Is VR the death of 'billboard' particles?
polycounter lvl 2
I recently spoke to someone who said that they had to make all their VFX's with 3d meshes instead of billboards, because billboards (in UE4) just didn't work in VR. Now after this conversation I was thinking to myself is that just a bug or is "camera facing billboards" intrinsicly unsuitible for stereoscopic/VR?
a) Just a bug: Perhaps it's as simple as that, UE4 (and perhaps other engines) gets confused over how to face the camera when there's 2 cameras, so rather than choosing a middle-ground value between the 2 cameras it does something wierd (chooses 1, use different for different eyes, flickers between them). However that this will probably be fixed very quickly (if not already).
b) There's something intrinsicly unsuitible for stereoscopic/VR. That even if a billboard correctly faces the middle value between the 2 cameras, the result just doesn't look good due to the nature of stereoscopic/VR. I would have imagined that any slight perspective errors by having a mono-camera sprite rendered on stereo-cameras would be so small it would be unnoticeable. but I admit to not having tested it (don't have VR)
I'm not working on a VR project ATM, I'm more interested regarding the future of VFX, if perhaps a VFX artist would be wise to gradually transition away from billboards into meshes.
a) Just a bug: Perhaps it's as simple as that, UE4 (and perhaps other engines) gets confused over how to face the camera when there's 2 cameras, so rather than choosing a middle-ground value between the 2 cameras it does something wierd (chooses 1, use different for different eyes, flickers between them). However that this will probably be fixed very quickly (if not already).
b) There's something intrinsicly unsuitible for stereoscopic/VR. That even if a billboard correctly faces the middle value between the 2 cameras, the result just doesn't look good due to the nature of stereoscopic/VR. I would have imagined that any slight perspective errors by having a mono-camera sprite rendered on stereo-cameras would be so small it would be unnoticeable. but I admit to not having tested it (don't have VR)
I'm not working on a VR project ATM, I'm more interested regarding the future of VFX, if perhaps a VFX artist would be wise to gradually transition away from billboards into meshes.
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