Down Porting Lighting Environment From MoP/WoD to Cata/LK

[PhilipTNG]

EDIT:// Added 3.3.5a Comparisons at the bottom for the HighMaul Raid map port.

I figured I'd show this here instead of posting it in the random thread.  In Cata and LK, there's two dbc files called LightFloatBand and LightIntBand, these two files were merged into a single file in MoP and WoD.  For quite a while now, ever since Will put out his 5.0.5 to 3.3.5 ADT Down Converter(April 2013), I've asked around if anyone was able to figure out how to convert the LightData.dbc data into the older data for use with the Int and Float dbc files.

A lot of people said it wasn't possible, and some others that are much smarter than me said it may be possible but if you did, it'd be very incomplete...... so I took that as fact and didn't bother with it again for 2 years lol.

I started seriously thinking about it again 3 weeks ago, because some of my friends had brought up the subject again but for their own custom maps they've made in Noggit, Sure they could up-port their ADT's to MoP and WoD, but they can't do their Environment Lighting, then I started thinking about my WoD ADT to LK/Cata ports and how empty they "feel" because of the lack of the intended environment settings.

So to figure out how to up-port the LightInt and LightFloat to LightData, I figured I should probably start by trying to figure out how to downport first, then when that's settled, I'll look into Up Porting. After about 4 days of crushing my variable amount of braincells I have left on this dilemma, I managed to get it working.

So below are Screenshots of the Wandering Isle Pandaren Start Zone in both my Cataclysm 4.0.6a and Draenor 6.0.3 game clients.  For those that don't pay attention to blizzcon events, MoP had it's Lighting algorithm and Texture Rendering systems overhauled as well as being able to use more tileset layers I believe, secondly Tilesets can be scaled and WMOs are able to deform and borrow the textures the terrain's Tilesets. I'll post videos and times to the 2011 blizzcon event where they talk and demonstrate this in more detail.

Comparison of Lighting between My Cata 406 and WoD 603 clients, first showing without light porting:

Without Light Environment porting looks like(at night, this map isn't supposed to go night at all):







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Here are the things I talked about above with changes that blizzard implemented into the game.

Scalable Tilesets(33:30):
https://youtu.be/B7SL8mscXA8?t=2010

WMOs able to deform and use the terrain's tilesets(36:04):
https://youtu.be/B7SL8mscXA8?t=2164

Lighting System Overhaul(36:57):
https://youtu.be/B7SL8mscXA8?t=2217

Which is why these images below are they way they are compared to the WoD Client, and also why My LK Downports don't look as fantastic.













Hope there's actually someone that reads through this instead of just looking at the images, then comments about it and being completely off topic.  Since LK's Light Data is pretty much the same, it'd look like the Cataclysm screenshots for the most part minus the Water and Beefier Anti-Aliasing.

And For WoTLK Comparisons between Non Ported Environment to Ported Environments:

And a close up of the Intended Water Lighting for this map looks much better than without the Environmental porting.

[scott07]

This is amazing, great work!

[PhilipTNG]

This is amazing, great work!

Thanks for checking it out man , much appreciated.  Dunno if I'll do a tutorial on this, it takes time doing it by hand, but it's always the best way to learn since that's how I initially did it anyway.   Though if I do make an explanation for it, I'll have to pick a tiny and easy area to use XD.