Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Ideas & Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: planetsim on May 28, 2014, 02:01:45 pm

Title: Fractal everything ?
Post by: planetsim on May 28, 2014, 02:01:45 pm

Hats off to you guys for the awesome engine. Cant wait for the future :)

I am not sure this will make much sense, but I was wondering, since the terrain is already done through fractal algorithms that tessellates it, why not do the same for trees and grass or other objects. Like the metal bodies of the vehicles for example ? Otherwise trees branches or barks appear too smooth. Maybe also make the textures more dense procedurally so they do not appear stretched on rocks ?

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: John514 on May 28, 2014, 02:06:31 pm

Welcome to the forums!
Tessellating all these things would be terrible for the performance. You can get away with some normal mapping instead! :D

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: planetsim on May 28, 2014, 02:12:18 pm

Yeah I agree with that. There was this for increasing realism of trees in GPU Gems 3 : http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch04.html (http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch04.html)

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: John514 on May 28, 2014, 02:14:38 pm

Interesting.........

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: planetsim on May 28, 2014, 02:43:02 pm

I think maybe parts of meshes could be marked for 'fractaling' like that huge stone ledge in the ME mod of Minas Tirith: http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-2420-16.html (http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-2420-16.html)

Or the vertical walls of the various rings.

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: John514 on May 28, 2014, 02:45:30 pm

Yes, Minas Tirith was bothering me as well, since the rock does not have the detail the rest of the scenery does.
I think we`ll have to wait for a cave system, to actually be able to apply such effects into vertical surfaces.

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: planetsim on May 28, 2014, 03:21:16 pm

Ok, does the engine support normal maps(specifically parallax mapping) and displacement maps for custom models ? That should still allow for considerable detail even up close.

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: John514 on May 28, 2014, 03:23:18 pm

It does support both normal and specular maps.

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: John514 on June 02, 2014, 04:44:32 am

Cameni, is it posible to use a mesh to create a heightmap for Outerra? For example, the central "cliff" in Minas Tirith could be made by using the excellent 3D model of Minas Tirith we have.

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: cameni on June 02, 2014, 06:10:59 am

Not yet, that's something that vector and mesh overlays are supposed to do in the future.

Title: Re: Fractal everything ?
Post by: planetsim on June 02, 2014, 06:51:00 am

If displacement maps are supported that could help also. Displacement maps are 2D textures where the color is used to decide the actual displacement of a vertex in screen space(I think, not sure) This combined with tessellation can give true 'roughness' to a mesh without having to send millions of vertices for the cliff to the GPU and look correct in silhouttes