Vertex Color Texture Blending, [bounty ?]

#1 In the release notes for b2 a vertex color flag was added to custom materials it might be a good jumping off point for vertex color material blending. I had tried to get this working in an earlier version without much success it was suggested then that you would need to extend shadergen to support it

#2 Thx Ken. Hopefully we can get a solution from someone since this is a mainstream concept.

- I have received 2 emails from people willing to add money to the pot.

#3 Just resurrecting this thread. I'd really like to see a vertex blending shader for Torque, maybe we can get some traction on this now that it's open source.

#4 It would be nice to have that feature..I'm sure that every artist would SCREAM a thank-you out loud.


// an RTCW fan eh?! :D
// ..I loved ET and worked on loads of mod maps for it.
// Even RTCW:ET had a version of VCTB via Socks' DotProduct2 material usage in Radiant. ..ahem..in 2003!

#5 Yeah, hey we're working on a RtCW-esque shooter if you have some spare time.

#6 If I had spare time I would help a bit..but I keep busy enough for 10. ;)

Do you have a link to a site for it ? or anymore info to share ?

#7 I should have some more info and a site up within the coming month. Also, I've offered a bounty on this feature www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/131831 if anyone wants to throw into the pot and get it done. It's getting annoying.

#8 Working on it now, should have something quite soon. Not terribly familiar with this part of the engine to be honest, but I think I can figure something out.

#9 You know what they say, slow and steady wins the race!




And then with some magical repainting:

#10 Man, that's great. Let me know when you're finished and have it steady I can shoot a few bucks your way, unless you feel like selling it on the asset store.

#11 Heh, well it'll be a little bit longer. First I have to get blended normal maps as well (which won't be difficult, just basically another iteration of the same process), but then is the matter specular which will be a bit more complicated. After that, height factoring in to the blending as well.

And then the massive task of looking into getting an editor and per-object basis set in. Heh, all in all a lot of work to do, but I think it'll be worth it. This is one of those features that'll really help put Torque in the running.

I'm thinking what I may do with this feature once I'm all done is a new idea I had: A sort of all-in purchase from the community. Basically people can just toss in a contribution and collectively buy the code and which point I give it out publicly. I'd hate to really restrict many people from such a feature, but with as many hours as I'm going to be sinking in to it all away from my own game, some compensation is always nice too, haha.

#12 That might be good. I mean if we all kick in 20 bucks or something we might be able to make it worth you while. The guy who wrote Bsurfaces for Blender did that. I think he sold it for 39.95 for a set time period and then released it as GPL.

#13 Do NOT release this as GPL. Go read the GPL license and tell me that it will not affect the T3D codebase. If you have to tweak the code for your own game then you have to release that as GPL. As far as I know every shader in T3D is MIT.

#14 Haha, don't worry, I never said I'd be releasing it as GPL. I know better than that. ;)

#15 Yeah, I should clarify. No GPL. The reason I'm using Torque is that it's MIT. I was just using BSurfaces as an example for payment options.

#16 BTW, I love GPL'd apps when I can get them. I also contribute back when I can. Blender itself was community/world bought for 500K to be made GPL. It is just fragments small code libraries have limited use when GPL'd on their own.

Jacob, this sounds really good. I don't know that I completely understand the purpose of this code, but the results on the texture look very nice. I would be interested in getting access to this at some point. I think it could help with my terrain generation efforts to make it more beautiful and immerssive. That is a primary goal of my current project. To make a person feel like they are somewhere wonderfully beautiful.

#17 Yeah, I'm finding that hard with the current terrain system. I am planning on modeling all of my terrain in Torque now.

Also, to Jacob, is there a possibility that you could use colors rather than just black and white. If you used RGBA we could blend up to 4 textures. Not sure if that's feasible with the current system.

#18 That was a first draft using white, I've already changed over to alpha to prevent conflict with wind, which uses colors. It's not too likely that you'll use a windy object with blend, but never know.

I doubt I'll do multiple blends though as it'll prolly just start getting too lengthy and complex for little benefit. Vertex painting is so low resolution (obviously) that more than one blend would probably be too busy to look good anyhow. Plus breaks wind effects at that point.

Was trying to get normal maps working last night and posted, but that didn't work out. Tired programming is bad to do and I ended up coding myself in to a corner; didn't see how to salvage what I set up so have to start over with that part of it. Oh well, im off tomorrow so I'll have time.

As for the purpose, its really all about environmentalal diversity. For example, say you want a plaster wall bit broken up to reveal the brick underneath. To keep it at high res, you need to use a massive texture for a large wall, not a great idea. If you break the wall in to segments, let's say 4, you'll need to make seperate materials for each one: build a new diffuse, normal, and spec map for each. AI you'll end up with 12 images in memory, four meshes, and four complete materials, so a lot of extra shader instructions too. Also not a great route.

With this code though, you can instead reduce it to 6 images total, four meshes, and.only 1 material. You jusy would define your blend textures, broken plaster to go over the brick, and paint your vertices.to define where it goes, and the code does the rest.

Plus that's only assuming I don't get object specificity working. If so, it'll only be one mesh. So in the end, this feature makes texture diversity much more efficient.

#19 The only problem on my end is that Blender can't paint vertex alpha. There's a work around, though, but it takes some extra doing. Not sure about Max/Maya (I'm assuming they can).

#20 They definitly can, if that is in fact the case,ill see about making a use color option.