Adjust sculpt detail during game play
Hi all.
I'm not sure if this is possible and I can't find anything using the search.
Is it possible to create logic that adjusts sculpt detail while you play?
My original plan was to use emitted assets based on how close and in what direction a player was looking. If I remember correctly in LBP I could emit objects that I'd created from any level I'd made. Unless I've made a massive oversight, in dreams it seems that I can only emit objects that are located somewhere in the level.
My back up plan was to change the lod and increase the detail of the asset as the player moved closer. This would allow me to optimize the thermometer while trying to keep everything looking crisp and detailed.
However I can't find a way to link the sculpt detail into logic...(unless object looseness is the answer)
My idea to build a detailed city area sort of depends on being able to emit and change sculpt details on the fly.
Cheers
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The looseness setting on sculpts does not affect thermo.
And as you say, emitting things means those things must be in the scene. So they're still in memory, and still using thermo. So this wouldn't help reduce thermo at all.
The engine does LOD stuff already. Smaller things or things farther away are rendered using a lower-detail version of the surfaces of that sculpt, and the flecks tend to disappear at larger distances. So I wouldn't worry about trying to make your own system to do this; it would only harm thermo and performance.
And objects that are fully occluded (hidden) behind sculpts aren't rendered at all--making that really efficient too.
If you're really interested in increasing performance, one small trick you can do is to group an entire area of the level that you won't see when you're elsewhere... then power it off while you're not in a position to see it. Rendering-wise the engine does that anyway, but it can help the engine out a little bit. -
Cheers for the reply and Thanks for the tips.
I understand occlusion and how the engine will manage LOD it just sucks that I can't come up ith my own version and trick it into reducing details where I need it.
If the emitter worked like LBP I would of had a city built with them and would emit what I needed and when. Maybe thats something mm will introduce in the future :)
I think my only option will be to build streets out of cloned objects and then have a "bank of higher quality dressing objects that I can call on when needed :)
Thanks again! -
Yeah... Alex said in a recent stream that they could theoretically stream new stuff into memory sort of as it's emitted or powered on, things like that. That would be a little ways down the line though.
To be clear, you *could* use the emitter method. It just makes it hell to work with. So you have an emitter that emits an emit-object when you get in range or something, and deletes that emitted object when you do out of range. Then you can clone that emitter around (by itself; don't clone the emit-object or you'll have a load of copies of that too in thermo). So now when you get to a particular area a load of copies of the same thing would appear. And when you leave that area those copies would be destroyed.
Here's a (really old) discussion on the topic of mine: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/442843244
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