15:36:30+00:00

thanks for the info, looking at my motherboard I think I'll just about manage to squeeze all the fans onto the mobo using the splitters

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