Nice example of normal maps for those who don't know what they actually are

[phantomdesign]

Normal maps are really awesome from my perspective, expecailly since my recent models are pure NURBS and are highly detailed.

Here's my current WIP, and I wouldn't be suprised if I could burn it (exterior and interior) to 1200-2000 polys without any noticable loss of detail. I don't know of any current racing games that could compare (although we may see them in a year or 2).

 

[babywax]

I wonder if there will every be a redesign of game engines/vid cards so we could use nurbs(or even splines of some sort) in games instead of these darned triangles That sure would be nice

For real time hair, seems like it could be done... A lot of games boast moving grass, hair could be done like large lumps of "grass" on top of someone's head.

 

[The Dark Elf]

I wonder if there will every be a redesign of game engines/vid cards so we could use nurbs(or even splines of some sort) in games instead of these darned triangles That sure would be nice

For real time hair, seems like it could be done... A lot of games boast moving grass, hair could be done like large lumps of "grass" on top of someone's head.

Some engines can use NURBS (dunno which, i just know atleast one is capable of it, prolly an open source one at that) and subdivision (ATI's Truform was basically subdivision, shame nobody uses it much, it was quite powerful really)
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moving grass is easy, dynamic strands of hair is difficult. There's even realtime shaders I think that can do basic style grass effects. Hair is best sticking to the alpha mapped + texture on layers of polygons for the time being, easier to handle realtime and still looks really nice, often quite realistic, for realtime games anyway.

 

[Brian Damage]

I'm pretty sure I saw a tutorial on how to do nurbs in OpenGL once...

 

[PvtRyan]

Aren't NURBS converted to triangles anyway when you render them in a game engine?
But it could be pretty usefull I suppose, highly dynamic LOD's, from a distance the model is rendered using very little segments, and from up close a lot. Not sure if this would work, really no experience using NURBS.

And Fenric, wasn't that TruForm from Ati similar to realtime NURMS/meshsmooth/subdivision?

 

[The Dark Elf]

Aren't NURBS converted to triangles anyway when you render them in a game engine?
But it could be pretty usefull I suppose, highly dynamic LOD's, from a distance the model is rendered using very little segments, and from up close a lot. Not sure if this would work, really no experience using NURBS.

And Fenric, wasn't that TruForm from Ati similar to realtime NURMS/meshsmooth/subdivision?

Yep Truform is simply subdivided polygons but done in realtime, I really wish it had been given a bigger chance, Morrowind makes use of it and I have to say I experience little to no slowdown using it and things do look nicer. Granted subdivision doesn't work for everything, and not many games recognise it, and you need to model with it in mind at all times (can't just subdivide any object) But done right and its pretty neat.

 

[Shinobi]

that's werid

wouldn't the computing time it takes to subdivide basically negate any performance gains from rendering low poly models?

unless all te LOD's are made dynamically as the map loads....

 

[The Dark Elf]

that's werid

wouldn't the computing time it takes to subdivide basically negate any performance gains from rendering low poly models?

unless all te LOD's are made dynamically as the map loads....

Well before, Truform was hardware based, so there was no problem. But then some tit decided to make it just software based... For slower machines or more complex models to begin with, its not very useful. But older programs, had they been Truform enabled it would extend the life of them a little.. Think HL1 if you could have used Truform in that on all the models (had HL1 been made truform enabled) the hi-def pack would have been fine, then on faster machines, switch on Truform and even better quality models.

AFAIK Truform was or could be LOD capable too. It would have taken some of the work out of modeling for the developers and give low poly models for slower machines, and allow much higher quality for better machines, with no extra work beyond making them with subdivision in mind.