[?] Animated Mesh for static

[smee]

How do you do animated mesh for static like the moving camouflage

[Rhino]

camo netting is a vegetation object, hence why it waves in the wind like the leaves on a tree.

[smee]

excellent, any tutorials on it ??

[Rhino]

not that I can remember, might be something on the BF2 editor site. Let me just see if I can recall a earlier post I've done on overgrowth.

mehhh can't find the post thou here are some things I have posted on them.

also just to let you know as I'm sure you have worked out, on leaves etc for a Overgrowth object, ingame they have there back faces render, ie, they are 2 sided so you only need to model one side for the leaves. thou for the trunk etc if you want them to have a backface, thou dont see why you would you need to model them like a static with a face on there back side too

Rhino;992364']you want to do a max render of your tree? best thing to do is in your tree settings just to check the box saying "Force 2 sided" and it will render the back face



can see it checked there in my options, on the right

Rhino;994433']Now onto the biggest problem about this tree, its LOD. Take it your still working on getting this right but ye, needs a lot of work hehe.

First of all I will talk about your lod1 on your main mesh, not the separate lod file. now for a overgrowth object you only really need a lod1 in the main mesh for low gfx users, if the tree is quite poly heavy like this one is, but for a bush etc you dont need it, but you do need the separate lod for your overgrowth even to work ingame. But ye, the main problem I can see between your lod0 and lod1 is that the leaves change slightly but I dont think that will be an issue since it is just a very slight change, should be fine tbh. Ingame I'm not even sure if high gfx users will see this lod1 when its placed with the overgrowth tool, when placed as a static, that's a different matter hehe.


Anyways onto the separate lod file. This has a bunch of problems that need to be addressed. First of all, dunno if you have done this or not BUT these lod files can not be tiled, and there UVs must not go right upto the edges of the texture otherwise you may get edges on the texture, like this LOD UV:

note how its just inside the edge. If its right on the edge, the MIPs might conflict with over textures in the map's "overgrowth atlas" which is basically all the complied textures of the tree LODs that are in that map, in one texture. Yes its very odd but it how BF2 works... It is also important that you test your lods are working correctly ingame, so place your tree in a map and put other types of trees, bushes etc in there too, dont matter if they dont mix this is just for testing. Then compile the overgrowth atlas texture (should do it when you save your overgrowth), pack your mod, and test it ingame. If your lods are being a ***** it may look fine in the eiditor, but ingame it might look something like this:

note the funny orange etc on the bits of field in the distance? that's the problem

But ye, if that happens, then tbh I'm not 100% sure how to fix it, will have to spend a lot of time looking into that hehe.

Oh ye that was one other thing I needed to tell you.

Overgrowth can not be lightmapped and do not need any lightmap samples. When exporting overgrowth you should set lightmap sample size to "None"

And you could export the bit of terrain as a static ye but I wouldn't unless it was required for the map.

[Rhino]

found a tut on this, dunno how good it is but might help: 3dSM: Vegitation Overgrowth Tutorial - Official BF Editor Forums