Help transparent ground for faux reflections
Hello everyone. I've read polycount for years but this is the first time I've had an issue that I couldnt figure out and I am seeking input.
So I'm doing an art test in Maya, you know the Gameloft one. I having trouble with the ground portion of my scene. I understand the concept but I'm having trouble following through, so to speak.
I need to have a ground that appears to have wet spots that reflect the environment, which is just an inverted instance of the environment beneath the ground plane. This is achieved through alpha transparency. I get this.
My problem is that my only option to get proper texel density for my ground texture is a tiling image. But then my alpha is also tiling, this is giving the "reflection" spots a very unnatural look.
I figured I could fix this easily with a layered shader but I would prefer to avoid using any techniques/shaders that an iPhone game engine wouldnt be able to handle.
My other idea would be having 3 Uv sets for the ground, 1 for the tiling image, 1 for the non-tiling alpha, and 1 for the lightmap. However, I've never done that before and I would think that the alpha would appear to be at a much lower texel density (the edges of the "relfection" would be pretty pixelated).
So I'm doing an art test in Maya, you know the Gameloft one. I having trouble with the ground portion of my scene. I understand the concept but I'm having trouble following through, so to speak.
I need to have a ground that appears to have wet spots that reflect the environment, which is just an inverted instance of the environment beneath the ground plane. This is achieved through alpha transparency. I get this.
My problem is that my only option to get proper texel density for my ground texture is a tiling image. But then my alpha is also tiling, this is giving the "reflection" spots a very unnatural look.
I figured I could fix this easily with a layered shader but I would prefer to avoid using any techniques/shaders that an iPhone game engine wouldnt be able to handle.
My other idea would be having 3 Uv sets for the ground, 1 for the tiling image, 1 for the non-tiling alpha, and 1 for the lightmap. However, I've never done that before and I would think that the alpha would appear to be at a much lower texel density (the edges of the "relfection" would be pretty pixelated).
Replies
I did the Gameloft art test back in July, I only used 4 512 maps: sky, water, everything else, and light map.
Today I'm sitting at my desk in the Gameloft Office.
just got to make sure the ground plane has enough verts to carry the information, so you may need to subdivided it a few times.
LMP, if i got the non-tiling route wouldn't the ground and transparency look terrible compared to the rest of the environment?
Passerby, my mesh isn't anywhere near the density I would need to get the kind of "reflections" I would like. I can't really increase it either as I have a Tri budget that I have to keep in mind and wasting a ton of Tris on the ground for transparency doesn't seem very efficient.
With regards to what Passerby said, you're going to need to vertex light this thing. If you don't have enough tris to add transparent spots to the ground, you're going to need to be more efficient. I probably spent at least a quarter of my poly budget on slicing of the geo for vert colouring.