Nissa_Red wrote...
@Randomdays
Yes, I would. Actually, even if I'd appreciate it, placeables do not matter that much to me, as I rarely use placeables trees, walls or buildings, and alot of them remain on a flat ground (so their flat PWK is valid and sufficient), but tiles, I use alot. I happened to see whole tilesets with no meshes reflecting walls or tree trunks in their WOKmeshes.
While I can understand why tileset creators would do it to save time and efforts (and spend it elsewhere), I wonder if there is more to it. Perhaps areas with such WOKmeshes would be way too laggy in the context of a PW, for example, because in a LAN/SP context, it doesn't seem to affect us (my players and me) that much.
The lag generated by any wok can be reduced by reducing poly counts. Most tileset folks generate the terrain/buildings first, then clone that for the wok. This leads to an enormous number of wasted polys as well issues with unconnected verts or overlapping faces etc, all of which cause sanity check errors.
Woks don't have to match terrain exactly, and can even be used to reach areas that you might other think unreachable. Someone at Bioware proved this with one of the tiles in Rural (I think) where you have buildings butting up against water, and one of the buildings actually overhangs a small boat parked underneath. I am still in hospital, so I can't look this up for greater clarity.
Anyway, my main point is that you can reduce the comp[lexity of a wok considerably to help with lag/speed issues. However, I also agree that a PROPER wok helps with immersion. I should be able to duck behind some trees in the forest to then be able to set an ambush...flat pwok prevents this, same thing is true in a tile wok. It is NOT necessary or even all that useful to utilize a flat pwok.
An object that blocks line of sight typically blocks movement as well, a few exceptions can be found in low walls, stone out croppings, cut down trees etc...
The downside to having a more accurate wok (this doubles with pwoks) is all the calculations that the engine makes for every step the pc/npc takes. Having a more accurate pathnode helps a lot here too. Tile-set wok files generally follow a "standard" that is not written down by Bioware though, and this is regulated by tilesize, height divisioins, etc.... typically since a tile is 10x10 meters, we divide that into eight sub-pieces (for lack of better wording) each being 125cm by 125cm. Each of THOSE verts on the outside edge of the wok, should be created if not alreay there. Aurora uses specific vert locations to tie various geometry together, if one of your outside edge verts is located at 130 and the tile next to it has the corresponding vert at 125, you WILL have a visible gap and may end up with npc's/pc's walking in air or under ground etc.
For textures? I like using 1024x1024 where possible for gound cover materials. I typically UVW map them with the default box type, with size fields set at 1001x1001x3. Doing it this way you are using a texture larger than the object, shrinking it down to 1001 which is ALSO larger than the object. This helps hide edges the best way I know (smoothing drives me nuts, and most times does not help with edges like that)
Shoot, I am bouncing all over the place it seems. I guess these meds are doing more to my mind than I realized.
If I have raised more questions than answers please give me a direct question and maybe I will be able to keep my mind focused well enough to give you the answer you seek, if I know it.
@nissa_red : Please re-post your mini-tutorial above in the
Custom Content Tutorials Thread. I am nearly positive that Shadow_m won't mind at all.
EDIT: Back to poly count and outside edge vert location. The out side edges of ANY tile should have corresponding verts in the same location as all other tiles in the set, but that is where the mirroring stops. You can reduce the vert count in any vertical object and typically most tree trunks or plants as well. The WOK does not get seen, but it does affect movement and/or line of sight. Reducing the polys necessary to get a general feel of the objects shape is all that is really needed, ie you do not need a 16sided polygone shape (and all its resulting polys) to represent the turnk of a tree. You might want that for the visible section of the tree itself, the one holding the texture, but the wok section has no need for that level of detail. (Except on the outside edges, there, they must match any other tile that might connect to that edge)
Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 16 mars 2013 - 05:55 .
