tournamentdan

The main problem with underlying mesh is when you animate. It can give you bad deformations . Normally trees are static unless you want to really bend the trees with wind or a car crash. Generally it's just a good practice. Edit: As for performance. I think a cleaner mesh is drawn a little quicker. You will not really see a difference with a few models. But if you instance a model a lot like you would with a tree, you may see a difference.

Something like hero engine would be great. Although I can not imagine the amount of responsibility if there was a data loss.

Ok. I changed my mind. I can do that right? I now think that it is a better idea to tessellate multiple planes. Instead of creating a single plane for each leaf. Make a larger plane with 8,9, or 10 leaves on it. Then with the displacement map make the leaves higher in the middle than the leaves on the edges. Then make another plane doing the opposite(higher on the outside). And now you can overlap the planes a little so that when the ivy tessellates it will create multiple levels of leaves. So when the camera is far away you will have large planes,and when the camera gets close you can have singular leaves with multiple levels.

Ok, so maybe the stone path video was not a good example about what I am talking about. It is only confusing you more. I am not talking about using single planes like you would model leaves for a tree. I am also not talking about placing a displacement map on a flat surface or terrain and have it magically create the multiple layers of ivy leave and vines you have mentioned. I guess what I am trying to say a modeler would make some three dimensional ivy leaves and vines. Then uv unwrap them and place a displacement map on them. You would only have to model a few and then you could place them together quickly creating the patterns that you need. I know it would create a lot more polys but with tessellation and good occlusion culling it should be good enough to render fast enough.

Here is an example of complex arbitrary 3D detail done with tessellation on the fly. It starts at 1:30 Edit: I know that thay do not mention it but they are also tessellating the terrain. I think we have had that conversation before.

Actually it will help here. Because you would not use the single plane for each leaf. You would create a whole mesh for the ivy and use a displacement map and then control the amount of tessellation from the distance of the camera. Take a look at this video. Instead of the stone path, imagine what it could look like if it was ivy. @ Lazlo Well thats great. All you have to do now is find God and you will be able to have ivy in a scene. Or maybe it was a African swallow that knows the true meaning of life. One or the other should be suffice

Looks great Marley. You know, that picture of the dock in the water is what pretty much sold me on leadwerks. Been hooked ever since.

Unreal engine 3 supports tessellation. I am guessing thats how it is done in that video and most likely the only way to get exactly what you want.

That is a great point Pixel. I am sure it could get to that point if the game was popular enough. Movies do it. I wonder how much GM paid to get their whole line of cars in the Transformer movies?

Yeah, that's a great idea. Everyone could write a short bio on the game they want to do.They could show some concept art for where they want to go and give little updates on progress.

I just recently purchased Driver-San Francisco. I did like the concept of the game, but it reminded me on how I like to race around and crash into things. I think I finally decided that I would like to make a Driver/GTA type of game. The only problem that I was coming up with was that I could not afford to pay to license thirty different cars and I did not want to make a bunch of cars that nobody has seen before. So I did a little research. I did not know that recently the supreme court sided with video game companies and ruled that video games have Freedom of speech rights. If you would like to read the full pdf of the ruling I will post at the bottom. Here is a quick quote. I did a little more digging to try and find just what my rights could be and I found this article. Although I might not like a lot of what EA has done in the past, I am sure glade that there are big studios out there that have enough money to fight these things in court. So what does this all mean after you have read the above article. It means there are still some gray areas. It seams that if your game focuses on one licensed product or is centralized in one area, you still need to license the copyrighted object. Like EA's "Need For Speed" game. It only focuses on driving the cars and that is why EA still license all the cars in "Need For Speed". But if the object is only a small part and you do not really focus on it.( Like in Battle Field3)You will not have to license it. Which is why EA is fighting the helicopter manufacturer. So with this in mind I am now planning my Driver/GTA type game. I have decided it will have lots of plot to it and hopefully it will have plenty of excitement to it. Below is a few pictures of a early "wip" of a 65 Shelby GT-350R that I started in the last hour. Link to court ruling pdf.http://edge-cache.kotaku.com/kotaku/pdf/08-1448.pdf

I like that one. You should copyright it

And here is a boulder type face.

I think he is looking for more of a rock face(Although I like what pixel came up with) on a hill side or cliff. The following took me less than three minutes to make. It's not the big boulder that rick likes but I just wanted to make like a rock face. I first started out with one rock like shape. I then duplicated the rock then rotated,scaled, and altered the duplicates a few time creating a pattern. I then duplicated that again to make a larger pattern. And again. Which quickly created a little over 34,000 triangles. Obviously I could have taken a bit more time on this to make it look better. Just wanted to show that it is pretty easy. And do not forget that after you would finish the rock face you would have to re-topo and make one clean mesh.

Yes now that the mesh is in the WOW game it is one clean mesh. But I think you are going to find to get it exactly the way you want it you would have to do it with separate models. Then use topology tools and create the nice and clean mesh. I know it sounds harder than it actually is. You would only have to create a few different boulder shape rocks. First you would make your terrain level the way you want it. Then take a boulder and place it partly through the mesh. You could actually only create one boulder then just duplicate then alter a little differently. You are going to want to start at the top of the cliff and work your way down to get it like they do. After you place all the boulders in the terrain mesh. Then you would re-topo and make a cleaner mesh. Sorry I can not help you get it done in LE, but I think you will find to get it exactly the way you want it, yo will have to do it this way.

My bad. Well then I do not know. It may not be able to create the terrain the way you like.

There are a few different ways you could achieve this. I do not know what type of modeling program you use. The only one I use is blender so I can only point you in the direction of blender tuts. http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/03/01/tip-using-the-ant-landscape-add-on/ This one may take some playing around with but it could get you there. http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/04/06/tip-adding-extra-detail-with-a-displace-modifier/ Same, some playing around. http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/06/05/sculpting-a-rock-face/ This is a pretty good one using sculpting in blender. To get exactly what you want would take a bit more sculpting. P.S. Do not forget that after all that sculpting you would have to retopo the terrain.

I think I have to agree with macks earlier post that decals should be copied. I personally think that decals are going to be a major factor with the tesselation coming in the next engine.

Actually it is a better idea to seperate the meshes especially when weighing to the bones. Example: When you want to weight the teeth and gums to a bone it is much easier to have them as a separate mesh so you can just select the teeth and gums. Instead of you trying to hide the cheeks and lips on a different layer just so you can select the underlying mesh. Also I think it would be a good idea to have separate meshes in game. That way you could change a texture in game with code. Like change eye color or what not.

I found a similar problem although it was a while ago. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/4665/24064.aspx Right now I am extremely busy with remodeling my house, but maybe in a couple of weeks I could make some facial animations for you. I have motion capture software that works nice. That is if you do not need it right now. Edit: Fixed link

It sounds like the head needs to be re-weight painted to the bones. Although I am kind of confused with the five meshes. Are you sure this head animations are driven by bones, because it kind of sounds like morphs.

10k is not bad. Leadwerks can handle that. With my characters I have reduced my top two LODs a good amount. The highest is right around 7,500. The second highest is about 5,000. The only difference between the two are the heads. The body's are the same, but for the top LOD I gave the head 2,500 more tris for facial animation.

How many triangles is your G Man?

Why would you find this incredible to be done in blender. Blender is probably the easiest of 3d modeling programs to learn and you can pretty much search anything you want to learn on youtube and find a tutorial on how to do it.

Very nice Ken. Spandex and all