FxShapeReplicator / fxFoliageReplicator / fxGrass with Atlas
by Vincent BILLET · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 08/19/2005 (1:56 am) · 6 replies
It seems that fxShapeReplicator and fxFoliageReplicator doesn't work in terrain_water_demo. I think it's because Atlas can't give a Z coords of a point.
But ...
1) Does anybody tried to use this components with Atlas?
2) Does anybody tried to modify them to make them available on Atlas? I think also that it will have some performance issue with huge terrains.
3) Does, in the same way anybody tried / Translated fxGrass on Atlas?
In advance thanks, and sorry for my poor english, I'm a frenchy guy.
But ...
1) Does anybody tried to use this components with Atlas?
2) Does anybody tried to modify them to make them available on Atlas? I think also that it will have some performance issue with huge terrains.
3) Does, in the same way anybody tried / Translated fxGrass on Atlas?
In advance thanks, and sorry for my poor english, I'm a frenchy guy.
#3
(Translation: Nothing right now, but maybe something soon.)
08/20/2005 (2:53 pm)
Oh ho ho... That's really the question, isn't it. :)(Translation: Nothing right now, but maybe something soon.)
#4
08/21/2005 (9:33 am)
Port the code to atlas and/or make it work better with TSE.
#5
08/21/2005 (11:29 am)
Wahooo... better than TGE .. A great challenge... But... For The Moment antoher goal..... ;) 
#6
I think there will be several shaders that need the terrain, like shader particles, water color variation based on terrain depth, shape replication and a couple others. I was thinking that if I created a heightfield for the local terrain chunk(s) on the GPU then I could do things like that. To accomodate all of these and still only use one bitmap, I'd need special values. I was thinking about using "0" for locations that contained interiors, and negative numbers to indicate values under water. (or possibly, if only one water block level is supported, normalize the heightmap so that 0 is the water level).
Thoughts?
08/22/2005 (8:04 am)
I might be able to tackle this... been reading alot about 2.0 and 3.0 shaders this weekend. I haven't actually coded anything yet, but I've looked at a lot of code and white papers. I'm going to try something simple first that doesn't take terrain into consideration (a rainbow effect), and if I can get that working then I'll look into the fxShapeReplicator next.I think there will be several shaders that need the terrain, like shader particles, water color variation based on terrain depth, shape replication and a couple others. I was thinking that if I created a heightfield for the local terrain chunk(s) on the GPU then I could do things like that. To accomodate all of these and still only use one bitmap, I'd need special values. I was thinking about using "0" for locations that contained interiors, and negative numbers to indicate values under water. (or possibly, if only one water block level is supported, normalize the heightmap so that 0 is the water level).
Thoughts?
Associate Kyle Carter
Long view distances might have issues, and fxShapeReplicator is definitely not the best choice for doing a big forest.