Ysidro Hartzell

Game developer 🇺🇸
my 3D modeler to web slowly...

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@Jason_Ewton Sorry I think was nervous recording the video 😅. Next time I'll try to make the camera movements slower/smoother. Thanks for the feedback 👍

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

Working on grass LODs.

A Fresnel-like effect approximates distant grass: at glancing angles, mostly the tips are visible, so I interpolate between the tip and root colors based on the view angle.

Next, I might add more texturing.
#gamedev #indiedev

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@falsely_flagged Interesting, no haven’t heard of it. Maybe I’ll check it out 👍

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@opdroid1234 I recommend memoryless mode for color/depth target textures. iirc I got my metal app below 150 mb that way.

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

If you're a graphics programmer and haven't looked into reverse-Z depth buffers yet, I highly recommend implementing them in your engine.

Massively improved depth precision at effectively zero cost:
https://t.co/CHM2wD3Iuu

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

Decided to try adding baked shadows via raymarching for now. The shadows make it look a lot better!

They're pretty blocky right now, so going to try improving it.

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

I ported the terrain generation to a compute shader, and now its fast enough that I don't need to bicubic interpolate anymore.

Next, shadows! Deciding if I want to raymarch inside the generation step, or use shadow mapping.

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@SheriefFYI In essence, yes - insofar as the geometry near the camera is a clipped window of a larger map.

I'm kind of using my own immediate-mode style, where I just render tiles around the player (8x8 per level). And a cache will get-or-create the tiles (32x32 height values per tile).

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

Debugging terrain LODs

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@brain_nullptr I'm not fully educated on clipmaps. But I'm basically caching 8x8 tiles per level, then sinking the y position of the vertex in the shader based on distance to player, which produces a circular shape.
When the player moves, only the front 8 tiles of a level are recalculated.

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

Infinite terrain.

The noise function is expensive (credit to RuneVision), so I only take a few samples at lower LODs, then bicubic interpolate between them.

Still need to iron out a few kinks, but it looks cool so far!
#gamedev #indiedev

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@SebAaltonen And for physics, working with points is much easier than triangles. It would be interesting if we get to a phase in the industry where every point on a character/asset is physically simulated. But current hardware could only handle a mildly complex scene.

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@SebAaltonen I had that exact thought recently. I'm interested to hear how your experimenting goes.

Point LODs seem very appealing, since triangles can take up an arbitrary amount of volume, but points are either fixed size, or their radius is one dimensional so the math is easier.

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@SebAaltonen I started working on a point sculpting editor for a day. I might continue if point rendering gets more popular and point/splat assets are needed.

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@antovsky Very excited that you two are making something together! Both of your pod episodes were my favorite 👍

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

@miketuritzin Wow this is very cool! I'm excited to see more.

I'm curious about one thing, hopefully its not a dumb question: is the ordered list of SDF edits evaluated at every brick, and if so, is there a limit? Does performance decrease linearly with the number of edits at a brick?

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

Implemented an edge loop tool. It's been pretty satisfying adding tools while trying to add as little code as possible.
#indiedev #3dmodeling

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

Working on my 3D modeler – added Extrude tool.

- Interactive (re-simulates every frame)
- Works in face, edge, and vertex modes

#gamedev #indiedev

[Ysidro Hartzell @Scoat_]

Working on my 3D modeler. Added long-press undo. Hold to rapidly step back through changes.

Also I'm releasing a demo for the first time: https://t.co/pOGEFb1ZYi

Let me know what you think! (For now it's Mac-only.)

#gamedev #indiedev