Craters and blending

[Flexman]

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to blend walls of an impact crater against different terrain textures. Alpha test/blending doesn't work so well as you can see 'under' the crater mesh.

 

Using the vertex shader to contour it to the terrain works fine (below used as "mesh_contour.vert")

 

#define LW_DIFFUSE texture0
#define LW_UPNORMALS
#define LW_MESHLAYER

Include "mesh.vert"

 

It's the texture blending that's got me a bit stumped. Any suggestions folks?

[Canardia]

You can make a seperate mesh for the outer side of the crater with an alpha transparent texture so that it blends with anything. The transparent mesh needs to be put into the transparent world.

I've done the same for character hairs and furry clothes, and it works fine.

[wailingmonkey]

I'd probably try something like this:

 

 

I've shared a UV-mapped version of the above if you want it here: blast crater (no .gmf ... just the .obj)

 

 

[Flexman]

Thanks gentlemen for both interesting suggestions.

 

Anything that's co-planer is out of the question you get a lot of zbuffer issues around the outer regions of the map. Lot of flickering around the base.

 

We did find a compromise that works quite well. Using mesh_contor.vert with mesh_diffuse_alphatest_terrainnormals_terraincolor.frag.

 

It blends the base reasonably well and fits it to the terrain without much flicker. Adding some rocks and other relief debris around it is a good idea.

 

 

Thanks all.

[Jardar]

nice looking craters that