Plan for Jeff "Reno" Raab

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Matthew Langley   (Oct 14, 2005 at 17:42 GMT)

Very awesome... Ok first the typical canned questions as well as the ones you might hate..

When is this coming out?

How much will it cost?


What type of performance hit do you get?


Ok now on to a bit less canned ones...

Are you releasing it through GG?

How much control do you have over the color and variety of the grass?

Can this be used for other types of "foliage"?

Chris   (Oct 14, 2005 at 17:55 GMT)

Ya, I have everyone of those questions as well... And That is some amazing work man, very very sweet.

Josh "GimpMaster" Hintze   (Oct 14, 2005 at 17:56 GMT)

Looks like in the video there was over 70,000 polygons in the scene....that seems like a lot for a grass effect...maybe i'm wrong. Average frame rate looked like 20 FPS.

Chris Labombard   (Oct 14, 2005 at 18:02 GMT)

Also, is it compatible with TSE, or just TGE ?

Chris   (Oct 14, 2005 at 18:08 GMT)

From their web site:

Quote:

---

As for performance, there is actually very very very very little performance hit because of the way every is handled. iG uses 3 LOD's at all times(which, like everything else, is generated at run-time), and the blade creation and interaction algos are very short and sweet, meaning less time to deal with it, but just as effective regardless. The general design this whole thing is based off of was capable of being run in realtime(30fps) on a 500mhz machine. Performance really wont be a concern ;)
And no, this is not a option that can be toggled off. that would be an unfair advantage to people who want a cheap advantage.

---

Vashner   (Oct 14, 2005 at 19:02 GMT)

Nice. Reminds me of how Star Wars Galaxes does ground foliage (grass, flowers, bushes etc).

Gary "ChunkyKs" Briggs   (Oct 14, 2005 at 19:10 GMT)

Very cool looking. I'm curious, though; those look like really old KDE window dressings. So two things:
1) Are you doing your development on a really old distro or something? Or are you using a different WM?
2) How did you do that capture on Linux? Did you hook ffmpeg into torque? [something else on my bluesky todo...]

Gary (-;

Todd Pickens   (Oct 14, 2005 at 19:50 GMT)

As an environment artist I can say that this could be a very useful tool.

Having said that, Unless the artist has control over the size, shape, color, etc. It would be limited.

Looking at the screen shot, I could only see that grass used in a cartoony looking game at best, given it flat color and high color saturation.

I have not checked out the videos yet, but will do so.

I look forward to seeing this develop. Given flexibility, this could make for some really beautiful environment work.

Jeff "Reno" Raab   (Oct 14, 2005 at 20:07 GMT)

for Matt's questions:
1) There isnt a solid date yet, as it is still in development.
2) I havent even begun to consider the cost of it yet, so we'll have to wait and see on that(it wont be that expensive)
3) see the quote Chris picke out ;)
4) I've talked with Josh about iG for a breif period of time at IGC, and my hope is to release it through GG yes, though no details are close to being finalized.
5) My intent is to make this as easy, and customizable as possible :)
6) Currently, the system supports just grass, or things close to grass. I have another system in the works to handle more complexe bodies of foliage, but i cant go very far into that one just yet ;)

as for Gary's:
1) Oops, i forgot to post the note in my plan's post but to clear it up: The video and screens are not Torque. They are the original implementation by Sylvian Guerrez, the guy i've been working with to get this done. While i'm working with him on this, my implementation is pretty well from scratch. I'll be posting Torque screens of it shortly, as soon as i sort out a few minor glitches with Torque's version of it.
While the pic and vids are not Torque, i've been working closely with Sylvian to get as close to what you see in those as possible into Torque, so dont worry about quality downgrading as i write this system for Torque ;)
2) Stated above, that's not my implementation, so i wouldnt know how Sylvian went about getting that. The current version is being written in TGE 1.3 on winows, but should be highly easy to port to all other platfroms(no platfrom specific code, so i'd hope it'd be easy ;) )

Todd:
As i said to Matt, i'm making this as customizable as possible, color of the grass, height, width, even the complexity of the grass(want the grass to bend more complexely? you can do that too)
Currently all color is created proceurally, though i'll likely implement a textuing system as well for more detailed grass.

The general system will function alot like fxFoliageReplicator, so ease of use is assured :)

Keep the questions coming :D

-Jeff "Reno" Raab

Blake Lowry   (Oct 14, 2005 at 20:31 GMT)

This looks cool :)

Todd Pickens   (Oct 14, 2005 at 20:49 GMT)

...Excellent :]

Erik Madison   (Oct 14, 2005 at 20:51 GMT)

Since you're still in the 'port over' and such stage, I'd really like to see this be done with TSE in mind. Even if you don't have tse, or don't understand GFX well enough, if you at least do your work in vertex buffers, it will make porting much easier for us later on. If I can use it, I will buy it.

Jeff "Reno" Raab   (Oct 14, 2005 at 21:02 GMT)

Oh, i have TSE, and there will be 2 versions of it when it's finished, one for TGE and one for TSE.
There will be some features that are TSE specific, espectially things like using vertex shaders to handle movement and the like.
While the 2 versions will function mostly the same, they will be approached differently.

Mike "Tango Whiskey" Lawrence   (Oct 14, 2005 at 22:48 GMT)

"IndieGrass" Sounds very cool (hmm... "IndieGrass - smokin' grass for your Indie game." er, um...)

Anyway,

I remember playing Planetside and "hiding" in the grass only to realize later that other folks could see me just fine because my local grass was just an illusion.

This IndieGrass looks very promising. If this will allow my players to actually use grass as concealment at long distances, then I am definitely interested.

Even if the graphis aren't oowie wow wow, I would still be very interested in this. Grass at range is truly a breakthrough.

Teck Lee Tan   (Oct 15, 2005 at 06:56 GMT)

Hey, coolnees, you've made some great progress since the last time i saw a demo of this. :)

Anthony Fullmer   (Oct 15, 2005 at 21:09 GMT)

iG is awesome! I have always looked at the texture painter in Torque and shuddered at the default grass paint texture. Even ones that I import in look like they were painted on - so this tool is a Godsend, something extremely useful when it comes out. Those demo videos look great!

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