Posted: 2006-04-23, 15:45
The "lod" thing:
In most cases Lod can be done simply manually, on more complex oganic shapes like a playermodel, a function will do good work.
But you always have to work with the same texture, which is the one single leaf from the top.
Its nearly imposible to merge multiple leafs into just one for the lod, you can't do this with one single UV. So at least one poly or one quad is essencial for a leaf.
But Facry uses another trick to speed things up:
Between lowest lod step and "blendout" is a simple bilboard version of the plant. Im not sure if this is precompiled or saved as a additional texture, or created on the fly.
I think its precompiled, so when the level is loaded (which takes quite while) all models and lod steps are loaded and it generates a simple billboard version of every different plant model while loading.
I found no bilboard textures of plants inside all folders, which seems to strenghten my idea..
In most cases Lod can be done simply manually, on more complex oganic shapes like a playermodel, a function will do good work.
But you always have to work with the same texture, which is the one single leaf from the top.
Its nearly imposible to merge multiple leafs into just one for the lod, you can't do this with one single UV. So at least one poly or one quad is essencial for a leaf.
But Facry uses another trick to speed things up:
Between lowest lod step and "blendout" is a simple bilboard version of the plant. Im not sure if this is precompiled or saved as a additional texture, or created on the fly.
I think its precompiled, so when the level is loaded (which takes quite while) all models and lod steps are loaded and it generates a simple billboard version of every different plant model while loading.
I found no bilboard textures of plants inside all folders, which seems to strenghten my idea..