Thanks everyone! It was quite exciting to end up there!
Yeah I guess the colors could be tweaked further but I think I'll put a pin in that for now, I have already started sketching on a new project. But I might come back to this and later on once it has gotten som rest ^^ But thanks for the feedback! As I understand the worldposition color technique doesnt work for this since UE4s foliage is considered to be one "actor" so I tried it but seemed like it always got the same color all over since it only has one position in the world, correct me if I'm wrong though
Yes that it correct, a more detailed mesh will greatly reduce overdraw but it also has some drawbacks like a lot more vertices and you can get very small triangles that causes overlap. In a live game environment this kind of mesh would be baked down to a LOD atlas that has all the different sections baked down to planes. With a proper fade this can be done pretty quickly and as the objecs gets smaller on screen you dont have to pay that much for the extra overdraw from the plane LODs since overdraw is per screenpixel.
But when the basic idea behind this technique is:
Triangles = cheap, Overdraw = bad
You will pretty much always choke on overdraw before triangles with most systems.
As for the lighting, it is all dynamic and a skylight. I bumped upp the shadow resolution in the BaseScalaiblity.ini file to get something that looked better. From 2048 to 4096, so not a dramatic change, I also bumped up the number of cascades to 8 I think in that same file.
Yes, I used quite a few planes that are mapped to different parts of my branch texture and built up more volume that way instead of using larger planes with the whole texture mapped into it.
For a fir tree I would probably go with a larger branch setup with maybe 2-3 smaller branches in the texture as well. I would use those to dress flat angles and build upp extra volume in the tree where needed
When balancing the textures coverage its ususally pretty case by case but in my opinion its always better to have a little more "air" in it than you think you need. that way it will stack well against other planes and dont appear blotchy and opaque ^^ sometimes its a little bit of trial and error on that but after a few branches you kind of get into it
It's definitely worth trying out, the distance field AO as well might help add some more lighting detail into the shadowed areas, it works on a much larger scale than traditional screen space AO, and would probably look great on those rocks in particular.
Thanks everyone!
Triangles = cheap, Overdraw = bad
ugh thanks for the information I thought cutting tris only for alpha blend/transluent like what i usualy did , but well didnt expect same issue with alpha test.
also thanks for the information on modifying ini file. will try that.
Its kind of an over simplification of the overdraw issue, there are many different factors at play but its the overall idea/strategy when building such meshes
Replies
Yeah I guess the colors could be tweaked further but I think I'll put a pin in that for now, I have already started sketching on a new project. But I might come back to this and later on once it has gotten som rest ^^ But thanks for the feedback! As I understand the worldposition color technique doesnt work for this since UE4s foliage is considered to be one "actor" so I tried it but seemed like it always got the same color all over since it only has one position in the world, correct me if I'm wrong though
Yes that it correct, a more detailed mesh will greatly reduce overdraw but it also has some drawbacks like a lot more vertices and you can get very small triangles that causes overlap. In a live game environment this kind of mesh would be baked down to a LOD atlas that has all the different sections baked down to planes. With a proper fade this can be done pretty quickly and as the objecs gets smaller on screen you dont have to pay that much for the extra overdraw from the plane LODs since overdraw is per screenpixel.
But when the basic idea behind this technique is:
Triangles = cheap, Overdraw = bad
You will pretty much always choke on overdraw before triangles with most systems.
As for the lighting, it is all dynamic and a skylight. I bumped upp the shadow resolution in the BaseScalaiblity.ini file to get something that looked better. From 2048 to 4096, so not a dramatic change, I also bumped up the number of cascades to 8 I think in that same file.
Yes, I used quite a few planes that are mapped to different parts of my branch texture and built up more volume that way instead of using larger planes with the whole texture mapped into it.
For a fir tree I would probably go with a larger branch setup with maybe 2-3 smaller branches in the texture as well. I would use those to dress flat angles and build upp extra volume in the tree where needed
When balancing the textures coverage its ususally pretty case by case but in my opinion its always better to have a little more "air" in it than you think you need. that way it will stack well against other planes and dont appear blotchy and opaque ^^ sometimes its a little bit of trial and error on that but after a few branches you kind of get into it
ugh thanks for the information I thought cutting tris only for alpha blend/transluent like what i usualy did , but well didnt expect same issue with alpha test.
also thanks for the information on modifying ini file. will try that.
Its kind of an over simplification of the overdraw issue, there are many different factors at play but its the overall idea/strategy when building such meshes