I was pretty happy with how the Overgrowth trees look when lit from the front, as shown in this shot:
But what about when lit from the back?
This didn't look quite right to me because leaves are translucent; and here we should be seeing light coming through the leaves. I went out to a park to take some reference pictures of real leaf translucency:
So what dermines how much light we see filtering through the back of a leaf? One factor is how close the leaf is to the image of the sun. Another factor is the angle between the leaf and the sun. The final factor is the translucency of each part of the leaf. Here is a picture showing these three components:
When they are all combined, we get a correctly lit tree!
What do you think of our leaf translucency? Are there any ways that we could improve it?(permalink)
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Thanks god. Fullbright or uniformly lit trees in games are starting to annoy me.
It looks so good.
Aye, you guys are doing some pretty amazing stuff!
Agreed.
Whoa, that's some awesome foliage lighting. I like how you guys keep posting these articles about how you do all of these cool effects. Kudos, and keepitup! :]
AWESOME SAUCE!!!
I've died and gone to heaven.
Awesome looking tree! =D That's a weird thing to say. I see so many trees... But that one is awesome.
Awesome! But, show us some leaves! All I see are pine trees.
what your doing here is great and i say keep up the good work a thought though is why stop with the trees... this could be used for ears cloth and many other things i would experiment even more and see what else you can use this for
It's the little things that make the biggest impact, especially to immersion geeks like me :)
Thanks for the insight, hope to see more of your work soon!
Great work.
Are we going to see the same transluncent in grass, also?
translucent grass ftw. Also I love theses updates about how your improving your tech.
Looks stunning. Really enjoying the attention to detail and lighting techniques. Each update keeps making this game all the more sweeter.
man that is epic.
Nice...
Reminds me of Leafs.
I think basically anything you guys do just exceeds expectations over and over. Keep the news coming, it's always a treat to see how you guys think and work. Great job with the translucency, I can't wait for release :)
Makes me think of SpeedTree, and how pretty much all developers now being too lazy to make their own tree assetes using it. Glad you guys aren't like that! Oh, and your trees look fantastic!
Completely magnificent! You guys come up with the best techniques for rendering wonderful pieces of art. I won't be surprised if your game becomes one of the best, fully thought out indies we have seen in a long time!
nice!
is this equal to SSS?
Subsurface scattering? Sort of, this is a pretty simple model though. It doesn't take into account the light bouncing around inside of the leaf and reflecting back, which is the main thing about subsurface scattering, IIRC.
Looks awesome! I though 'god, I have to buy this' then I realized I already have! YAY!
I always was amazed by how Indie developers are the real people who push the envelope.