Session Name: | Using Gigapixel Landscape Textures in Dragon Commander: Lessons Learned |
Speaker(s): | Charles Hollemeersch, Swen Vincke |
Company Name(s): | Graphine, Larian |
Track / Format: | Visual Arts |
Overview: | Dragon Commander is more than 'just another' strategy game - Dragon Commander seamlessly blends different gameplay genres into a single, grand adventure. This freedom also has its repercussions in the landscape rendering. Landscapes have to look good, from dragon dogfights up in the clouds all the way down to commanding ground-based combat units. Instead of using traditional mask-based techniques (which lack unique detail and have difficulty hiding visible tiling), we adopted a technique based on texture streaming that covers the whole landscape with unique texture data. In this talk, we'll describe both our production pipeline as well as the technical lessons learned when trying to adopt such a technique. |