Terrain LOD
September 23rd, 2006
Dynamic terrain level of detail is working now using a form of patch-based geomipmapping; this means that we can seamlessly render distant terrain at lower level of detail, so polygon count does not increase exponentially as view distance increases. This means that we can make the far clip plane much farther away while maintaining high framerate, so you will be ...
Morph targets
August 11th, 2006
Morph targets allow us to create several model variations and interpolate between them, so that we keep all of the benefits of skeletal animation as well as the flexibility of traditional keyframe animation. This allows our characters to blink, breathe, make facial expressions, and other soft motion that would be difficult to simulate using bones. Here is an example of ...
Normal mapping
July 17th, 2006
I just got normal mapping (with or without specular lighting) integrated into the game engine properly, so we can render detailed bumpy surfaces such as wrinkles in cloth or ornate carvings. We are making sure to keep the normal mapping toned down and realistic, so we can avoid the shiny-plastic look plaguing many recent games.
Starting fur
June 18th, 2006
I basically applied the grass shader to Turner, and this is what he looks like! I am going to have to tweak it a lot to make it look more like fur (anisotropic lighting, edge highlighting, etc)
Grass rendering
June 14th, 2006
I thought the grassy areas were looking a little bit flat, so I started working on the grass rendering. It uses the same general principle as the old grass system (fin/shell volume rendering) but now it uses vertex and pixel shaders to look better and run faster.
Procedural texture blending
June 13th, 2006
I just added procedural texture blending to the Phoenix terrain; it now blends between different textures based on slope, and between variations of the same texture to reduce tiling artifacts.
Lugaru 2 movement
June 12th, 2006
All of the basic movement activities in Lugaru 2 are working now! Walking, running, crouching, sneaking, rolling, and jumping are fully functional. Phoenix (the Lugaru 2 game engine) uses a unique animation system that creates animations on the fly based on surface and physics information, and even the character's personality and current state. For example it is very easy ...