grasses and texturing

[boytitanium 10]

The in-game graphics are a good beginning to what I think can be very much improved grass texturing. The only thing that is not 3 dimensional is this aspect of gaming. I have not found a game yet to have very good grasses in game that was as good as the rest of modeling, gameplay, etc. I think you need a different editor to really get the effect of the ground. What I want to suggest is an example located here:

http://www.thomasandfriends.com/usa/videos.asp

This video has extremely good modeling throughout and looks real to an extent--I just think maybe you could copy an atmosphere similar to this game and have playable models but instead of being still they actually move?

Another idea on this same concept is the video documentary on the military and history channels of Patton 360, the modeling in these documentaries are very close to ideal including the terrain and grasses they feature?

http://www.history.com/content/patton-360/image-gallery

[enad 11]

Cmon guys lets make ArmA II look like Thomas and Friends! YAY!

What does that video have anything to do with textures or grass?

I mean I see what your saying about the models but...This is ArmA II, a video game. Not an animated TV about trains.

[max power 21]

TV and movie production art is typically a product of a composite of all kinds of different elements from different sources. Moreover, they are not rendered in real time. While these images may be useful as target renders, perhaps, they don't actually tell you how to get there in real time rendering. Real time rendering has its own, much more limited, bag of tricks.

[jw custom 56]

Splish Splash Splosh wtf :confused:

[Master gamawa 0]

I like the grass layer as it is. It works. Sometimes I see something far away that looks like a rock and it's an enemy helmet. I guess snipers will look like bushes which makes perfect sense.

I've said it before, all the grass layer needs, is a local effect that projects a transparency mask shaped like a few different types of grass outlines.

Instead of seeing someone submerged in green concrete it will look like someone is actually hiding behind/lying in grass. If someone manages to make a sway-with-the-wind animated mask it would be flawless!

Let me illustrate that for you:

This has to work after the range of rendered grass. It could be activated just as soon as the real grass disappears.

How hard would you reckon that would be to implement in the game? I am asking because I know jack shit about addons and hardcoded stuff.

[boytitanium 10]

I view the grasses, bushes as a good beginning since it is real photography, but overall it needs large improvements-- when a player or vehicle runs over the texture lets say a bush it just plops over without any kind of motion? Same thing with the trees, if you look at the thread websites the grass seems as if the player vehicle would interact with the grasses, bushes, trees, meaning when near the tree branches only the branches would move, same thing with the grasses, when player is moving in high grass it would move independent of the large scale wind movement direction showing where a player is hiding.

Mature video games:

****The only thing that should not be real in video games is the environment you are playing from****

Edited January 8, 2010 by boytitanium

[max power 21]

I like the grass layer as it is. It works. Sometimes I see something far away that looks like a rock and it's an enemy helmet. I guess snipers will look like bushes which makes perfect sense.

I've said it before, all the grass layer needs, is a local effect that projects a transparency mask shaped like a few different types of grass outlines.

Instead of seeing someone submerged in green concrete it will look like someone is actually hiding behind/lying in grass. If someone manages to make a sway-with-the-wind animated mask it would be flawless!

Let me illustrate that for you:

[MG]http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4106/grasslayermask.jpg[/img] [MG]http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/grasslayermask.jpg/1/w800.png[/img]

This has to work after the range of rendered grass. It could be activated just as soon as the real grass disappears.

How hard would you reckon that would be to implement in the game? I am asking because I know jack shit about addons and hardcoded stuff.

I think the grass layer is a polygonal layer above the ground. Masks applied to it would exist on the horizontal plane, not the vertical plane, I think.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

I thought the "grass layer" was non existent in Arma2 compared to Arma1. In Arma1 I believe it worked in the ways you describe, but in Arma2 I thought the "grass layer" was just sinking the graphical polygons into the ground. His fire LOD is still above ground. It's a "bad trick" in that he won't be exactly where you're shooting, but it's still better than nothing.

[max power 21]

That could be but I don't know why they wouldn't sink all LODs below ground. Surely they don't have a skeleton for each LOD. If the fire geo was above ground, and the skeleton was below ground, (invisible) shit would go crazy.