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ugly nature in doom3 / TDM


Johannes Burock

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i often think about the problem of the "not so good" nature models in TDM.

after seeing this:

 

 

i think the trees could look more like this. yes, it needs bether hardware but they look much bether.

i played around with blender in the past but the DR editor is more my way of creation new worlds and not a modeleditor.

 

or did i miss this models in the list ?

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I guess there could be endless debate on it.

 

1- while a nice proof of concept I don't think the anim looks very realistic.

 

2- The trees look pretty good and could/-probably should be exported to use as static models at the very least.

 

3- we can use 'plane leaves' or particle leaves. Guess it depends on which you think looks best. I prefer the particles (even though they have the kaleidescope drawback). So it's nice to have tree models with and without leaves so authors can choose.

 

4- models needed means more modellers needed. I'm kindof burnt out and have other projects going. Not to mention how I hate modeling vegetation. I've spent a lot of time over the years trying every single technique to make the best looking veg and it usually comes down to throwing tons of polys at it to make it look good.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I think those trees work as a proof of concept but I agree they need a lot of work. The leaves are obviously flat sheets waving up and down. Currently they don't look as good as particle trees IMO, though I'm sure they could with more leaves and a slower animation.

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Currently they don't look as good as particle trees IMO

I have to disagree. Particles rotate with the player, which looks horrible, like from a 90's game, they have a constant, boring movement and they obviously hang in the mid air.

though I'm sure they could with more leaves and a slower animation.

Adding more leaves and branches is no problem. As for animation, I like the windy mood. I could tone it down a bit.

It's only a model...

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Particles only look bad if used badly, they are meant to be used in larger number! So you either use a few textured polygon with a smart material (to prevent the spike effect, for example) or a larger number of particles.

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Trees are just plain hard to get "looking good"

 

I recall a couple of years back some university setup a cluster of 100's of PC's with AMD 64 chips to render a fully volumetric tree with branches leaves and all... It was still dog slow.

 

I am curious about using an animated texture that scrolls to different frames that represent different view parallax positions. It could be kinda like the simulated view parallax for the oncoming cars in games like Outrun. It wouldn't be good as the real-deal but it could look better than the current choices...

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

 

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

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I think the big performance hit, no matter the method, is that all that foliage is light reactive.

 

If the leaves were blend-blend material then you could pile-up the numbers. Maybe fake some illumination via a simple low-poly underlying mesh with an alpha-ed diffuse stage to blend with?

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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my issues with planar branches is they don't have much volume. I've gotten better with them but still, they take a lot of polys, tons to not look flat from some angle. maybe a bit easier to make more 'natural' as far as having branches branching off that can be seen as such.

 

issues with particles are the kaliedescope effect, but it's only bad if the player is under/in/above them spinning/twisting. Of course this doesn't happen often, it's just not something you do in gameplay, it's something you do while testing.

The benefit is they look much fuller/rounder/natural.

 

It's all just a matter of opinion, but I think we should try and leave any new models with choices for authors if possible.

 

My issue with those animated trees is that it looks like the branches are swaying heavily (tornado weather), and yet the leaves are completely still and stationary. To make the leaves rustle you need particle leaves or maybe some kind of magical animated texture/normal maps. Or a million bones which would make the anims really large with a huge performance hit I imagine.

--------

 

I think if we had a very very mellow animated tree model with branches only, and could bind the windy leaf particles to the branches they could possibly look very stunning.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Some time ago I was fooling around with Unity. One of the first things I noticed was that all the plants in the island demo were sprites and I didn't liked them. When I changed them to just regular planes that don't rotate with the viewer it looked a lot better. Maybe the trees don't need these sprite particles but just a reasonable amount of randomly oriented particles.

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Yes those are called sprites lol. Sprites are cheap to render and you can have a lot of them but they don't always look good.

 

EDIT: @Orbweaver; yeah you don't have to have them face the player, there are options for orientation.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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A lot of games do that rotating thing and I have never liked it, I would prefer a non-animated object - which I imagine would be better for cpu/cpu perf anyway...

 

As in SpeedTree, for example. I really do hope that ST will change their routines some day to allow real polygon based trees and bushes.

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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Would one be able to randomize the start animation frame on each tree as well? So, they don't move too synchronically? And also the speed?

Where are the REAL brits?! The one's we have are just brit-ish.

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Yes those are called sprites lol. Sprites are cheap to render and you can have a lot of them but they don't always look good.

 

EDIT: @Orbweaver; yeah you don't have to have them face the player, there are options for orientation.

 

The problem with the D3 particles isn't that they "face the player" (e.g. orient themselves around the Z axis to face the player), but that they ALSO do this arund the X/Y axis, so if you LEAN, they rotate with you but the tree they are attached to does not, and this looks wierd.

 

Having particles that only rotate around the z-axis to always "face" the player would solve this issue.

 

(Of course, having them not rotating in any axis might also work).

"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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Having particles that only rotate around the z-axis to always "face" the player would solve this issue.

 

(Of course, having them not rotating in any axis might also work).

 

Well, then from below the tree would look very flat with a bunch of ugly vertical planes.

 

So you either except the fuller trees with particles that move (if you twist) , or you just make trees out of planes in which case the modeller can do much better job arranging the planes so they look good then placed particles can.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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  • 1 month later...

also this looks realy good...

 

 

its a bit unified, but if the grass is created more varied this could be VERY cool...maybe in smaller areas...but this could look like in modern games (new grass for Tels biggrin.gif )

when i posted the treemodels no one wants to create something...is there nobody who is incorporated in blender & co or is it the bad timeproblem sad.gif ? or left with Nosslak the last active modeller this place ?

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also this looks realy good...

 

 

its a bit unified, but if the grass is created more varied this could be VERY cool...maybe in smaller areas...but this could look like in modern games (new grass for Tels biggrin.gif )

when i posted the treemodels no one wants to create something...is there nobody who is incorporated in blender & co or is it the bad timeproblem sad.gif ? or left with Nosslak the last active modeller this place ?

 

whats with all the html code (&nbsp)?

 

 

The trees and grass were done by ... can't remember, someone here anyway. So yeah we already saw them. And he talked about improving them.

 

Personally they don't look that great imo but I already stated this above.

 

I doubt Nosslack would do it, he hasn't done much lately, other than the clock he was working on awhile ago. He's only contributed a few models total anyway and someone else had to finish them/get them in game.

 

I've personally been burnt out on modeling for awhile now and still need to do some for a project.

I've also done too many trees in my day and am not looking forward to doing more variations.

Plus animated models have a pretty good performance hit, a large file size, and the only way trees and grass will look good is if the anims are almost non-exisistant imo. Just a very slight, barely noticeable breathing so it gives some life without looking fake.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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