[Graphics] Object type, 2d sprites or 3d models?

[Nique]

For example, a tree

Should it be drawn as a 2d sprite? or just as a model?
I think a tree should be drawn as a 2d sprite pointed to the camera because we have a static camera.
If we want to simulate wind (in the future), we can animate it.

Now, a car has to make a curve when it turns right or left. So i suggest that we use and leave them as 3d models in game.

[joelyboy911]

I think that trees are such complicated objects, that they should be kept 2d. All those different branches would slow the rendering down a lot.
Yes. cars and other vehicles should be 3d.

[croxis]

Sprite or billboard should work.

[JonM]

Ya but on the other hand, you can make a beautiful 3d tree under 100 polys, using billboards with 3d trunk and what not. But for now maybe we should keep it easier, a 2d billboard.

[Jonathan]

I'm not sure what a billboard is, but is it one of things things that are always facing the camera?

Well I'm not sure if I'm the only one but I find them incredibly annoying, it probably wouldn't be so noticeable in 2.75D but it's just irratating how they are identical on all sides.

If that's totally incorrect/irrelvant/etc then just ignore it.

Jonathan

[Nique]

of course not. It is rendered from a 3d model.. from all points so it wont be identical on all sides.

[croxis]

A billboard is essentially a square or rectangle with a texture on it. This is how buildings were done in SC4. 

[mrdazza_460]

The trouble hear is, getting the trees, I have a tone of models of trees but they came with rhino, I can render them for you but don't know if you are allowed to uses them.

[Nique]

Hmm, i have seen tropical 3 DEMO, i think this way of rendering (constructing) buildings is also a good option to consider.

And have you seen the terrain? It's fantastic.

[croxis]

With 3d graphics a lot comes down to the quality of the textures.  Awesome textures can even make low polygon objects look good (some games on the wii are great examples of this).

[Nique]

I think one of the most important things to archive is render good, realistic graphics. So, we need to pay a lot of attention on textures and vegetation of the terrain (tree's grass, bushes, (maybe low poly models?) rocks...). 

[j-dub]

I don't know why, but for some reason, the stuff I see in this picture does remind me of a ground level SimCity 4. However, this looks like it takes a lot of space, whatever is going on here, there appears to be a huge draw distance here and a lot of foliage. Someone knows how to render. Anyway Nique,I think City Mania would look fine just as this picture, we don't have to get carried away with the weeds though. All I know is that flat trees that spin around and just face the camera are annoying.

Mrdazza_460: There really should be no problem porting the trees from that program for this project. Why? Because we already used a bunch of copyrighted stuff into SC4 already anyway. Besides the fact, other game players/modders are always porting something from somewhere else, like a console game into their mods for a different PC game. I have a game I will not mention, that does do just that. What makes this so different? There is so much going on, it can't be stopped. So long this is not for profit, the original tree maker is credited, and the fact we can say this is fair use, there should be no problem.

If you don't feel safe with I said above, I thought people did upload BAT ready 3D tree models to the SimCity4 exchange sites anyway. For that matter, other stuff like water BAT models are uploaded too, so to make stuff easier later, there is that, instead of the ground up. I also thought, so long as you work with them, they would allow this stuff for a situation like this, since they are SC4 community already. This Tropical game takes advantage of 3D plant models. If City Mania can look just like this Tropical picture, I think that would be the route. Maybe Nique, I don't know if you have the Tropical demo, maybe porting stuff from that game would work.

[mrdazza_460]

to save you time you should just get a standard set of textures and so on and let other people mod it down the track, you can get bogged down with stuff like this and let it consume the project.   

[tomkeus]

OK, guys, I know we've been quiet for some time, but croxis and me are discussing some problems. So here's the lowdown:

We initially wanted to have 2.75D version (kinda like in SC4, only allowing us to have buildings at arbitrary angle) in order to have greater detail. It turned out to be problematic. When I came up with the idea, it didn't cross my mind to do some estimates on memory usage. I did that last week, and it turned out that it would require ridiculous amounts of graphics memory (10x10 km city could require somewhere between 2 and 5 GB of memory to store textures).

So I guess, we will have to scratch that idea and go 3D. Some estimates I did show that we could fit 10x10 km city full to the brim in less than 512 MB of graphics memory.

This rises the question of processing performance so some aggressive optimizations would be required. I'm currently looking into some papers concerned with rendering of large architectural environments.

One idea I have is to have orthographic camera positioned like in SC4 as primary camera, only being capable to rotate around vertical axis and not just being limited to four angles. This allows for easy and fast determination of visible geometry. Free camera doesn't allow for such optimization and using it, especially for panoramic views will significantly hit performance, so I'm thinking that it could be good idea to use it as a secondary camera.

[Atomius]

As long as there is a mode or expansion pack or some way to have the 'free camera' i'm for the idea.

Incidentally I recently purchased Game Maker Pro and Virtucity has a beta 3D mode with perspective projection. Of course with my weak knowledge of modelling and lighting etc it is a slow process.

But it's good to know you've ditched ortho SC4 style. I always thought a true successor to 4 should be in full 3D, or have a full 3D option/mode.

[tomkeus]

But it's good to know you've ditched ortho SC4 style. I always thought a true successor to 4 should be in full 3D, or have a full 3D option/mode.

It is nice, but large cities have huge amounts of polygons, so it is in no way easy task to get acceptable performance, not even CXL did it, and they had professional developers and millions of $ at disposal who actually did pretty good job considering huge amounts of geometry they had to handle.

[Atomius]

Well I think you mentioned the game would be developed using the 'contruction layer', so as computers are getting more powerful I should think that by the time the game engine is as good as what Simcity 5 would have had perhaps it will be easier.

[tomkeus]

Well I think you mentioned the game would be developed using the 'contruction layer', so as computers are getting more powerful I should think that by the time the game engine is as good as what Simcity 5 would have had perhaps it will be easier.

It wasn't easy so far. I sifted through a c**pload of papers from various academic journals concerned with rendering of urban environments. Bottom line is that there is no universal way to do optimization. At least three methods for visibility determination should be used, depending on the position of the camera.

First when camera is isometric and positioned like in SC4, second when the camera is free and close to the ground (or bellow average roof line) and third for panoramic views of the city (camera above the roof line, looking either not too much bellow the horizon or not much over the horizon).

So far, I think I've found good way to do first and second, but the only idea to optimize third I have so far is to use agressive LODing.