Recently found the stuff on imposter meshes and optimization for FNBR mobile, near the end of the second half of the GDC talk there is brief mention of using triangle meshes to fake tree shadows at distance. Is there anywhere i could find more information about doing something like this? Specifically how to control the two vertex points of the drop shadow, and sourcing the shadow projection.
Google is your friend.
yeah this is not at all what my question said, I’m literally only talking about the trees using a vertex shader to simulate long distance shadows by moving two vertices of a triangle plane in relation to the sun. Looking for an explanation on how to manipulate a mesh like that with shader logic, I’m an artist not a programmer
Edit: Unreal Engine - Live from GDC This is where he explains tree imposters, and “Shadow Fakery”
Ahh sorry. I figured it all fell under the same category of distance fields.
Nah some vertex shader nonsense I don’t fully understand. How do you control individual mesh vertices with precision in material editor, maybe vertex painting and WPO would be the ideal method?
I watched the video from Facebook. He didn’t mention anything about shadow fakery but talked about using a new technique to render more accurate imposters for the trees. I even rewound it a bit to the DHLOD talk in case I missed something but they didn’t mention shadows at all. What time are they talking about it?
Oh yeah that’s some advanced custom code. It’ll likely make its way into an official release at some point in the future but I wouldn’t hold your breath. I’d post over on polycount with the link to the video there and ask them if someone could break it down for you. The artists on that site tend to have a lot of industry experience. Are you making a mobile game? What would you intend to use it for?
Also, to clarify he said the shadows were rendered on a plane that was 2 triangles not 2 verts. So essentially the plane is stretching to match the sun position during the time of day and he’s using the distance fields to do this. Lot of code to get it set up on your own but maybe they’ve added it to GitHub already?