[Flaser]

Omni's recent asteroid model showed the shortcoming of the current LOD system - he can't assign big enough textures to properly cover a model that big, because doing so will kill any system.

Bobb (semi) recently made code for superdetailing - putting extra high poly parts into models that are only rendered when within a set distance (LODs are like this too AFAIK).

My question is, could the coders implement a system that would allow similar super detail textures.
However unlike a preset submodels, these could be any texture on any given part of the model.

The effect would be that modellers could use a small number of textures for distance texturing of huge models, and cover its surface with a bigger number of high res textures for close-up.

Without this improovement landscapes and big objects would be a major GRAM killers.
With this the modeller can put in as many textures as they want since only the textures closest to the player will be rendered.

[DaBrain]

I support this request. It's quite hard to make landscapes looks good and perform good at the same time.


Still, what you're asking for is already possible. It's just pretty difficult.

You'll have to divide you landscape, or lets say model, in many subsystems and use smaller maps for the higher lods.

Together with Bob's subsystem lod feature you will achive the effect you were looking for, I think.

I's just rather complicated. You'll have to spilt your texture into many parts...

[aldo_14]

You could probably do it now, just use the subsystem loding with the same model with different texture res......

Other thing is >4 lod support; I'm not sure if we have that, I've heard some conflicting details in the past.

[DaBrain]

It's rather work intensive...


Detail textures would be a great deal. But if I don't stop requesting, I'm sure the coders will hurt me badly....

So I'll let you guys do it.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by DaBrain
It's rather work intensive...


Detail textures would be a great deal. But if I don't stop requesting, I'm sure the coders will hurt me badly....

So I'll let you guys do it.

It's not work intensive if it's a texture change only; depending on how you make the more detailed texture, of course.

[DaBrain]

I think the UV splitting is the work intensive part...


The more parts you use the better the performance will be.

[Flaser]

I already now its possible that's why I mentioned Bob's subsystem.
However what I'd like to now is if some support could be added for textures and textures alone - a system that would help the modeller assign several sets of textures to the modeller.

How much work that would be, can it be done without a major overhaul, or can it make it to the new material system...that's the sort  of thing I would like a coder to tell.

This is not a feature request, more like an inquiry if it can be done and wheter someone is willing.

[Bobboau]

landscapes aren't suported, I would like to add that feature some day, but now is not the time, detail textureing is easy to implement, but not when you have such a complex lighting method as specmapping, if we were to so much as drop glow map suport it would be easy (ignoring for a moment the lack of suport for multable uv coordanants).

when the new material system is implemented people will be able to pick and choose exactly how each surface of the model is rendered,  until then there realy isn't much we can do we have effectively reached the limit of the hacked in name based texture loading will allow.

[Flaser]

OK.

So all we have to do is test your builds and send lots of chocolate and/or beer to support your coding frenzy.

(J/K)

BTW - how is the overhaul going? Bug killing, or you could make progress beyond the bare "fundamental changes" you made not so long ago?

[Bobboau]

I'm in the middle of trying to get all dynamic geometry batched, I build a batcher, and moved the thruster drawing code into it, I was hopeing someone could tell me if it is actualy working faster or not...