Hello :) I swear I've worked with an engine that has this capability in the past and I am hoping you folks can help me find out the name of this technique, so I can read up on it. Have you ever seen or worked with tech that could control edge softness right in the engine? So if I have a hard edge in Max on export (each…
I don't know how source does it, but I can only imagine it would be dynamically adding edge loops, like chamfering each edge with a few segments. Did you want to do this as a sort of LOD method? Like softening the edges as the object comes into view?
Check out the article in the book Shader X5 called "Micro Beveled Edges". This does what you're after on an engine-level. Basically the engine calculates two sets of normals per model, the first set is the hard edges, the second set is smoothed normals. Then it masks the edges of the model, displaying the smoothed normals…
Hijack : I dont think so hehe. Its a great technique but I think Adam means something else. Adam. For starters you can check some solutions already available for regular renderers. Max used to have a plugin exactly for that, and now MentalRay has an architectural shader doing exactly this too. (ever monder how come shitty…
Hmm, interesting. How expensive is that technique? Would be interesting to know if it was actually more efficient to just bevel the edges instead of using a shader, or vice-versa... :)
adam, I would think that's impossible. If an engine does that, it's simply adding more polygons around the edges, like a very basic version of dynamic tesselation.