Dev news : plants again…

Some more plants for today, I added a double-height block (lilac) as well as animated plants (kelp). I also reworked grass and fern textures to somewhat improve their alpha “outline”, adding some details to the stictly vanilla square alpha map: some grass blades or fern leaves stick out of the map, adding more detail while keeping close to the original shape.

Scroll down to check that out.

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Here you see the POM was adjusted to minimize the issues that can arise on double blocks (seams between the upper and lower textures) and also the mirroring effects at grazing angles have been averted. I might make some more fine-tuning adjustments to the heightmap but it’s the overall idea and very close to the final stuff.

As the HRR version of the PTGI shader now features POM I also included some PTGI screenshots. The next HRR version might see a POM depth slider though, which could improve the overall rendering of Vanillaccurate’s heightmaps (they’re too shallow at the moment because the current HRR version lacks an adjustment slider).

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I ad a hard time adjusting heightmaps on kelp, because of the animated frames. I also had to watch out for wrapping details that would end up overflowing on the other side of the texture. Adjusting heightmap edges and details and whatnot was the most difficult part here. Double-height and animated blocks are always the most tricky ones with regards to POM.

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Finally, here’s what I was referring to when mentioning the improved edges on grass/fern blocks alpha masks. Notice how the details are not strictly constrained to the original 16×16-based alpha map but can have details protruding beyond that original map. I tried keeping them as close to their original bounds as possible but I wanted some more variation to add depth and formation to the default shape.

For instance, compare those two alpha maps. The first being the original one, the second being the altered one to use some grass blades protruding out of the original mask.

When overlaying both masks you can see the original one (in red) is fully included in the detailed mask (red CONTROL text shows that magenta parts are where the mask’s inside of the detail map, red parts are outside)

I will use this technique for some blocks that have high frequency details mostly. I’ll experiment a bit with other types of blocks as well.

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