Techdemo vegetation

Discuss artwork in all of its forms here, from level design to GUI button themes. New MODs planning, work-in-progress and other samples are welcome in this forum as well.
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Kai
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Post by Kai » 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..
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Thrawn
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Post by Thrawn » 2006-04-23, 17:43

Unbelievable, first of all, to let the kid out I'll post smilieys to express my current feelings:

:groupwave1: :groupwave2: :up: :hiding: :thx: :coolp: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :sailor: :captain: :jester: :cop: :nerd: :smartass:

Well thanks for your critics. I'm always open to your constructive critics, they really push me behind my limits over and over again and the results are just awesome - don't hestitate to mention them, please :).

1. I had a look at the model and with tears ;) I had to get rid of some polys. Right now the model isn't that beautyful anymore, but when it is surrounded by 100 other plants, nobody will notice XD

2. I also got rid of some unnecessary polygons, the plant doesnt't look that natural now anymore.

3. I got the friggin awesome idea to use the TwoSided keyword in my cmat - the consequence - only half the polys necessary. ^^ As a consequence, I can also rework the bush models and reduce their polycounts by the factor of 2 :D

The result: My farn now only has 40 polygons!

Here is it in it's full beauty:
Picture 1 Picture 2

As a result, the other LoD models just need 16 and 8 polygons ;D Maybe even less, I'll try some stuff ^^

Here is the highest LOD model as ase file for you to have a look at:
Download

---------------

OK @ Carsten: I'll try to create additional farn versions with less leaves and I'm going to try the alphablend keyword out!
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Kai
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Post by Kai » 2006-04-23, 18:32

Ahh okay now i know why your model was so overwhightend ^^
You did 2 sided polys manually XD

No need for that, the "2 sided" tag will enable you to see both sides of a plant !
Okay so now that you fixed so much of the polys, i think you see what changes the difference ;)
My idea would be to spend some more leafs or to change the leafsurface again .. Its your model, and just do what you think would be the best !
So far i really like the model, and its okay to give some more natural bending. Try to split again vertical a leaf but not completly maybe only a half (hope you understand what i mean )
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Thrawn
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Post by Thrawn » 2006-04-23, 18:37

Kai wrote:Try to split again vertical a leaf but not completly maybe only a half (hope you understand what i mean )
Yeah, I already did that before but was afraid that the polycount still would be too high. I'm going to do that again!

****EDIT***:

Done, polycount is 96 O_o

Really looks much better, you can't really see it on the screen, but the effect in motion is HUGE.

Click me :)
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Thrawn
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Post by Thrawn » 2006-11-11, 15:40

2 new bushes, which use the same model as this one.

:)

New bush 1

:/

New bush 2
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