WIP Apricot Hill Speedway

[Kennett Ylitalo]

I just spent a full hour to send you a PM and then this ****ing forum decides to log me out... I did a detailed tutorial for mipmaps, spec/bumb mapping etc... Press send: "you re not logged in" i sure was and never logged out...Not your fault but here's the links...

Read this from start to the specular, forget the examples and height map section: http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Texturing#Material_shaders You can find better examples from google image but the concept is the same.


You need normalmap filter: http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

Mipmaps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap

I'm sorry but i really can't be bothered to write everything again, at least if i get logged out now, the text is still in the cache, unlike in the PM system here... What i basically tried to say in the PM that mipmapping is more important in racing games as we are constantly looking at objects that are far away and all of them gradually comes closer with some going from kilometers to inches, something that no other gametype does...And mipmaps increase BOTH performance and quality, mipmap bias defines when the GPU switches from different versions, too high and they become blurry, too low and they begin to shimmer. Most materials use small negative bias. That's it, now i grab a smoke and breathe normally for few minutes..

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

These questions have been asked many times from me and i was strugling with shaders, mipmaps etc. for a long time..

So i made a small tutorial or demonstration, what ever this is.. A small project that shows what the different shaders do, how mipmaps work, some basic LOD stuff and two corners with correct and incorrect panel lengths, a common problem i've encountered almost on every tests i've done for folks.

Download the project: http://cream.galleria.fi/BTB/Tutorials/MipMaptutorial.zip

Export to your game of choice.

When you drive on the track, you'll see some walls that are bent to different angles. There's six lines of them, the order form left:

Diffuse, Diffuse+Bumb, Diffuse+Spec, Diffuse+bumb+spec, Diffuse+bumb+spec without mipmaps on diffuse texture and finally simple Diffuse with no MipMaps.

Drive on track. First corner has correct panel lengths switching to incorrect length. Further on the road you'll see the texture getting blurrier. That's the difference between mipmap bias -4 and 0. Stop there so you can see the change and try different cameras to see what is the reason for all of this mipmapping stuff. In the last corner there's a example of totally worng mipmap level, the material uses +4, all the details are gone.

The six lines of objects uses -2 mipmap bias. Use BTB material editor to edit mipmap biases, export and see what the difference is. You should also check the diffuse, bumb and spec maps, they all have "flat" ie single color sections to show different points. You're job is to figure it out..

The trees use 50 and 75 LOD, the track should be longer to really show the effect but at least i got one jumping tree there..

So this a DIY tutorial, experiment with it. I'll upload the original textures used in the tutorial as a bonus, it's pretty usable plastered cement texture with good bumb and spec maps.

PS: I'll post this in the general section too...