Re: [Algorithms] Character customization Vs Number of primitives

[Sylvain G. V. <vi...@ii...>]

There's a free unofficial WoW model viewer if you want to get an idea
how they do. Several of the customization only alter textures. A few
create additional meshes.

A simple way is to have as many different customization in big atlas
textures so that you just use UV shifting for most stuff.

If you need additional meshes, you may try to use common lods (like only
1 body armor at lod level 1 instead of 10 at lod level 0) for further
character and to merge most used armors and bodies together in a new
vertex buffer.
For even further object the armor could be always displayed, but on an
aditionnal bone which matrix will be scaled down a lot when the armor
must be hidden.

The goal is to display as few fully detailed characters, and for those
happy fews that stay quite long near the camera, you may want to
generate a new VB.

That's just a few ideas to extend...

----- Original Message -----
From: Matt J <mjo...@gm...>
Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 11:49 am
Subject: Re: [Algorithms] Character customization Vs Number of primitives
To: Game Development Algorithms <gda...@li...>

> 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
> 
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