 |
Adapitve discrete LOD for static game Objects
The desired LOD system is intended for static game objects only (like trees, buildings), not terrain.
Normally a LOD (Level of Detail) system switches between different representations of one model by diminishing somehow
the number of polygons. The adaptive discrete LOD presented here knows only three states and in addition switches
between meshes and billboards. The purpose of this LOD system is to create the illusioon of a densely populated
game world. Let's go through the states starting with least detailed.
The least detailed state is the third state and called image state. At this state the object is represented by a
(billboard ?) image. Modern hardware can display a manyfold of bitmaps in very short time. These bitmaps will
represent models far away up to the next stage. The bitmaps are shoots of the textured models in stage 2. With
many models represented as bitmaps, forests will look dense and cities filled with buildings.
The second state is called base state. At a reasonable distant range from the frustum objects are represented
by the basic geometry of the object. For a house this would be the basewalls, roof and chimney. The rest of the model
detail is represented on the texture. (Windows, doors, flowers, shutters, etc.)
The first state is the detail state, where models are drawn in full detail. The building from the example above will
use the same geometry model. The details on the texture are now represented by textured geometry.
| Drawbacks: | Solutions: |
| Popping between state switches | Switch states to far away to be noticable (beware tricount) |
| Detail geometry must hide detail texture | Use extra model texture without detail (beware memory usage) |
Something missing? Mail to 
|
|
 | 2009-06-01
WoW Importer for Max |
| The World of Warcraft tool for 3D Studio has been updated. It now converts model files from WoW Client version 2.x (upto 2.7) and displays correct animations for multi mesh models. The script can be found here.... |
 | 2007-03-07
nGUI explained |
| If you ever wanted some more details on the nebula2 nGUI System you can find it in the nGUI System article. |
| 2006-10-17
Mangalore entity ID's |
| If you need information about the mangalore entity ID usage have a look here.. |
| 2006-08-06
Mangalore Articles |
| Added a new section about the mangalore game framework from radonlabs. The section contains some articles about my experience with mangalore. Read more here: |
| 2006-03-10
Free models |
| Finally some free models for the Radonlabs SDK. You can download them here. |
|
|
