Editing normals vs. planes with multiple polygons for foliage - issues.
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I'm creating, let's say, mid poly trees for my game and i feel like i'm on dark side of internet right now. There are multiple tutorials and discussions about foliage and building trees but i can't find any that shows full picture.
To reduce polygon count, but keep kinda nice looks i want to use baked branch with leaves and place them multiple times on tree - standard technique for games for what i know. After that i use blender modifier: edit normals to get rid of messy shadows that this technique is known of producing. Now i have 2 outcomes:
- If the planes were single face (4vertex) polygons i get well shadowed but shallow and messy look.
- if the planes were multiple faces (5+vertex) so i can give them volume, editing normals flips them completely on some triangles so i have holes in mesh. I was trying to copy whole foliage after flipping normals and flip faces to fill up holes but obviously that makes shadows messy again and if i copied and flipped foliage before after editing normals faces direction matched on both sides.
What am I missing guys?
Edit:
To reduce polygon count, but keep kinda nice looks i want to use baked branch with leaves and place them multiple times on tree - standard technique for games for what i know. After that i use blender modifier: edit normals to get rid of messy shadows that this technique is known of producing. Now i have 2 outcomes:
- If the planes were single face (4vertex) polygons i get well shadowed but shallow and messy look.
- if the planes were multiple faces (5+vertex) so i can give them volume, editing normals flips them completely on some triangles so i have holes in mesh. I was trying to copy whole foliage after flipping normals and flip faces to fill up holes but obviously that makes shadows messy again and if i copied and flipped foliage before after editing normals faces direction matched on both sides.
What am I missing guys?
Edit:
Replies
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage
Sounds like you're using Blender? It helps to put the program name in your thread title, so experienced users will be drawn in to help.
http://polycount.com/discussion/63361/information-about-polycount-new-member-introductions/p1#use
About the page, yep i've seen it and i walked through every single link on this page, actually it is the place where i found out about editing normals for foliage technique.
To be completely honest with You, i don't believe myself enough to say if it is software related or it is me being dumb and i was simply scared to reduce target of ppl who could and want to help me only to blender users.
I would like to add that I chose this shape because it's similiar how they did it in "Zelda: breath of the wild", personally i think they achieved awesome results for such low poly game and i am aware that i won't get same results without their shaders and skill but for now it looks just terrible.