PlaneShift
Development => Development Team Blog => Topic started by: Xordan on January 25, 2009, 03:19:14 am
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Here's a sneak preview of something I've been working on the last couple of weeks.
Enjoy! (http://www.xordan.com/grass.avi) :)
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Xordan: What does it look like when you're say 10 meters above the ground looking downwards?
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Like this; http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/6465/grassgn2.png
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OK thanks, I don't remember why I was asking that. It looks interesting.
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Amazing! It makes the landscape look much better!
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looks pretty cool.
Just two questions: Will it lag the clients like the first attempt on grass did? Will it be that high ingame too?
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Just two questions: Will it lag the clients like the first attempt on grass did? Will it be that high ingame too?
No, this grass is significantly faster.
As for height, that depends on what the artists decide suits the area. Could be low or high.
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Very nice. I look forward to seeing this applied to Trees...
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Greetings!
I love it! And it swings in the wind! Just the kind of thing I was trying to do for the BD back then, but got errors from CS. Something about duplicating the movement curves for all foliage instances... but where I failed, you succeeded! Go Xordan (& co)!
Keep it up,
- Cherps
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I am sure it looks lovely, and will be excellent in game. Not going to look at the AVI because it will take me 2 hours 40 minutes to download :'(
Maybe encoding in DivX (Xvid) or similar so it isnt 50+ MB would help people like me out a little.
/me uses his imagination...
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Here a (bit more up to date) screenshot; http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/9052/screenla0.jpg
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Xordan, have a big hug...
This is great work - cannot wait to see it implimented!
Lolitra
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oh that's nice :)
it will bring the game some more live
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Hey ... it started with Bugreport PS#2463 (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?project=2&do=details&task_id=2463) for me, a little higher resolution grass from Arerano, and now ... amazing! :D
\\o//
BTW: (http://wol.pilum.net/grass.gif) <= Arerano's grass_small01 texture
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Very cool! Will the drawing distance of the grass be configurable?
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Vegetation is a mega-major + to a 3D scene.
For the sake of comparison, it reminds me of 1 main reason why I enjoyed exploring the maps of Gothic 3 so much.
This experimental blog is quickly becoming packed with \\o// and :thumbup: material.
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I agree with peeg that a configurable drawing distance would be very nice for those with a faster GPU/CPU :)
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Very cool! Will the drawing distance of the grass be configurable?
Yes.
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nice work sur !
Now the treport can "realy" eat the virtual grass !
and doing the "job of the dev"
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=29432.0
(perhaps after ?)
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WOW!! Great job! The grass is amazing, I love how it sways in the wind! \\o// \\o// \\o//
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@ Xordan:
Could you summarize a bit the key features and improvements of your algorithm? Does it use sorting, and which kind?
The guys from #crystalspace (e.g. Dentoid, res2k) are curious, tell them about it!
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The guys from #crystalspace (e.g. Dentoid, res2k) are curious, tell them about it!
Ehm, well seeing as res2k did a lot of the work on it, I doubt that he's curious as to how it works :P
It uses pseudo-instancing for the grass meshes and a shader to do the wind effect.
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The main question was: How could you show so much grass so much faster? Alpha blending would require sorting, therefore: Did you use alpha blending, did you have to sort it - and if, how did you accellerate it? There is still the thumb rule to avoid sorting due to its performance costs.
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The main question was: How could you show so much grass so much faster?
Pseudo-instancing.
Did you use alpha blending, did you have to sort it.
It's alpha blended, currently sorted in the order that they happen to be added, although I'm looking at the best (fastest) way to sort them b2f as that'll give a better visual result.
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\\o//
Looks promising!
Trees and forests next?
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If a character is attempting to use the grass for cover to say, sneak up on another player, what happens when the player is outside the rendering distance? It's pretty difficult to use cover that isn't being drawn, thus the approaching player has an infinite advantage.
Would it be possible to provide some cover other than the grass for objects outside the render distance? Perhaps a semi-transparent flat surface drawn about the height of the grass (or half player height that a player could crouch under), displayed where the grass isn't being drawn could provide such cover (being a mostly flat object, it'd be pretty quick to render too)?
It's annoying when games provide some sort of cover for players to sneak around in that can be circumvented by simply being outside the rendering distance or turning graphics options down so far that no ground cover at all is rendered (cough military games cough)... Just a thought.
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The video seems to be down, could someone please reupload it somewhere, I'm very curious as to how it looks =)
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I'd send it to you, but I lost my copy...Damn windows crash :thumbdown:
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I'm sooo looking forward to this! It really enhances the landscape a lot...
Talking about grass reminds me of a wishlist discussion way back about dynamic paths (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=7888.15). I think that would be a totally awesome idea to implement.
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The video seems to be down, could someone please reupload it somewhere, I'm very curious as to how it looks =)
http://planeshiftmmo.110mb.com/grass.zip
compressed and zipped to fit my webhosting. :P
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Thanks Durwyn for the upload.
It looks nice! It even moves! It would be even nicer if the grass didn't spawn on empty hills as you move closer but I guess It would be a bit of a strain to have grass visible as far as the rest of the map...
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It would be even nicer if the grass didn't spawn on empty hills as you move closer but I guess It would be a bit of a strain to have grass visible as far as the rest of the map...
If you can notice it, then it doesn't look natural enough. I think the challenge is in making the grass and the hill texture the same color so people don't notice it.
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If you can notice it, then it doesn't look natural enough. I think the challenge is in making the grass and the hill texture the same color so people don't notice it.
This :)
The technical stuff is done, getting it to look great is in the hands of the artists.