Image-based ambient lighting
March 26th, 2010
Ambient light (or indirect light) is light that is not coming directly from a bright light source. For example, in an outdoor scene, the sun is a direct light, and the ambient light comes from the sky and the ground. Here's a picture of the shadowed side of an Overgrowth character, showing how it's lit by scattered light ...
From temporary to final textures
March 25th, 2010
Following up my post on making temporary textures, this post explains how to make the final textures using your temporary textures as a guide. The first thing I did was place the bricks and stones to match up with the original temporary texture. This was really easy since I already had the texure in 3DS Max. After I finished that ...
Comparing ODE and Bullet
March 24th, 2010
Last week, I switched the Overgrowth physics engine from ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) to Bullet. This prompted a few questions from blog readers. What are ODE and Bullet? Why did we switch? Why weren't we using Bullet from the start? What are ODE and Bullet? ODE and Bullet are both open-source physics engines. What are physics engines? To put ...
Overgrowth Interviewed in Strana Igr (Gameland)
March 21st, 2010
You might have seen the interview on RPS that Alec Meer featured yesterday with Aubrey and me. That was totally awesome and we are very thankful to the RPS guys for giving indies like us a voice. However, I wanted to draw your attention to another interview that won't be as accessible because it's only going to be ...
Last call for Overgrowth orchestra
March 20th, 2010
This is a post from Mikko Tarmia, who composed all of the music for Overgrowth. As we mentioned earlier, we are recruiting musically-talented Overgrowth fans to play a special arrangement of the Overgrowth theme. So far we have over 80 volunteers, but we are still missing certain instrument players. We have plenty of piano/keyboard players and guitarists, but we ...
Using texture atlases
March 19th, 2010
So a texture is an image that is wrapped around a 3D model to add apparent detail -- but what's a texture atlas? A texture atlas is an image that contains multiple textures. For example, below you can see a character texture on the left, and a texture atlas on the right (with four character textures). Why use a texture ...
Overgrowth Soundtrack: Ambient 4
March 7th, 2010
We've uploaded another song to the Overgrowth Soundtrack playlist on YouTube. The songs are composed by the talented Mikko Tarmia and often feature Anton Riehl on the flute. Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to another beautiful ambient track. Be sure to enjoy it in HD. This track commences with predictably soothing tranquility. However, as my eye ...