Lights and Shadows

[sojourner]

I hope I don't offend anyone or attract criticism by mentioning some names and making comparisons. My objective is to understand a few things.

I would also like to mention that I am not at all good at the technical terminology when it comes to graphics... yet.

Now to the point:
I have seen Age of Mythology many a time and wondered why the graphics look so pleasing to me - especially the water. Am I right in thinking that the technology used by Megaglest is at par if not better than what AOM was created with?

Some observations I made:
1. The lighting in AOM seems to be either noon or midnight and thus the shadow is always the same. However, the nearly overhead lighting seems to add a shadow that makes the elements on screen pop out better (to my eyes of course)... it looks more 3D to me, even though the shadow is not really very natural -- it does not change with time gradually.
just some links off google:
http://xlinqa.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pxFwrbTHjZb0PQeKDcy3DBt_ICXatzlgtet5bLVRWogJ-jPaXympvz0GtZkFxp4r6LsSFdNZuoEk1cZ4XqFZYOQ/aom-20081209-140337.png
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KRO4jtYDBiI/T19RXLaFUsI/AAAAAAAAZWs/b6UB2iCBxZk/s1600/Age+Of+Mythology2.jpg

2. The lighting in MG seems more like a studio lighting than a day light ... Is it due to less ambiance? Is it due to less brightness ?

3. have AOM resorted to more image based presentation than a more programmatic way of doing things... ? I mean, simplistically speaking, is it like drawing a triangle every time using code vs showing a picture of a triangle directly.

I like megaglest and AOM both.... I am not much of a game play oriented person... I just let the A.I. play and watch   I just get lost in the graphics mostly

[victorj]

I do not know me megaglest have better graphics than this game, everybody says age of empires has better graphics, "discarding the III" but I think the best mg, for my personal reason. These games appear to be 2D rpg for me mg what else seems to be one of those style 3D game rpg third person only with the camera on top. but the worst factors that may leave bad graphically mg, water, shadows are located only at the point where your camera is approximate, but moved away when there are no shadows, and the wind moves the trees ... and this is one of the millions things I wanted to improve on MegaGlet. 

[wciow]

IIRC this was discussed in another thread a while back. Basically the difference between AOM and MG is purely down to superior texture work and good choice of colours. There is no technical reason why you couldn't plug in the models and textures from AOM and have something that looks similarly good with MG's lighting.

[sojourner]

I tried searching the boards in this forum.. but I could not find anything decisive. So I will take it that textures and colors can be improved.
I think I should next search to see why some trees look the way they do... like paper trees. While some others are pretty good.

[-Archmage-]

Maybe I can help:

The picture below is a wireframe of a tree model from a game.

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[img]http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/images/b/b7/Low_polytree2.jpg[/img]
You may see a 'flat' or 'papery' effect because 3D models are made out of flat faces. All those leafs you see are in the texture, and the face is usually angled right so it appears to have more depth.

(click to show/hide)

Some higher detail plants:

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[img]http://files.turbosquid.com/Preview/2010/12/04__14_30_00/banana3%20wireframe%20sml.jpg58580735-fd89-4410-868a-8e95d04a2706Larger.jpg[/img]

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[img]http://files.turbosquid.com/Preview/Content_2009_10_13__12_12_21/OakTree1Render1.jpg07f8380d-1518-4132-9016-6446adbda3f2Larger.jpg[/img]
[img]http://files.turbosquid.com/Preview/2010/12/04__15_30_00/OakTree1Wireframe.jpgf85f9c24-dd19-4b00-a9d3-6eb19cab1f70Larger.jpg[/img]