Trying to break down Black Flag's Island foliage vertex normals
polycounter lvl 9
Hey Guys,
Currently I'm in the process of creating a few Caribbean type islands in Unity. I can't seem to understand their process of vertex normal for distant foliage. Here are some of the islands I've made:
They don't look too bad. Now let's look at Black Flag's islands:
I've had a look at the way they laid out the foliage using a free camera in the game. It's basically a bunch of planes/billboards put together. They also do not cast any shadows or receive shadows from geometry meshes (which I did the same):
My islands look great from a distance, there's no issue. The issue seems to lie when you have the sun directly behind the foliage. The thing lights up like a christmas tree.
My method to create the vertex normals for these islands was to have an entire sphere (if the island was circular), or shaped sphere to encompass the island. I'm not sure if this is the correct method.
I've tried having the handles facing outwards more towards the ocean but the shading seems to get nastier with some patchy areas.
It doesn't seem to blend as nicely as Black Flag. Sun's at 2 o clock but obvious weird shading/overly dark areas:
Whatever Black flag did for vertex normals on their islands, they came out perfect. There are literally NO shading issues whatsoever, every bit of foliage looks great regardless of player position and sun position. Does anyone have any ideas?
Currently I'm in the process of creating a few Caribbean type islands in Unity. I can't seem to understand their process of vertex normal for distant foliage. Here are some of the islands I've made:
They don't look too bad. Now let's look at Black Flag's islands:
I've had a look at the way they laid out the foliage using a free camera in the game. It's basically a bunch of planes/billboards put together. They also do not cast any shadows or receive shadows from geometry meshes (which I did the same):
My islands look great from a distance, there's no issue. The issue seems to lie when you have the sun directly behind the foliage. The thing lights up like a christmas tree.
My method to create the vertex normals for these islands was to have an entire sphere (if the island was circular), or shaped sphere to encompass the island. I'm not sure if this is the correct method.
I've tried having the handles facing outwards more towards the ocean but the shading seems to get nastier with some patchy areas.
It doesn't seem to blend as nicely as Black Flag. Sun's at 2 o clock but obvious weird shading/overly dark areas:
Whatever Black flag did for vertex normals on their islands, they came out perfect. There are literally NO shading issues whatsoever, every bit of foliage looks great regardless of player position and sun position. Does anyone have any ideas?
Replies
It seems more likely they did it on individual assets or groups of assets.
Black Flag: