Re: [Algorithms] Character customization Vs Number of primitives

[Matt J <mjo...@gm...>]

They use segmented meshes? I'd be interested in how they do it using seamless..

Matthew

> Hi all,
>
> The game I'm working on has around 30 customizable characters that will be
> displayed during a match.
>
> Each character has an armor, made by 5 different fragments (arm, legs, body,
> head, name). The first 4 fragments have 3 different levels (81 different
> possibilities) and the name is unique. I was wondering how you guys deal
> with this kind of customization. I see two options (I may be missing other
> solutions though :) ):
> - Have different primitives for each fragment: I'm afraid that the number of
> draw calls would increase a lot, since each character will also be rendered
> for shadowing, for lighting and for glowing, but the textures will be shared
> in memory
> - Group all the different primitives into one single primitive: this will
> reduce the number of draw calls, but the textures must be grouped together
> into a single texture, that may never be shared (and there are
> diffuse/normal/gloss textures for every characters) and the memory cost can
> become huge if the artists want a pretty big resolution.
>
> When I see games like World of Warcraft where the number of characters is
> pretty big, and the customization can be important, I assume that I'm
> missing something :) .
>
> Any wisdom to share about this ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ben