Billboards Part 2
Entry posted by Josh ·
3,020 views
I tried a different approach for billboards that is giving good results. A single quad rotates around the vertical axis to face the camera. A series of 64 different view angles are rendered in a circle around the billboarded object. A second quad faces straight up and is gradually dissolved in when the angle between the object and the camera becomes vertical enough.
A combination of cross-fading and cross-dissolving is used to smoothly blend in between the different side views. The billboard itself is dissolved in as the 3D model is dissolved out. The net result is perfectly smooth blending between distances and view angles. The billboard representation of the model is extremely accurate and has much better lighting than Leadwerks 2 vegetation system had.
A couple of things I also had to do:
- Activate alpha filtering in the mipmap generation routine in the texture converter. This will make tree branches look a lot better.
- Add the ability to render to a specific mipmap of a texture. Works nicely!
There's still a lot to do, but the idea is starting to sprout.
-
12
6 Comments
Recommended Comments