Geometry for sharp cliffs example

[Beherith]

EDIT: Released, check edger.py in the zip file below:
http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/spring/alter ... onghold.7z

[PicassoCT]

I have a dent in the desk and a date with the dentist due to this..

We can go beserk now.. grand canyon maps ... all the way..

Bravo beherith.. just bravo.. wish we had a way to give standing ovations on this board.

[SirArtturi]

Really nice idea. I see a lot of possibilities to play with it. Is it possibly to apply it just for specific area or does it apply globally on the whole map? Also, how do you apply texture and what is the resolution? How customizable?

[Beherith]

So far this is extremely work in progress. But at the moment, all of it is automatically generated by a script, so the customizability is not really fleshed out. smoth is being a dear and is helping with a bit of texturing, to make it all look much sharper tuan just the screenshot. There are only practical upper limits on the texture resulotion, currently we are working with a resolution that is approx 4x the resolution of the default texture map. The script in general takes a heightmap as input to generate the walls where the slope is above a predefined threeshold. I will add the ability to define a mask where one absolutely does not want walls to be spawned. Stay tuned for more details...

[The Yak]

Looks excellent, can think of a few maps that this would improve

[Anarchid]

Wow it even works with shadows, whatever that is!

[enetheru]

Look'n good :)

What do you think your strategy for cliff merging into ramps will be?
Do you plan on creating varying cliff geometry, with cosmetic overhanging terrain? (ie caves)
Whats your strategy for deformable terrain?
You've stated that the cliff geometry is generated, what do you think of being able to pre-built segments that fit in with the generated terrain?

[scifi]

Man i always wanted maps to have these sharp cliffs!. And since they are features(3d models themselves), its great!. Because lets face it cliffs always looked a bit too low rezz, at certain angles.

Any eta on when your releasing the code?, i would like to take a look at it just for experimentation purposes.

[Beherith]

Wall texture courtesy of smoth:


Current features:
-Generates features of a predefined size, and places those on the map where needed
-Use a heightmap as input
-Custom textures
-generates a tiled wall from 16x16 elmo sized elements
-requires a grounddetail setting of 150 to ensure that the sharp cliffs of a map are perfectly covered by the wall
-generates a typemap that can be used with it to prevent ground deformation under the center point of the feature and under the walls.
-Uses Muon's s3o library to generate s3o's

Outstanding issues:
-the normals of the wall tops are not smoothed.
-The vertical wall texture tiling and generation method needs improvement

Issues because features are used:
-normal maps/custom shaders not supported
-when zoomed in the feature visibility is not always perfect
-features fade when zoomed out
-will not integrate well with map overlay views
-cannot be integrated with deferred rendering

[smoth]

And the saturation and brightness are very off.

See what I meant about having 1 strip for the large flat area etc?

[Anarchid]

Aha, so it's a feature.

One more thing they don't do well, from my experience, is ground decals - features can't receive those.

Though ideally it wouldn't matter.

[FLOZi]

Aha, so it's a feature.

One more thing they don't do well, from my experience, is ground decals - features can't receive those.

Though ideally it wouldn't matter.

Pretty sure they can these days (it's an attribute of the super class of Feature & Unit).

[PicassoCT]

Can we post random textures here to have them send to the Wall?

[Anarchid]

Pretty sure they can these days (it's an attribute of the super class of Feature & Unit).

Whoa?!

I should finish my own verticliff thing, then.

Anywhere to seek first?

[smoth]

Decals cost performance. I would take care. Also people have that lovely decal limit setting.

[Beherith]

By the way, does any engine develop have any tips o which rendering pipeline to use to avoid all of the above mentioned caveats? Especially unit lod and icon rendering?

[Kloot]

Perhaps too obvious: use null-script Gaia units instead of features?

[PicassoCT]

Can you randomize the lower and midsection of the polystrip outwards?

[Anarchid]

Perhaps too obvious: use null-script Gaia units instead of features?

Units will become icons though?

[Beherith]

Thanks Kloot, only the billboarding and distance icons could be an issue then, but i think lua materials can be forced to a single LOD, and the icons can have a custom distance multiplier.