And going back to the development I present the first ever Playable/ Collidable/ Walkable terrain mesh in Starcraft 2. Larger than the actual map a bit, you can imagine a village can fit in the depression area ther. Was rather lazy so I painted it fast to see how it would look in sc2. I will combine more layers like AO, detail map, "Terrain mesh normal" and a colormap.
How do you make units follow the terrain when it becomes hilly when using the mesh as terrain? If you're making a tutorial then just answer it there I guess.
This can't be done without HOTS and Art tools :\
Use the terrain sample I posted for this!
1. From 3ds max add a "Helper object" >>> "Sc2 Physics"
2. Select a "Convex hull"
3. Align it to the mesh
4. Pick mesh button, select the mesh terrain
5. Set "Planar angle" to 0
Final steps
6. Go to "Utilities" >>> "Properties lister" and select physics. There will be a extra option available one "Shape tipe" pick mesh.The dummy (Green) should take the exact form of the mesh.
7. Very important! Select the "Walkable checkbox", makes it so the unit can walk on the terrain, you can make bridges the same way etc.
Quote:
Also after doing some testing with terrain removal I noticed and saw such a minimal difference that I doubt it would matter.
First of all I would like to know your pc specs, if your pc is a powerful beast then you won't feel much of a difference in the first place. If you got a over average pc, I recommend you set everything on max settings and max resolution aldogh if it's powerful enough it still might not slow down and to be honest, even powerful beats are at least a bit affected by a full terrain in far view [Tested this at a friend on a -I 7 I 5 but you get the idea of the stress test)]. If it does then you will notice the difference between having and not having a terrain. It is very visible on older computers, actually the difference is from heaven to the earth!
What exactly did you mean with "minimal"? Did it improve performance very lite or does it run just as slow?
I don't know what kind of tests you did but hers what I recomend:
1. Use a rts\fps map.
2. In the editor go to terrain object and pick "Hide Terrain Cell". Hide the entire terrain!
3. Just in chase, In the trigger editor there's a action called "Show/Hide Terrain", use it!
4. Place a lot of HQ models in the map and I do mean a lot.
5. Set the camera's "Field of View" to a (fps standard), larger than usual.
6. Set the camera's "Far Clip" To max (999999999999999....).
Note: Have a terrain with varying height.
Test the map with terrain on and off! ________
Ok now why would I bother with the optimization in the first place? Because my PC is weak? No, because sc2 lacks just that!
Even if some people don't feel much strain because of their awesome computers those with bad pc's will definitely hate it. Now I know what most people say and that is to just buy a new one! However it's not about that. Technology also means performance and optimization, even new games follow some rules and traditions and for good reasons. If you ever looked into Unity engine or Unreal you'll notice straight away how the models lose detail in the distance and trees are being replaced with billboard objects. Sc2 Doesn't have any appropriate Distance Culling like a fps so you should play fps in sc2 at your own risk and what I meant by that is that the video card and parts will heat up for mostly nothing. Why strain your pc uselessly when things like optimization are available, it's pointless so I feelt like sharing some info with people who visit since we are on topic about optimization.
<<From unity Documentation>>
Optimizing Graphics Performance
Good performance is critical to the success of many games!
Where are the graphics costs
The graphical parts of your game can primarily cost on two systems of the computer: the GPU or the CPU. The first rule of any optimization is to find where the performance problem is; because strategies for optimizing for GPU vs. CPU are quite different (and can even be opposite - it's quite common to make GPU do more work while optimizing for CPU, and vice versa).
Rendering is not a problem, neither on the GPU nor the CPU! For example, your scripts or physics might be the actual problem. Use Profiler to figure this out.
GPU has too many vertices to process. How many vertices are "ok" depends on the GPU and the complexity of vertex shaders. Typical figures are "not more than 100 thousand" on mobile, and "not more than several million" on PC.
CPU has too many vertices to process, for things that do vertex processing on the CPU. This could be skinned meshes, cloth simulation, particles etc.
CPU optimization - draw call count
In order to render any object on the screen, the CPU has some work to do - things like figuring out which lights affect that object, setting up the shader & shader parameters, sending drawing commands to the graphics driver, which then prepares the commands to be sent off to the graphics card. All this "per object" CPU cost is not very cheap, so if you have lots of visible objects, it can add up.
So for example, if you have a thousand triangles, it will be much, much cheaper if they are all in one mesh, instead of having a thousand individual meshes one triangle each. The cost of both scenarios on the GPU will be very similar, but the work done by the CPU to render a thousand objects (instead of one) will be significant.
In order to make CPU do less work, it's good to reduce the visible object count:
Combine close objects together, either manually or using Unity's draw call batching.
Use less materials in your objects, by putting separate textures into a larger texture atlas and so on.
Use less things that cause objects to be rendered multiple times (reflections, shadows, per-pixel lights etc., see below).
Combine objects together so that each mesh has at least several hundred triangles and uses only one Material for the entire mesh. It is important to understand that combining two objects which don't share a material does not give you any performance increase at all. The most common reason for having multiple materials is that two meshes don't share the same textures, so to optimize CPU performance, you should ensure that any objects you combine share the same textures.
However, when using many pixel lights in the Forward rendering path, there are situations where combining objects may not make sense, as explained below.
LOD and Per-Layer Cull Distances
In some games, it may be appropriate to cull small objects more aggressively than large ones, in order to reduce both the CPU and GPU load. For example, small rocks and debris could be made invisible at long distances while large buildings would still be visible.
This can be either achieved by Level Of Detail system, or by setting manual per-layer culling distances on the camera. You could put small objects into a separate layer and setup per-layer cull distances using the Camera.layerCullDistances script function.
Realtime shadows are nice, but they can cost quite a lot of performance, both in terms of extra draw calls for the CPU, and extra processing on the GPU. For further details, see the Shadows page.
Actually I think I will.
Just added a terrain as large as the map itself and pretty much high poly, runs as well as if it weren't even there in the first place (almost, having all those trees and unoptimized mesh rocks slows it down a little), it's fascinating. A well optimized terrain will be a perfect piece on the cake. Working on this and I will be coming with the proof to, soon enough.
Nice tip, I'll take a look at that file.
I found a better solution for that using this program. All that I need to do is replace the textures with black and white after the painting is finished, export each layer as a individual alpha mask and I can see what I am painting so it's fine. http://www.earthsculptor.com/
Think the largest changes came with HOTS, lots of improvements and fixes for most of the stuff like, physics and lighting. I tried once to make a fps with wings of liberty but I had a shadow problem which was that they would disappear if no terrain was drawn, the shadows were dependent on the terrain, also there was this annoying shadow glitch all fixed with the appearance of HOTS. There was physics but I think the domino physics engine was introduced much later but I am not sure.
Quote:
With your physics-based collision, could you make a fairly complex mesh and give it a collision mesh?
Yes with art tools it is now possible to use the mesh itself as a collision shape. The collision is perfect with no room for error, tried it already and works however I have yet to understand how gravity works and how to add a basic jumping function for a character. I didn't really see much people actually getting in to the physics engine more in depth so there are no tutorials. Not going to use a scripted physics since it fairly simple and pretty much obsolete.
Anyhow by playing with the art tools I actually got to better understand what the sc2 engine is truly capable of.
Mesh terrains are great stuff!
This one has only diffuse textures with a crack as normal
The last important piece of the puzzle is complete, "the mesh terrain". Success in using one single large mesh with no divisions which means a pentium 3 can have it all for breakfast.
By Making a composite material with 2 UV's, one tiled and the other one for the blend mask, more than 7 texture can be combined together similar to how a terrain brush works. You get to have max quality terrain textures, it blends super fine and best of all you can tile them as much as you want. This technique is not made using the terrain material or does it have to do anything related to the terrain, It's treated just like any other sc2 object which will be flash fast on performance. You can all say goodbye to the nightmare that is the terrain or reducing the far view of the camera for good, it's obsolete.
Disadvantage is that you won't be seeing what your doing so you'll have to find a way to paint the alpha masks somehow.
One more thing I would like to add is a model distance culling, that might be impossible for the terrain since it's one object but it's not hard for the rest.
Performance, Performance, Performance! :)
Bump 2: The environment is being built little by little and jaw drop will be granted when it's finished!
I will be mentioned kinkycactus in the credits along with the other people that help for contributing to the development, also I fell a tutorial will be most called for when this is all done.
I am implementing AO on all models and the results are more than satisfactory, don't mind the ugly test models, they are for test relay!
Ambient Occlusion Test
AO Off
AO On
________________
Environment Rocks For The Mod
I even played with physics and it seems to work how I planned. The terrain will be a separate object with a physics collider, tested it and you can walk on it no problem. I would also like to make it multi floor level since it's a fps shooter so expect to go from one floor to the next and under platforms also.
Everything from painting a mesh terrain texture to terrain optimization has been given a solution given that I had to look in to unity to adopt some features which unfortunately I'll have to reverse engineer.
For the lighting I used Logarithmic Exposure Controls to remove the unnecessary shine in case you're wondering.
Well, AO works like a charm, to bad I don't have time to post it. I have no idea what the deal with the ligmap is although it works at low settings, it's not what I was looking for and it doesn't display in the render, also there is another render state called static shadows, honestly it got me confused.
Duno when I'll be coming back and Vic also wanted to post something himself but he's also busy.
Improved! Almost removed all the fuzzines by adding a bit of blur to the hight map.
Regarding ambient occlusion, I thought about simply baking the AO in the diffuse texture for optimization but it wont give me the same results as real AO. Noticed some of the rocks have AO, even if I put it in the diffuse, the texture in the shaded area will look flat like the rock from the right. Oclusion adds some shape and definition in those cases, which is why I find it necessary to have plus it gives extra realism to a model.
Lol, I actually made the parallax work last night before reading this and I have to say it's not that great but not too bad at the same time. Kinda` works like my fake one but a little better, have to set the values really low so that it won't look ugly from an angle. I used a simple black and white texture with a alpha but I didne't change "Use A" under color operations, I'll give it a try. This needs more experimenting...
I was thinking to fake the parallax because it looks a bit better from an angle but it's really expensive to do so I'll just stick with the game's one.
Did not know that Gloss requires one, a alpha mask.
So I have to use both lighmap and AO for both low and high settings and AO also acts like a lightmap?! Think I can make this work now.
Thanks kinkycactus, all the tips are very useful. The skybox problem was also fixed, one thing I was doing wrong is that I forgot to make the model in the data editor as a skybox. _______
Edit: And here is the real Parallax, could be useful depending on how it will be used.
Just one silly request, can you add some flowers? Wc3 had small details like that aside from the grass, oh and don't forget about the rocks! Another thing I would like is to have lordaeron summer lighting environment, the ashenvale green one is getting boring and tiring to look at.
Should recommend this to non believers. Nice job on the normals as well and I wouldn't mind playing wc3 in sc2. I'm generally judging the graphics since that's my present interest so I could say that it could use some more graphical improvements but in this case there really is no need to unless you desire to add some more eye candy wich I wouldn't mind.
I'll let you guys enjoy some of my galeries till I come back from being absent on the project for a long time. This are all models and projects I was doing for the old warcraft 3, everything you see it's done in that engine which was practically impossible back then (Year 2002) for those who might not know. The efex are all fake.
Models I might include in the pack
In this particular screenshot I did the opposite, imported sc2 models in wc3. I want to see if I can get as close to starcraft in look as possible in a old game engine.
Static Shadow/Lightmaps
With static shadow you can achieve things like illuminations that even overcomes the limitations of old games. Note* WC3 does not support static shadows.
Contest image
Fake Parallax
As its name says...
* Some models and techniques belong to Talavaj, credits to him for his work which without it would be all imposible. *
If anyone knows how this techniques work in sc2 - "parallax and lightmapping" I would appreciate a share on the matter. I can always do it like in the pictures and fake the effects but it is pointless and consumes resources since it's already implemented in the engine.
We are having some problems and it's going to take a while till we get back. Just to reassure we are not dead!
In other news, I Have planned to release some of my model resources for "Unity" which will also be included in "Starcraft 2".
Made some tests on the fps and will be making videos, had a video posted her but was deleted.
The models are unrelated to the mod! Excepting the tree but I might consider using them. There are alot more that I haven't shown yet...
0
And going back to the development I present the first ever Playable/ Collidable/ Walkable terrain mesh in Starcraft 2. Larger than the actual map a bit, you can imagine a village can fit in the depression area ther. Was rather lazy so I painted it fast to see how it would look in sc2. I will combine more layers like AO, detail map, "Terrain mesh normal" and a colormap.
0
This can't be done without HOTS and Art tools :\
Use the terrain sample I posted for this!
1. From 3ds max add a "Helper object" >>> "Sc2 Physics"
2. Select a "Convex hull"
3. Align it to the mesh
4. Pick mesh button, select the mesh terrain
5. Set "Planar angle" to 0
6. Go to "Utilities" >>> "Properties lister" and select physics. There will be a extra option available one "Shape tipe" pick mesh.The dummy (Green) should take the exact form of the mesh.
7. Very important! Select the "Walkable checkbox", makes it so the unit can walk on the terrain, you can make bridges the same way etc. First of all I would like to know your pc specs, if your pc is a powerful beast then you won't feel much of a difference in the first place. If you got a over average pc, I recommend you set everything on max settings and max resolution aldogh if it's powerful enough it still might not slow down and to be honest, even powerful beats are at least a bit affected by a full terrain in far view [Tested this at a friend on a
-I 7I 5 but you get the idea of the stress test)]. If it does then you will notice the difference between having and not having a terrain. It is very visible on older computers, actually the difference is from heaven to the earth!What exactly did you mean with "minimal"? Did it improve performance very lite or does it run just as slow?
I don't know what kind of tests you did but hers what I recomend:
1. Use a rts\fps map.
2. In the editor go to terrain object and pick "Hide Terrain Cell". Hide the entire terrain!
3. Just in chase, In the trigger editor there's a action called "Show/Hide Terrain", use it!
4. Place a lot of HQ models in the map and I do mean a lot.
5. Set the camera's "Field of View" to a (fps standard), larger than usual.
6. Set the camera's "Far Clip" To max (999999999999999....).
Test the map with terrain on and off!
________
Ok now why would I bother with the optimization in the first place? Because my PC is weak? No, because sc2 lacks just that!
Even if some people don't feel much strain because of their awesome computers those with bad pc's will definitely hate it. Now I know what most people say and that is to just buy a new one! However it's not about that. Technology also means performance and optimization, even new games follow some rules and traditions and for good reasons. If you ever looked into Unity engine or Unreal you'll notice straight away how the models lose detail in the distance and trees are being replaced with billboard objects. Sc2 Doesn't have any appropriate Distance Culling like a fps so you should play fps in sc2 at your own risk and what I meant by that is that the video card and parts will heat up for mostly nothing. Why strain your pc uselessly when things like optimization are available, it's pointless so I feelt like sharing some info with people who visit since we are on topic about optimization.
<<From unity Documentation>>Optimizing Graphics Performance
Good performance is critical to the success of many games!
Where are the graphics costs
The graphical parts of your game can primarily cost on two systems of the computer: the GPU or the CPU. The first rule of any optimization is to find where the performance problem is; because strategies for optimizing for GPU vs. CPU are quite different (and can even be opposite - it's quite common to make GPU do more work while optimizing for CPU, and vice versa).
Rendering is not a problem, neither on the GPU nor the CPU! For example, your scripts or physics might be the actual problem. Use Profiler to figure this out.
CPU optimization - draw call count
In order to render any object on the screen, the CPU has some work to do - things like figuring out which lights affect that object, setting up the shader & shader parameters, sending drawing commands to the graphics driver, which then prepares the commands to be sent off to the graphics card. All this "per object" CPU cost is not very cheap, so if you have lots of visible objects, it can add up.
So for example, if you have a thousand triangles, it will be much, much cheaper if they are all in one mesh, instead of having a thousand individual meshes one triangle each. The cost of both scenarios on the GPU will be very similar, but the work done by the CPU to render a thousand objects (instead of one) will be significant.
In order to make CPU do less work, it's good to reduce the visible object count:
Combine close objects together, either manually or using Unity's draw call batching.
Use less materials in your objects, by putting separate textures into a larger texture atlas and so on.
Use less things that cause objects to be rendered multiple times (reflections, shadows, per-pixel lights etc., see below).
Combine objects together so that each mesh has at least several hundred triangles and uses only one Material for the entire mesh. It is important to understand that combining two objects which don't share a material does not give you any performance increase at all. The most common reason for having multiple materials is that two meshes don't share the same textures, so to optimize CPU performance, you should ensure that any objects you combine share the same textures.
However, when using many pixel lights in the Forward rendering path, there are situations where combining objects may not make sense, as explained below.
LOD and Per-Layer Cull Distances
In some games, it may be appropriate to cull small objects more aggressively than large ones, in order to reduce both the CPU and GPU load. For example, small rocks and debris could be made invisible at long distances while large buildings would still be visible.
This can be either achieved by Level Of Detail system, or by setting manual per-layer culling distances on the camera. You could put small objects into a separate layer and setup per-layer cull distances using the Camera.layerCullDistances script function.
Realtime shadows are nice, but they can cost quite a lot of performance, both in terms of extra draw calls for the CPU, and extra processing on the GPU. For further details, see the Shadows page.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/DrawCallBatching.html
0
Actually I think I will.
Just added a terrain as large as the map itself and pretty much high poly, runs as well as if it weren't even there in the first place (almost, having all those trees and unoptimized mesh rocks slows it down a little), it's fascinating. A well optimized terrain will be a perfect piece on the cake. Working on this and I will be coming with the proof to, soon enough.
0
Nice tip, I'll take a look at that file.
I found a better solution for that using this program. All that I need to do is replace the textures with black and white after the painting is finished, export each layer as a individual alpha mask and I can see what I am painting so it's fine.
http://www.earthsculptor.com/
0
Think the largest changes came with HOTS, lots of improvements and fixes for most of the stuff like, physics and lighting. I tried once to make a fps with wings of liberty but I had a shadow problem which was that they would disappear if no terrain was drawn, the shadows were dependent on the terrain, also there was this annoying shadow glitch all fixed with the appearance of HOTS. There was physics but I think the domino physics engine was introduced much later but I am not sure.
Yes with art tools it is now possible to use the mesh itself as a collision shape. The collision is perfect with no room for error, tried it already and works however I have yet to understand how gravity works and how to add a basic jumping function for a character. I didn't really see much people actually getting in to the physics engine more in depth so there are no tutorials. Not going to use a scripted physics since it fairly simple and pretty much obsolete.
Anyhow by playing with the art tools I actually got to better understand what the sc2 engine is truly capable of.
Mesh terrains are great stuff!
This one has only diffuse textures with a crack as normal
0
Ok this is revolutionary!!!
The last important piece of the puzzle is complete, "the mesh terrain". Success in using one single large mesh with no divisions which means a pentium 3 can have it all for breakfast.
By Making a composite material with 2 UV's, one tiled and the other one for the blend mask, more than 7 texture can be combined together similar to how a terrain brush works. You get to have max quality terrain textures, it blends super fine and best of all you can tile them as much as you want. This technique is not made using the terrain material or does it have to do anything related to the terrain, It's treated just like any other sc2 object which will be flash fast on performance. You can all say goodbye to the nightmare that is the terrain or reducing the far view of the camera for good, it's obsolete.
Disadvantage is that you won't be seeing what your doing so you'll have to find a way to paint the alpha masks somehow.
One more thing I would like to add is a model distance culling, that might be impossible for the terrain since it's one object but it's not hard for the rest.
Performance, Performance, Performance! :)
0
Here is Vick's New Cover Photo Walppaper for Hellsing Mod
Do not forget to visit us on Mod DB
Here is the direct link to the mod
http://www.moddb.com/mods/hellsing-mod-sc-2/images
0
Bump 2: The environment is being built little by little and jaw drop will be granted when it's finished!
I will be mentioned kinkycactus in the credits along with the other people that help for contributing to the development, also I fell a tutorial will be most called for when this is all done.
I am implementing AO on all models and the results are more than satisfactory, don't mind the ugly test models, they are for test relay!
Ambient Occlusion Test
AO Off
AO On
________________
Environment Rocks For The Mod
I even played with physics and it seems to work how I planned. The terrain will be a separate object with a physics collider, tested it and you can walk on it no problem. I would also like to make it multi floor level since it's a fps shooter so expect to go from one floor to the next and under platforms also.
Everything from painting a mesh terrain texture to terrain optimization has been given a solution given that I had to look in to unity to adopt some features which unfortunately I'll have to reverse engineer.
For the lighting I used Logarithmic Exposure Controls to remove the unnecessary shine in case you're wondering.
________________
Edit: Small details, small update.
0
Well, AO works like a charm, to bad I don't have time to post it. I have no idea what the deal with the ligmap is although it works at low settings, it's not what I was looking for and it doesn't display in the render, also there is another render state called static shadows, honestly it got me confused.
Duno when I'll be coming back and Vic also wanted to post something himself but he's also busy.
0
Improved! Almost removed all the fuzzines by adding a bit of blur to the hight map.
Regarding ambient occlusion, I thought about simply baking the AO in the diffuse texture for optimization but it wont give me the same results as real AO. Noticed some of the rocks have AO, even if I put it in the diffuse, the texture in the shaded area will look flat like the rock from the right. Oclusion adds some shape and definition in those cases, which is why I find it necessary to have plus it gives extra realism to a model.
0
Lol, I actually made the parallax work last night before reading this and I have to say it's not that great but not too bad at the same time. Kinda` works like my fake one but a little better, have to set the values really low so that it won't look ugly from an angle. I used a simple black and white texture with a alpha but I didne't change "Use A" under color operations, I'll give it a try. This needs more experimenting...
I was thinking to fake the parallax because it looks a bit better from an angle but it's really expensive to do so I'll just stick with the game's one.
Did not know that Gloss requires one, a alpha mask.
So I have to use both lighmap and AO for both low and high settings and AO also acts like a lightmap?! Think I can make this work now.
Thanks kinkycactus, all the tips are very useful. The skybox problem was also fixed, one thing I was doing wrong is that I forgot to make the model in the data editor as a skybox.
_______
Edit: And here is the real Parallax, could be useful depending on how it will be used.
0
Just one silly request, can you add some flowers? Wc3 had small details like that aside from the grass, oh and don't forget about the rocks! Another thing I would like is to have lordaeron summer lighting environment, the ashenvale green one is getting boring and tiring to look at.
0
Should recommend this to non believers. Nice job on the normals as well and I wouldn't mind playing wc3 in sc2. I'm generally judging the graphics since that's my present interest so I could say that it could use some more graphical improvements but in this case there really is no need to unless you desire to add some more eye candy wich I wouldn't mind.
0
I'll let you guys enjoy some of my galeries till I come back from being absent on the project for a long time. This are all models and projects I was doing for the old warcraft 3, everything you see it's done in that engine which was practically impossible back then (Year 2002) for those who might not know. The efex are all fake.
Models I might include in the pack
In this particular screenshot I did the opposite, imported sc2 models in wc3. I want to see if I can get as close to starcraft in look as possible in a old game engine.
Static Shadow/Lightmaps
With static shadow you can achieve things like illuminations that even overcomes the limitations of old games. Note* WC3 does not support static shadows.
Contest image
Fake Parallax
As its name says...
* Some models and techniques belong to Talavaj, credits to him for his work which without it would be all imposible. *
If anyone knows how this techniques work in sc2 - "parallax and lightmapping" I would appreciate a share on the matter. I can always do it like in the pictures and fake the effects but it is pointless and consumes resources since it's already implemented in the engine.
0
We are having some problems and it's going to take a while till we get back. Just to reassure we are not dead!
In other news, I Have planned to release some of my model resources for "Unity" which will also be included in "Starcraft 2".
Made some tests on the fps and will be making videos, had a video posted her but was deleted.
The models are unrelated to the mod! Excepting the tree but I might consider using them. There are alot more that I haven't shown yet...