Direct3D -> 2D Part 2, Faking Light!!

After figuring out how to rotate 2D sprites using Direct3D (check my other submissions), I wanted to do lighting. After reading some tutorials I gave up, they all used 3D, while I wanted to do 2D. There are other ways of faking light; making tiles in multiple shades at either design time or run time, but they're limited...

So here it is: faked light using Direct3D to simulate 2D! It looks great, runs fast (if you've got a 3D card, my P133 with Voodoo 3 could easily run it, although not on software rendering mode), and allows dynamic setting of light brightness and color.

So how does it work? Easy: it sets the color of a vertex (corner) to the brightness of the light at that specific place, after which Direct3D automatically adjusts the texture!

Some limitations though:

Light might seem choppy when moved (like in the example), but static lights will do much better... the smaller the tiles, the less you'll notice it, but I didn't want to fill the screen with 8x8 sized tiles...
This won't work with multiple lights or multiple colors of lights, you'll need to adjust some algorithms for that to work. I'm working on this problem, if I finish it, I'll post it here offcourse.

Enjoy, and don't forget to leave comments and vote!

(You're free to use this code in your own programs/games, but I would appreciate it if you gave me some credit, thanks!)

Original Author: Mark van Renswoude

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Posted: 2002-06-01
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