Original Post
Well, I can finally post a screenshot.
Specs:
- Clouds. Most of the stuff about clouds is discussed in advanced cloud rendering thread. I'm yet to implement advanced shading but for now some simple perlin noise does the trick. The clouds are fully dynamic and move and change over time.
- Terrain. A simple heightfield without any LOD. I currently use a 64x64 map. I will eventually have to create an octree to do frustum culling, dynamic loading of maps as the camera moves and possibly an LOD algorithm (not sure about that one yet).
- Texturing. This isn't your average let's-use-a-large-texture-and-a-single-detail-map terrain. I'm using tiles of textures that are blended together using a large alpha map (one for each type of tile). I generate low resolution alpha maps for the entire patch and use them to blend the layers of tile textures. The problem with this approach is that when there are many small tiles it's very visible that the terrain is tiled. It looks more like a rug then mountains and grass 
It currently takes one pass for every time of texture (the screenshot is rendered with 2 passes).
- Lighting. I precalculate per-vertex lighting at loadtime. I will soon move the lighting information to alpha maps and use them as lightmaps. There's a lot to squeeze into 2 texture units with some clever thinking 
I'll also use the same map to implement shadows.
I currently run this on GeForce 2 MX so I only have two texture units. Once I get a GeForce 3/4/25 I'll optimize the terrain for it. I'll add a detail texture to every tile and lower the number of tiles so the texturing will look perfect , add dynamic per-pixel lighting, dynamic shadows and a lot more. Right now I just don't have enough texture units for per-pixel stuff although a GeForce 2 can handle it.
A demo is yet to come, stay tuned for water, grass and a lot more cool stuff
[edited by - kill on June 17, 2002 11:13:12 PM]
Specs:
- Clouds. Most of the stuff about clouds is discussed in advanced cloud rendering thread. I'm yet to implement advanced shading but for now some simple perlin noise does the trick. The clouds are fully dynamic and move and change over time.
- Terrain. A simple heightfield without any LOD. I currently use a 64x64 map. I will eventually have to create an octree to do frustum culling, dynamic loading of maps as the camera moves and possibly an LOD algorithm (not sure about that one yet).
- Texturing. This isn't your average let's-use-a-large-texture-and-a-single-detail-map terrain. I'm using tiles of textures that are blended together using a large alpha map (one for each type of tile). I generate low resolution alpha maps for the entire patch and use them to blend the layers of tile textures. The problem with this approach is that when there are many small tiles it's very visible that the terrain is tiled. It looks more like a rug then mountains and grass It currently takes one pass for every time of texture (the screenshot is rendered with 2 passes).
- Lighting. I precalculate per-vertex lighting at loadtime. I will soon move the lighting information to alpha maps and use them as lightmaps. There's a lot to squeeze into 2 texture units with some clever thinking I'll also use the same map to implement shadows.
I currently run this on GeForce 2 MX so I only have two texture units. Once I get a GeForce 3/4/25 I'll optimize the terrain for it. I'll add a detail texture to every tile and lower the number of tiles so the texturing will look perfect , add dynamic per-pixel lighting, dynamic shadows and a lot more. Right now I just don't have enough texture units for per-pixel stuff although a GeForce 2 can handle it.
A demo is yet to come, stay tuned for water, grass and a lot more cool stuff
[edited by - kill on June 17, 2002 11:13:12 PM]
