Hey, I have not posted in awhile, but I thought Polycounters would maybe find this interesting! Here is a breakdown of how I'm making the art assets in my game -- I think it's a pretty novel approach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bez-9AnW3kI
This is not usually a problem, because the shader is pretty simple, and there is not a ton of geo -- so it seems to render pretty fast, BUT by default it does a "SetPass" for each plane. It does eventually become a problem for more complex scenes. Here is the solution I came up with-- Use this tool to convert the sprites…
Yup, alpha test works nice and seems to render fast. I would like to try some SSAO, or one of the more recent volumetric lighting plug-ins. I will post up some video here if I get a chance to try that in the next couple of weeks!
Really cool technique! Nice sleuthing, and a great way to make stylized art. I assume you're using alpha test for most of the assets? Alpha blend would probably have tons of artifacts. I wonder if SSAO would work with this style at all? Probably not enough geo though.