Friday 2010-06-17 Dev. update and Discussion Thread

[philip.ed]

Originally Posted by KOM.Nausicaa

Do you have any idea what that foliage will do to you frame rates Philip.ed?

LOL. I can imagine, although taking the example of WOP perhaps it could be avoided? e.g, in areas of forest, the trees could be static, i.e with no moving leaves etc apart from maybe the trees on the outside of the forest-area. So here, the effect would be visible from looking at the forest, without there being a massive impact of frame-rates

[KOM.Nausicaa]

if I understand correctly you talk about moving effects, like wind ?
But the problem really comes from the polygon count from the leaves and branches themselves, no matter if you have additional effects. That is why there are so many third party tree renderer, because creating custom trees from scratch is a massive resource eater for any studio. Tree renderer solve the "species" problem (you can buy from a library) and they are made to perform well and look reasonable -- which is very hard to achieve. That is why some companies have (rightfully) found a business model in selling trees and foliage to cinema and game studios.

[philip.ed]

Originally Posted by KOM.Nausicaa

if I understand correctly you talk about moving effects, like wind ?
But the problem really comes from the polygon count from the leaves and branches themselves, no matter if you have additional effects. That is why there are so many third party tree renderer, because creating custom trees from scratch is a massive resource eater for any studio. Tree renderer solve the "species" problem (you can buy from a library) and they are made to perform well and look reasonable -- which is very hard to achieve. That is why some companies have (rightfully) found a business model in selling trees and foliage to cinema and game studios.

OK, that makes sense. Although there are many sims on the market with lots of trees on the maps so if they were able to do it and playable frame-rates....

But thanks for the insight