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using decal and custom vertex normal for vehicles?

BI0H0G
polycounter lvl 9
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BI0H0G polycounter lvl 9
Can i use custom vertex normal and decal for vehicle for example a tank or a aircraft? i see the tread for the use of decals to add higher details on the model and i read that starcitizen ships use custom vertex normal to add smoothness to the edges. i did try to make a high poly but i having problems adding a lot of edge loops. So is it a viable option?
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  • Obscura
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    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    Its optional. The most of racing games use this edgeloop method for their cars though.
    Also to clear out something, when you use the custom normals/edgeloops method, you won't need a highpoly model. You only make a "med-poly" mesh, and don't bake in the most of cases.
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  • BI0H0G
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    BI0H0G polycounter lvl 9
    cool thanks i going to try it and see how it goes.
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  • BI0H0G
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    BI0H0G polycounter lvl 9
    here is a test editing vertex normal

    Ng0GGcA.png

    wireframe

    dnxZOzi.png

    Is this better or should i just make a high poly instead and bake the normals. i making this for game in the same stile as battlefield so the model will be up close.
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  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    Baking or using this method depends entirely on the game and workflow. I recommend doing some tests with this workflow to completion and figure out the pitfalls, there are plenty.
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  • Obscura
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    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    Quack. Could you tell us more about those pitfalls please? To me it seems like these works very well in a lot of cases. When you work with large scale hard surface, its the best. Also it works in car games, simulators, and fps too. But they are obviously not for a top-dpwn game, or mobile game.
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  • Obscura
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    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    @BI0H0G - Here are some pros/cons:

    + The smooth edged geo and modeled details allows you to not bake from a full highpoly, so you won't have a pixelated normalmap on a large scale asset (such as your vehicle, which would require huge normalmap if it would be baked). Also it saves time because of the no highpoly.

    + The smaller details can be still mapped/normalmapped onto a decal sheet.

    + Can work on any asset regardless of shape/size (Alien Isolation is a perfect example)

    + You can still use even unique texturing for the non-normal map textures, however such games usually use modular, tiling materials, and procedural materials.


    - You need exaggerated bevel width to not get aliasing issues

    - The decal technique require a special shader

    - Both technique require the artist to have deep understanding in how the techniques works, to get out the most from it.

    Games with similar or same approaches:

    Alien Isolation
    Star Citizen
    Elite - Dangerous
    Probably the newer GTA games for the cars
    Most of racing games

    - Reason for why the smooth edges technique is used on cars in racing games is that the cars are large scale models, with a lot of flat, smooth surfaces. And if they were use normalmaps for paneling etc, the compression of the normalmaps would be very visible because of the smoothness of the car body panels, and they would look very ugly and noisy. Also it would require huge resolution to use normalmap, and even then the compression would still destroy the look.

    - Reason for why its used in space ship/simulator games is its because of the huge scale. It would be simply impossible to use enough big normalmaps.

    When you work in a studio, they will tell you how they want to approach the graphics, except if you are the lead artist and technical artist. When you work on your own game, you can decide how you want, what fit your needs... So I think you can decide.
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  • endeffect
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    endeffect polycounter lvl 8
    Hey Obscura. Do you know any method for baking curvature maps for ddo or substance painter? I've used smooth edge technique before on my architectural visualization in UE4 and worked pretty well with tiling materials. My reason to use it was saving time.

    The textures i've used were very clean, but for experiment, i made a lot of tests on different bakers to see the results if i can bake proper curvature map to use in ddo. Only modo curvature map was near to proper one but still need some adjustment for black and white values.

    If anyone knows a way to get proper curvature map for only smooth edge beveled medium polygon models (weird name, i mean no high poly and no baking), i'll be happy to know it. I didn't want to open a new thread for this question, but i'll be modelling only cars on my new job and researching techniques about this. Any help or resource is appreciated :)

    I only found this technique but didn't test yet. Also more explanation about that would be really amazing.

    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2349398&postcount=148

    Thanks. :)
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