alexei.garbuzenko Posted February 13, 2012 Author Share Posted February 13, 2012 We say goodbye to billboard-based leaves: Link to comment
alexander.zubov Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 Goodbye or hello? I though you didn't have billboard leaves before. Link to comment
alexei.garbuzenko Posted February 14, 2012 Author Share Posted February 14, 2012 we used billboards for leaves from late 2008, even before engine claimed official support for these: It was own SpeedTree-like implementation, acceptable for top-down view and simplified shading. But with each year technologies evolve and now in 2012 to have realistic looking billboard trees (like in SpeedTree v6) we need lot more: density maps, pre-baked ambient occlusion, normal maps for leaves, lod alpha-fading, distance billboards, etc. Unfortunatelly Unigine lacks support of such features and modifying shaders is a dead way. That's why we are completelly switching to geometrical trees - leaves and branches are either geometry or non-billboard planes with transparency. Great shading, no parallax effect, low fillrate overhead, precise x-shape billboards - that is what we got with that technology. Link to comment
alexander.zubov Posted February 14, 2012 Share Posted February 14, 2012 One thing I can tell you for sure - if the gameplay in your game will be "meh", no super realistic visuals will save it. So you should probably get the game done with "ugly" trees and have a focus-group play-test it. When they confirm that the game is fun, then you can make life-like trees. Otherwise you spend a lifetime making realistic and awesome visuals, but the game won't sell well cos the gameplay isn't there. Link to comment
alexei.garbuzenko Posted March 27, 2012 Author Share Posted March 27, 2012 P.S. We a going to make a short pause at this stage - it is barely possible to make a game without funding and now we have acceptable picture quality to try involving investors to the project. Link to comment
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