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Nosslak

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Looks great! :)

Thanks!

 

Yes, vertex colors can be made to color the diffuse map.

Thanks, I just looked it up at the modwiki and the material def seems a lot easier than I thought it'd be. Is this really all that is needed if I want the vertex colors to darken the model in places:

{
blend add
map textures/custom/image1 
vertexColor 
}

 

Also I didn't get any answer about the polycount, Springheel. I think I've heard complaints that some tree models where too lowpoly, but I can't remember which and the only thing I have as a guideline right now is the tree that Arcturus animated. The tree could potentially be used a lot in a forest so it will be important for me to know how many polygons I can use for it maximally.

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Alright, here's a new (albeit small) update with the finished branch that I will repeat over the whole model:

Treebranch.png

The reason for me posting this is that I suspect that it might be way too highpoly, especially if you compare it with that other tree that Arcturus worked on, as each branch will use 12 triangles instead of the 2 triangles that the other tree uses. So yeah, is it too highpoly?

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There's no hard and fast rule about polys. Some of the trees we have now are probably too low poly, but then, they might be perfect for areas the player can't get very close to. Higher poly trees are great but then you obviously run into problems trying to place too many of them.

 

With the existence of the LOD system, my preference would be to have 3 levels of each tree:

 

High poly (approx 2000)

 

Mid (around 800-1000)

 

Low Poly (approx 200-400)

 

And then mappers could mix and match or use the LOD system.

 

each branch will use 12 triangles

 

That's only 12 tris?? Wow, good optimising.

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Looks great!

 

The only thing I am concerned with is that the branches look like they are made of "long thin triangles" which is what Graphic Processors hate the most. If you can forcibly break the verts on those it may perform better but I have no frame of reference for how heavy that'll be. I can only guess that shadow calculations would be a little tough :laugh: but a shadow mesh would help...

 

This is screaming for LOD variations with less or less detail in the branches :)

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

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Yeah Nosslak, exactly this are the thinge i searched for when asking for new tree models...great wub.gif

That's what I hoped you'd say!

 

There's no hard and fast rule about polys. Some of the trees we have now are probably too low poly, but then, they might be perfect for areas the player can't get very close to. Higher poly trees are great but then you obviously run into problems trying to place too many of them.

 

With the existence of the LOD system, my preference would be to have 3 levels of each tree:

 

High poly (approx 2000)

 

Mid (around 800-1000)

 

Low Poly (approx 200-400)

 

And then mappers could mix and match or use the LOD system.

I know there is no hard limit I just wanted to have some kind of idea of how many polygons I could use for it, so I wouldn't make it all too detailed and then have wasted all that work. I usually lose most of my motivation to work on models after I'm finished with the modeling and texturing (that's why I think it's hard to bring myself to export the models to Doom) so I won't promise anything.

 

each branch will use 12 triangles

That's only 12 tris?? Wow, good optimising.

Yeah! I'm essentially just using 3 planes with a cut down their middle for the bend and then the textures take care of the rest.

 

Looks great!

 

The only thing I am concerned with is that the branches look like they are made of "long thin triangles" which is what Graphic Processors hate the most. If you can forcibly break the verts on those it may perform better but I have no frame of reference for how heavy that'll be. I can only guess that shadow calculations would be a little tough :laugh: but a shadow mesh would help...

Thanks! That other tree model has even more, even longer triangles so I'm not sure if that really is such a big hassle. If absolutely necessary I can, as you say, add extra polygons to break them up but I'm not sure that actually worth it.

 

This is screaming for LOD variations with less or less detail in the branches :)

Yes, great idea! I have modeled it so that if I change one branch all the others gets changed with it, so I've got (almost) insta-LOD right there.

 

I look forward to seeing a vid of this Noss...

I'll see what I can whip up when it's finished!

Edited by Nosslak
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Yeah, it's hard to say whether the triangulation optimization even fits this kind of model. I am wondering if lots of these puppies are on screen if the gains would be greater though...

 

Here's Humus's reference on the topic:

 

http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=Comments&ID=228

 

Again, love the work Noss! :wub:

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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Looking pretty good.

 

I have a tree I was working on for TF2 that uses a similar technique.

 

But the branch seems more like a pine tree branch in how the leaves/twigs(smallest branches) all hang down. Typically leafy trees tend to branch off in all directions, even up and it makes them bushy.

 

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

As for LOD I did it on my TF2 tree and it was hardly noticeable, maybe I didn't hit as big of a seperation in polys as Spring stated but you also didn't notice the change much.

 

After I had the branches all in place I just went around and deleted alternating branches (just leaf planes) in spots I felt they wouldn't be missed much or change the overall shape.

 

I also deleted small branches from the main tree even if it left leaves floating (the player is pretty far away) and welded verts down in the trunk so it went from like 8 sided to 5.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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With the existence of the LOD system, my preference would be to have 3 levels of each tree:

 

High poly (approx 2000)

 

Mid (around 800-1000)

 

Low Poly (approx 200-400)

 

And then mappers could mix and match or use the LOD system.

 

I'd like to add that having a very low-poly model (possible even just four flat planes intersected, e.g. 8 tris) is also very useful for very distant trees, like in skyboxes, or when you view a wood from very afar. Here 200 tris would be overkill and prevent f.i. scenes with many hundreds of trees.

 

That's only 12 tris?? Wow, good optimising.

 

Yes, that's excellent. A lot of our trees waste a lot of polygons and still don't look very good. Love the work, Nosslak!

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Yeah, it's hard to say whether the triangulation optimization even fits this kind of model. I am wondering if lots of these puppies are on screen if the gains would be greater though...

 

Here's Humus's reference on the topic:

 

http://www.humus.nam...Comments& ID=228

 

Again, love the work Noss! :wub:

Thanks! I didn't know it could have that much of an impact on performance. I'll try to adapt to that Max Area technique, though I can't use it on this model that much.

 

Looking pretty good.

 

I have a tree I was working on for TF2 that uses a similar technique.

 

But the branch seems more like a pine tree branch in how the leaves/twigs(smallest branches) all hang down. Typically leafy trees tend to branch off in all directions, even up and it makes them bushy.

Thanks! You might be right but this is the only approach I think I've seen in tutorials and my tree turned out pretty great IMO so I'll stick to that for this model at least.

 

As for LOD I did it on my TF2 tree and it was hardly noticeable, maybe I didn't hit as big of a seperation in polys as Spring stated but you also didn't notice the change much.

 

After I had the branches all in place I just went around and deleted alternating branches (just leaf planes) in spots I felt they wouldn't be missed much or change the overall shape.

 

I also deleted small branches from the main tree even if it left leaves floating (the player is pretty far away) and welded verts down in the trunk so it went from like 8 sided to 5.

Yeah, I'll try to do something similar for my tree as well! Thanks!

 

I'd like to add that having a very low-poly model (possible even just four flat planes intersected, e.g. 8 tris) is also very useful for very distant trees, like in skyboxes, or when you view a wood from very afar. Here 200 tris would be overkill and prevent f.i. scenes with many hundreds of trees.

Yeah, I was considering doing this too. I'll see what I can do!

 

That's only 12 tris?? Wow, good optimising.

Yes, that's excellent. A lot of our trees waste a lot of polygons and still don't look very good. Love the work, Nosslak!

I just realized that they will all need to be doublesided so that effectively skyrockets my polycount all the way to 3000 polygons :(

 

@Noss - Lovely leaves and the work of late; you really nail quality to resources - still damn impressed :)

Thanks a lot, Serps!

 

Also, http://www.meshmixer.com - while I have no idea what you'd use it for, I've found it to be an incredibly strange yet fun tool, donno if you've tried playing with it :)

I might try it out, thanks for the suggestion!

 

I look forward to seeing a vid of this Noss...

I'll see what I can whip up when it's finished!

Here's a still as well:

 

 

Tree2.png

 

 

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Hmm, are those branches two-sided? The tree looks fantastic in the videos, but I have a feeling it's not going to look quite as good in D3. There's some tricky little glitch with the leaves of other trees that keeps them from picking up light properly, I forget whether it's due to the transparency or being double-sided.

 

Also, are you using vertex blending to simluate shadows in the center of the foliage? The dark areas look great but I can't tell what's causing them.

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Hmm, are those branches two-sided? The tree looks fantastic in the videos, but I have a feeling it's not going to look quite as good in D3. There's some tricky little glitch with the leaves of other trees that keeps them from picking up light properly, I forget whether it's due to the transparency or being double-sided.

Most games have trouble with this while they use alphablending (>1bit alpha maps) but I have already thought of this so I am not using anything else than a 1bit alpha here. 1bit alpha is essentially that either something completely opaque or completely invisible, here's an image for you. So as you see 1bit alpha is rubbish at making hair, but as I am making leaves and braches there should be no real problems here. I thought that if anyone would know about this it would be a lead artist. Doom 3 might be different though but what I said is true for other engines at the very least.

 

Also, are you using vertex blending to simluate shadows in the center of the foliage? The dark areas look great but I can't tell what's causing them.

Nah, that is just Blenders light not going through all of them. But I might try some vertex coloring on the middle parts as that sounds like a pretty good idea.

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I thought that if anyone would know about this it would be a lead artist.

 

Uh, yes, I am aware of that. D3 can't do anything but 1bit alpha, so that's not what I'm referring to.

 

It's been a couple years since I worked on the foliage on the existing trees, and I can't remember whether it was a problem with them being transparent (and thus non-shadowcasting) or something to do with being double-sided. But there was a problem with one side of each plane being very brightly lit and the other being completely dark, making the planes very obvious and the tree overally look poor. This may or may not be a problem for you.

 

Ultimately my point was that there could be a big difference between how they look in Blender and how they'll look in game.

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Most games have trouble with this while they use alphablending (>1bit alpha maps) but I have already thought of this so I am not using anything else than a 1bit alpha here. 1bit alpha is essentially that either something completely opaque or completely invisible, here's an image for you. So as you see 1bit alpha is rubbish at making hair, but as I am making leaves and braches there should be no real problems here. I thought that if anyone would know about this it would be a lead artist. Doom 3 might be different though but what I said is true for other engines at the very least.

 

D3 doesn't actually use only one-bit alpha, it uses a variable-threshold. E.g. youhave 255 alpha leves, going from 0.0 to 1.0. And the shader during rendering has a cut-off value (like "alpha 0.5") which means everything above 0.5 is transparent, everything below is opaque.

 

Now, the clever trick is that you can shift that level, even dynamically!

 

Here is a shader that does this:

 

alphaTest 0.05 + 1.5 * (time - parm7)

 

That means if you have a clever alpha map, that the texture is fading in/out over time. Likewise, LOD entities can use this:

 

alphaTest 1.0 - parm3

 

That means if you have an alpha map, where everything outside the leave is alpha 0.9, and inside the leave is "growing thinner" with alpha 0.9 down to 0 (at the center of the leaves), then with distance, the model grows "thinner". Our gras models use this, f.i.

 

That is, btw. the only way to get gradually disappearing models, because the "transparent" keyword in D3 always fixes the transparency at 0.5 - so it is not possible to make thing more and more transparent with distance.

 

You might want to read this threads:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/11515-real-translucency-anyone/

 

There is also an internal thread, which shows that varying vertex color on models means you can vary their color (by the model), so each looks a bit different:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/11372-improving-the-improved-lod-system/page__view__findpost__p__225059

 

I am not sure you have access to that forum, tho. I can repost the screenshots here if you want.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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off topic-ish

 

@Tels, maybe having the leaf planes actually become more opaque would help.

 

As leaf planes are deleted for LOD, existing planes fill in some with alpha to mask the loss of leaves. And since it's at distance losing the detail of individual leaves/branches wouldn't matter as much.

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

 

back on topic.

 

The vid does look pretty good.

 

I think the best thing that can be done is to NOT use TwoSided materials.

That's where the shading issue is I believe, as the tris are 'cloned', but probably still only recieve lighting from original side?

But if you just clone/normal flip in 3d program you get the same in game tri count. But the actual tris exist and probably light better.

===========

The bark though has VERY obvious tiling.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Uh, yes, I am aware of that. D3 can't do anything but 1bit alpha, so that's not what I'm referring to.

Oh, well that's great to hear. I wasn't sure if you guys knew because if I remember correctly someone said when I was making my screenwall that I should have made the AO part of the alpha map, which clearly wouldn't have worked and even if it would've it would (most probably) be a pretty big performance waste.

 

It's been a couple years since I worked on the foliage on the existing trees, and I can't remember whether it was a problem with them being transparent (and thus non-shadowcasting) or something to do with being double-sided. But there was a problem with one side of each plane being very brightly lit and the other being completely dark, making the planes very obvious and the tree overally look poor. This may or may not be a problem for you.

 

Ultimately my point was that there could be a big difference between how they look in Blender and how they'll look in game.

I see, I'll try Baddcogs method if it doesn't work then.

 

D3 doesn't actually use only one-bit alpha, it uses a variable-threshold. E.g. youhave 255 alpha leves, going from 0.0 to 1.0. And the shader during rendering has a cut-off value (like "alpha 0.5") which means everything above 0.5 is transparent, everything below is opaque.

 

Now, the clever trick is that you can shift that level, even dynamically!

 

Here is a shader that does this:

 

alphaTest 0.05 + 1.5 * (time - parm7)

 

That means if you have a clever alpha map, that the texture is fading in/out over time. Likewise, LOD entities can use this:

 

alphaTest 1.0 - parm3

 

That means if you have an alpha map, where everything outside the leave is alpha 0.9, and inside the leave is "growing thinner" with alpha 0.9 down to 0 (at the center of the leaves), then with distance, the model grows "thinner". Our gras models use this, f.i.

 

That is, btw. the only way to get gradually disappearing models, because the "transparent" keyword in D3 always fixes the transparency at 0.5 - so it is not possible to make thing more and more transparent with distance.

That does sound pretty clever. I'm not sure I can come up with any scenario where I would want the model to get thinner but I can see how it work great with the inverse that it thickens with distance, but it sounds like that might be what you meant. I'll try it out as it doesn't sound like it'll add all that much work (I'll just stroke the model with a black and white gradient).

 

You might want to read this threads:

 

http://modetwo.net/d...lucency-anyone/

 

There is also an internal thread, which shows that varying vertex color on models means you can vary their color (by the model), so each looks a bit different:

 

http://modetwo.net/d...post__p__225059

 

I am not sure you have access to that forum, tho. I can repost the screenshots here if you want.

I was actually considering posting that first link then I got a little unsure as it sounds like it will chew up a lot of performance as it sounds like it has to render every polygon twice but maybe D3 would draw the other side anyway even though the player can't see it? It seems like that method uses a twosided material and it seems to work fine there (you don't see the backside so I might be wrong), so I'll try this first, before duplicating the polys in Blender. I won't be able to fake any real volume or shadows with vertex colors if I use this translucency metod, but I think translucency will look a lot better anyway.

 

Do post those screenshots as well!

 

The vid does look pretty good.

 

I think the best thing that can be done is to NOT use TwoSided materials.

That's where the shading issue is I believe, as the tris are 'cloned', but probably still only recieve lighting from original side?

But if you just clone/normal flip in 3d program you get the same in game tri count. But the actual tris exist and probably light better.

Thanks! It sounds way too obvious that the problem is that the normals aren't getting flipped with the twosided materials, that sounds like the stuff that they would have noticed instantly when they made it over at iD, but if I'll get any problems I'll be sure to try this.

 

The bark though has VERY obvious tiling.

Yeah, I noticed that as well and have corrected it now. I'll just have to change the color of the branches as well and I'll be good to go again.

 

[EDIT] The leaves takes up a lot of more polys than I first anticipated (didn't count the fact that they needed to be double-sided) so 24 instead of 12 polys. So the tree takes up 2954 polys right now, is this way too many or is it okay if I make LODs?

Edited by Nosslak
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I think 3000 is fine for an up close good looking tree.

 

Keep in mind the leaves should probably be noshadow anyway, so problem solved. Of course there are issues. Shadows and you just get poly shadows which wont look good. No shadows it might look odd in a well lit area.

Author can use a shadow decal for a softer fake shadow, but candles/lamps would be odd....

 

either way it's a toss up, drawbacks. But without leaf shadows performance will be much better.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I think 3000 is fine for an up close good looking tree.

 

Keep in mind the leaves should probably be noshadow anyway, so problem solved. Of course there are issues. Shadows and you just get poly shadows which wont look good. No shadows it might look odd in a well lit area.

Author can use a shadow decal for a softer fake shadow, but candles/lamps would be odd....

 

either way it's a toss up, drawbacks. But without leaf shadows performance will be much better.

 

And it is always possible to add a shadow-light (as NHAT shows) to get sfot leaf shadows.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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