Quick question about feathers...

DustyShinigami

Hi

Just a quick question: for a project, I'll be making a real-time dinosaur that would fit into Ark Survival Evolved. Specifically, a Velociraptor. Some designs (and new research) portray them as having feathers, like this:

For the game-ready asset, would these be made using hair cards? I suspect the answer is 'yes'... Or, would/can it just be retopologised geometry?

Thanks

DustyShinigami

I guess something like this would be more in-line to the kind of feathers I'd make...

Eric Chadwick

Hair cards, yes. Ideally using alpha-to-coverage if available in the engine.

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Transparency_map#Alpha_To_Coverage

DustyShinigami

Cool. Thanks for the heads-up. I'm not sure how I'd go about setting that up in UE4, but it's certainly something I'll look into some time.

Eric Chadwick

Do some searching yet? https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/TestingAndOptimization/PerformanceAndProfiling/ForwardRenderer/

DustyShinigami

Not much, no. I've been busy gathering references still. But thanks for the link.