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Volumetric Billboards, and Grass Override
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Chris Offline
Member

Post: #1
Volumetric Billboards, and Grass Override
Hi,

These two would be great for my game. Can they already be done? If not, they can be low priority feature requests.

1. Add support for volumetric billboards, as here: http://www.antisphere.com/Research/Volum...boards.php

2. The option to improve (override or replace) the current grass & leaves system with volumetric billboards, or (in the case of grass only) just shell texturing/fur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwxg59rdxeE

E.g. Realtime Grass using instanced Volumetric Billboards, for mid geometry, and full geometry for nearby, a Youtube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JQ--yA8i...re=related

3. Are these feature requests too time-consuming, or not feasible? I'm interested in your roadmap. I see you have some cool stuff like Voxel Terrain, and more platform support considered. I'd far prefer if you concentrated on cross-platform support than these kind of feature requests.

I find the current grass method far too expensive for my game (which is pretty low-spec), especially with shadows. There's too much distance between blades, for the performance<->quality balance, I had to remove all grass for now.
01-03-2010 07:55 PM
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Esenthel Offline
Administrator

Post: #2
RE: Volumetric Billboards, and Grass Override
1. volumetric images are already supported (there is tutorial for that, please search for "volumetric" or "holographic" in file names)

2. you can play around with custom shaders, better built-in foliage is planned for the future
01-03-2010 08:02 PM
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Chris Offline
Member

Post: #3
RE: Volumetric Billboards, and Grass Override
1. Thanks, I saw this before but never realised what it was doing, as I couldn't see what it was doing. It seems tough extending these over a surface, but will have a play somewhen.

2. Okay, I think i'll wait to see what better built-in foliage is like, and just have no grass up until then; lots of polishing and network security tests to do for now smile

Good luck with your current feature implementations.
01-03-2010 08:22 PM
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monolith Offline
Member

Post: #4
RE: Volumetric Billboards, and Grass Override
The holographic tutorial is not very easy to understand. I think the problem might be that it uses a procedural sphere instead of doing all the steps of transforming a 3d object into the "voxels" and then displaying it with multiple instances.

If anyone could make an example, or improve on the existing tutorial, it would be great.
01-15-2010 08:18 PM
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