Plant Potted Examples for Modern Games

oXYnary

Hi new project with Torque. Need to create some potted plants to fill a space. Looked briefly through environmental thread. Did not see what I was looking for.

Can some kind soul allow me to see one of their plant creations for a modern engine? With texture/shader items? I only use them to see as reference alone to get a better grasp of the creation method. 3ds max would be best.

Most formally I am wondering about alpha channels and using single sided polygons that are reflected in game with the normal map inverting itself then from the backside (not sure if Torque engine overcomes this).

Eric Chadwick

I did a test not long ago with normal mapping leaves. Don't know if Torque's materials support this kind of effect though. Probably overkill anyhow, unless you get self-shadowing and you don't care about fill rate.
http://www.ericchadwick.com/img/tree_light-scattering.html

Here's another example that isn't using a fancy shader, just straight diffuse. It does use separate faces for the undersides of the leaves though, they all get the darker leaf. I used a ton of geometry because the fronds wave in the wind.
http://www.ericchadwick.com/img/palm_rigged.html

oXYnary

Thanks Eric, I will look over yours and see what I can come up with. Its a indoors environment so no worries about movement.

Eric Chadwick

I'm updating my portfolio, so now there's a video up of the motion, might give a better sense of the undersides.

oXYnary

SO I will admit being a newb at this multiple levels of transparency on top of one another. My eventual goal is a bonsai type tree, so its more cloudy/bushy than flat planes stacked in parallel.

Trying to make a planes intersecting, say a three way, will then confuse dx with the front and rear of the polys when I add an alpha. So some of the faces look dark from one side, and light on the other. They also depending on the direction of the normals wont show the transparency of the polygons behind them.

Attempting to make double sided polys of course gets the flickering with the polys on top of one another.

Any suggestions for this type of tree? Again actual file examples work the best as I can study them in max.

Eric Chadwick

Good luck getting files. When I explicitly model backfaces, I make sure to turn on backface culling, otherwise I get z-fighting (flickering).

To avoid transparency sorting problems either use alpha-test (what everyone used to use for trees, and many still do) or use signed-distance alpha-test.

For the normals shading problems, either edit the vertex normals of the intersecting planes so they all point in a uniform direction, or make the surfaces fullbright and use vertex color for AO-like tinting.

Joseph Silverman

Why not just use the technique EQ posted for ivy here (with modeling/texturing your source plant of choice instead of ivy?)
http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p=826598&postcount=32

Vailias

oh hell intersecting alphas in torque.
If you aren't using 3dsMax for the modeling you're just plain screwed, and need to take a different approach all together.
if you're using max you can put SORT:: in the name of the finished object, and the exporter will chop your mesh up into enough polygons/subobjects so that it will render properly in torque.

For torque foliage your best bet is to either make big indpendant shaped things, like cacti or large leafy indoor trees, or if you want a lush leafy thing, make it in conentric shells. Don't use interpenetrating geometry it just fails with torque.

By concentric shells think of a hedge, make one cube fully textured with a dark foliage look to it, then make another one larger than that with a lighter foliage look with some alphaed holes in it so the lower cube shows through. Just be sure to attach the inner cube to the outer one so you get proper sort order. If you're working in maya you wind up with the same sorting issues as torque so you can see if you've done it right or not.