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One waterblock or many?

by Dave · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 04/11/2006 (8:55 am) · 8 replies

Hi,

Using Atlas terrains, it would seem that I would need a mega-waterblock to fill in all the lakes etc. in the terrain. I recall reading somewhere that every vertex of a waterblock is rendered no matter what the view distance is set to. Therefore it would seem logical to use lots of small waterblocks instead of one large one. However I know from past experience that what seems logical on the surface (no pun intended) is not always so.

Can anyone tell me if one huge waterblock several kilometers a side is more or less efiicient than (say) fifty or a hundred small waterblocks placed appropriately?

Thanks very much,

Dave.
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Torque 3D Owner Jason Nabors
#1
04/11/2006 (3:02 pm)
I don't know the answer to that, but your logic sounds good.

I think you could just load up the demo and make a huge waterblock and document your fps.
Then make a bunch of small water blocks and do the same thing. See which one works best.

Torque Owner Jeremiah Fulbright
#2
04/11/2006 (7:28 pm)
Sounds fairly right.. The fact that every vertex is rendered is sort-of bad, in a general sense.. Probably need to work it all out to become more Progressive where it'll get lower and lower detail out at certain distance

Torque 3D Owner Florian Ross
#3
04/12/2006 (1:29 am)
I think many Waterblocks have the problem of rendering the reflection map several times. Once per Waterblock. I would just use one large Waterblock and maybe just reduce the number of vertices on it

Torque Owner Dave
#4
04/12/2006 (4:18 am)
Hmm, thanks guys. Looks like some fps counting is in order. Will update this in a few days with some figures. I just thought someone may already have done this. It would have saved a bit of messing about.

Cheers,

Dave.

Torque Owner Brian Ramage
Default Studio Name
#5
04/12/2006 (4:06 pm)
Florian is right, you'll want to use fewer waterblocks rather than more because of the reflection overhead.

Torque Owner Dave
#6
04/13/2006 (2:07 am)
Ah so, thanks Brian. Saves me a bit of time!

Torque 3D Owner Thanhda Tie
Digital Shock Inc.
#7
04/20/2006 (12:40 pm)
How is the rendering handled? i'm guessing and hoping its not just a basic clipping plane. and hoping you guys are using portalization. is the water below the terrain being rendered when you cant see it?

Associate Manoel Neto
Default Studio Name
#8
04/22/2006 (8:05 pm)
I think the current TSE waterblock is always flat (no vertex-level waves). If so, it could use very few polygons. Heck, you could get away with 2 triangles and cover the whole world.

Can it do waves yet? I'm sure the reflection clipping could go wrong if so... but one could go all the way and modify the shaders to use parallax mapping with z-offsetting and add waves without need to tesselate the water surface.