Few Quick Questions

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Varine
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Few Quick Questions

Post by Varine » 2010-12-14, 11:55

Hey I'm Varine, I'm new and I really need to leave and get on a plane pretty soon and don't have a lot of time to do more research, but basically I'm looking for an engine for an FPS project that me and a few others are working on and I have a couple questions that I didn't see much about in my quick run through the documentation and need to know and it would just be nice to have the information when I get back (so sorry if these are answered somewhere obvious).

So the first is I believe I saw normal maps listed in the features list or something, what about other techniques like occlusion and parallax?

I also so that physics was being integrated at some point, so I'm guessing that ragdoll physics aren't implemented in the current version. So would it be possible to use a third party plugin, such as Bullet or whatever that one's called? Can't remember....

And what's the 3D engine like? Is it very limited? We're estimating between .5 to 2-2.5 million tris on the screen, likely most of the time between .5 to 1 million or so. I know this has a lot to do with hardware, but will the engine itself have issues rendering this much? How does it deal with terrain and occlusion?
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Kai
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Re: Few Quick Questions

Post by Kai » 2010-12-14, 17:18

I'll try to answer that but Carsten may add more specific information about it ;)
So the first is I believe I saw normal maps listed in the features list or something, what about other techniques like occlusion and parallax?
So far the default material system supports map types for diffuse, spec, glow/ambient, normal, hight/bump and alpha.

Occlusion is either a post processed effect, like in most current modern games a screenspace based calculation. Or can be "baked" inside the diffuse map for example, however this is no dynamic approach.

Post processing effects are currently not implemented but we talked about them of course. So far, other elements have higher priority, like the model editor.

Same goes for parallax mapping which, in my opinion, is not the best techniqe for a texelbased displacement. Cone stepped mapping is far better in terms of quality. I guess its not hard to add it to the material setup, but im no coder ;)
So would it be possible to use a third party plugin, such as Bullet or whatever that one's called?
As far as i know, that is already done, the infrastructure to provide support for bullet physics is there, im not sure what the current state of that implementation is.

In order to use it in detail, someone needs to add and adjust parameters on their own. Same goes for Ragdoll, it requires the artists to attach the Ragdoll setup to the custom character. There is no native ragdoll setup so far.
And what's the 3D engine like? Is it very limited? We're estimating between .5 to 2-2.5 million tris on the screen, likely most of the time between .5 to 1 million or so. I know this has a lot to do with hardware, but will the engine itself have issues rendering this much?
That is some kind of an inaccurate question, of what issues do you speak ?
The limit is based on the hardware itself, the framerate you want to maintain as well as the resolution you would like to have.

The engine itself can handle that many polygons, as almost any card can. However it is more than just polycount to get proper performance or not.
Lights and shadows can cause performance loss, as well as many highres textures, hardware features like AA and so on could choke on the fillrate. So it depends on what is displayed and how.
How does it deal with terrain and occlusion?
Terrain is supported as in most other engines, based on hightmap editing.
The editor supports manual adjusting and editing of the terrain, but lacks the option of creating the surface material based on custom masks or textures within the editor itself. It still requires a texture made with another program.
It uses the SOAR algorithm with view frustrum culling, LOD and geo morphing for smooth results and can be pretty huge.

So im sure Carsten may add more in-depth information but i think this covers most of it.
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Carsten
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Re: Few Quick Questions

Post by Carsten » 2010-12-14, 19:37

Hi Varine,
welcome to the Cafu forums! :welcome:

Kai answered your questions very thoroughly already, so that I have quasi nothing to add. :cheesy:

Physics support with Bullet is present and well integrated (i.e. physics objects are sync'ed over the network etc.), but as with other major features, it could be expanded both in (sub-)features and in use-cases in the maps.

You may also wish to check out :up:
Best regards,
Carsten
Varine
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Joined:2010-12-14, 11:18

Re: Few Quick Questions

Post by Varine » 2010-12-31, 16:42

Thanks, I'm trying to play with it when I can but I'm behind in class and trying to catch up so I haven't had time to do much yet.

Also I thought of a couple more questions. What's the maximum resolution for textures and is there a maximum poly limit on imported models?
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Kai
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Re: Few Quick Questions

Post by Kai » 2010-12-31, 19:42

There is no build in limit, most cards can handle up to 8k sized textures, but be careful not to exceed the card based ram.
Same goes for polycount limit, .obj can handle as much polygons as your computer can handle. Todays limits are mostly based on hardware not software :)
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