Incorrect lighting on class select screen

[loudbytes]

This is what it should look like:

This is what it looks like instead:

[modawan]

Thank you! With a side-by-side comparison it is definitely not a good look.
There is also no background smoke. Effects for smoke seem to be implemented (briefly checked on TAR_M04AA near the crashed escape pod on the lower city). Hopefully this can be resolved by setting chargen scene correctly.

[modawan]

Class selection scene is initialized in ClassSelection::setupClassButton and getCharacterModel.
There is similar code for the main menu: MainMenu::setup3DView and getKotorModel. It lights fine, smoke is present too.

Perhaps something is wrong with cgbody_light model that the class selection uses.

[navarro967]

Just an observation, this seems more like an issue with the PBR renderer doing wonky things to light multipliers. The lighting is much closer to the original screenshot (minus the smoke effect) with the retro renderer.

[modawan]

@navarro967 thanks! Lighting with PBR looks worse than with Retro renderer in most scenes I think. Maybe that is why we still have both. Hopefully we can fix this at some point and keep only one of them.

This is how class selection scene looks with Retro renderer. Note that there is still no smoke effect, but lighting is better:

[modawan]

I think we can ignore PBR issues for now. Retro renderer is how the original engine works, and it should be the default.

PBR needs material properties for everything, and original KOTOR data do not have them. Reone used to add material properties as a mod (see commit 1e807eb, for example), but then PBR was dropped in commit d94bb67, then patched multiple times again, then the whole engine went through a reimplementation phase until it was rolled back for the most part.

In other words, it's complicated. In order to bring PBR back, one needs to fish through git history and re-apply some of the original design if it makes sense. Seedhartha did a lot of work there, screenshots looked good, but I think it is going to be quite tricky to get all parts together again.

[loudbytes]

I agree, I think we should focus on getting the engine to look as close as possible to the game. We can focus on adding prettier renderers once everything else is on par with the original game.

[modawan]

Right. Unfortunately Retro renderer pipeline is also quite broken: issue #82.
Performance is also noticeably worse compared to PBR (debug build).
EDIT: ignore the performance issue, I had compilation running on all cores in the background.

[loudbytes]

I'd be happy to make progress on the renderer, I'll check that issue out after I finish porting to SDL3.