Talk:Portal 2

Global shadowmapping

There's still baked shadowing in a lot of the videos, I'm calling bluff on that. --Legend286 18:19, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The videos aren't representative of the game. Look at actual screens and you'll see the shadow maps everywhere. --TomEdwards 18:23, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The screenshots look like they're from SFM, and in the gel picture you can clearly see lightmap artifacts.--Legend286 18:27, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Allow me to show you that they're merely projectedtextures/prebaked. Both are in source, except one is an official game, the other is a mod.--ZombieDawgs 22:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

ZombieDawgs; just an FYI, the right one doesn't use a single line of (shader)code related to proj. textures... --Biohazard 09:44, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

This is what I can say so far from a BSP file of the leaked Xbox 360 version:

• Static lightmaps are still widely used (light, light_spot, light_environment and even brushes with blocklight textures)
• Dynamic lighting is realized with multiple env_projectedtextures, like in Alien Swarm.

--Barracuda 04:15, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Very odd. Every screen that's been released (and which includes any direct lighting) clearly has shadow mapping. Perhaps the entities are generated during the compile process? Or maybe the Xbox couldn't take the strain and had to have more static stuff? There's no way it's all done by hand on the PC. --TomEdwards 11:04, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it could be performance optimization... sp_a4_finale4 has 9 x env_projectedtexture, 25 x light and 19 x light_spot. From what I've seen from a video, the projected textures seem to "replace" the static light in some scenes on close distance. --Barracuda 15:17, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The picture in the left could just be a light_spot entity, not projected_texture. From what I've collected, all of the "offices" in Portal test chambers used very bright light_spots, not dynamic lighting/projected_textures, yet they can achieve the same effect as shown by the casted shadow of the window pane. —Mattshu 12:25, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

It turns out that map isn't in the game. What is in is practically all shadow mapped. I saw two direct static lights, one of which was in the extreme distance and the other of which was in an obscure corner of a huge vault. However, I don't recall seeing any omnidirectional lights at all. --TomEdwards 13:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

But in the end all shadowmapping is based on heavily improved env_projectedtextures, using a perspective projection at all times. Lightmaps still play an important role (for gel anyway!). Just use stuff like r_flashlightbrightness 0 to see what is shadowmapping and what is not if you can't tell otherwise. Also I think there never is a situation where more than one is drawn at the same time, a lot of trig makes sure of that. I would presume they might project now during the final pass to safe lotsa drawcalls, but this would limit them very much to one at a time. On the other hand the filter is very neat now, maybe something like hardware biliniear depthmap filtering in conjuntion with pcf and no dithering anymore... --Biohazard 13:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Source SDK + Portal 2

So I may be calling out a little too early for something like this, but when is it expected to allow map editing for Portal 2? This might even be possible now, I haven't done any research. I just noticed Portal 2 isn't showing up in the game list in my Source SDK tool. —Mattshu 03:39, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

It will probably the same as for L4D/L4D2/AS: SDK comes out a few weeks/months after release of the game. I don't think there's an exact ETA yet. --Barracuda 07:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Opening map.bsp runs the game, but not the map?

Attempting to run .bsp files will open Portal 2, but it won't load the map like it was meant to do (File Types dialog in Windows shows BSP files are set up to run: "F:\steam\steamapps\common\portal 2\portal2.exe" "%1"). Maybe it should be "+map %1"? Either way, when I try changing it, it resets every time Portal 2 runs. Is this happening for anybody else? —Mattshu 00:17, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

That's always happened. If you are desperate you can create a non-broken launch command that the engine doesn't stomp on in Regedit. I prefer to just use the console... --TomEdwards 21:12, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Did Half-Life 2 do the same thing? I just remembered that bsp icons were HL2 logos, but I never tried running them —Mattshu 04:49, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

How were the 2d commercials made?

Title says it all. I want to know how I can make a portal 2 style "bendy" animation.

This is not the right place to ask. But just for your sake: the little figure is a 3d model. All of the things in those videos are models, even if they appear to be flat.

Portal2 has the bendy model in it, for the ingame map editor. But its not the same fully rigged version used for the videos.

for the videos they most likely just made a scene in maya (or whatever tool they used) and then just animated their models on it.

--MrFunreal (talk) 08:39, 22 April 2021 (PDT)