Netting Help

nick2730

Hey guys im making a hockey net and trying to decide the best way to attack the net itself. I have the frame constructed already to size and scale.


How would some of you guys attack the net? Simply texture it then opacity or actually model it out then maybe use cloth simulation? It will be for an animation later

Mark Dygert

Rendering it as geometry would speed up the rendering time, but kill the scene file. You could use proxy objects or Xrefs so you're working with a low poly object but rendering the high, or just bake it down and fake all the lighting so the low poly works.

I would probably model it out, bake it down to simple geometry with an opacity map then turn off shadow casting for that object because rendering highly accurate shadows that include opacity map info takes forever and the alternative is rendering with geometry shadows, which would be a big ugly dark shadow.

Then do something similar to the mini tut I wrote that records cloth sims and creates bone animation. If you need a net like shadow you can add the net opacity map to the projection map slot of a light.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=66993

cryrid

Unless the camera was right up close to it and in glorious slow-motion as a puck comes flying in, I'd just do a texture+alpha channel.