Hello again everyone,
After the feedback about the normal maps, its safe to say from my point of view, that I think I am doing the right thing developing slightly low poly models to save frame rate,as most of the time these days effects take up most of the ingame frame rate,so if I can make low poly models look really good then it will be all worth it when it comes down to ingame stuff at the end of the day.
The one thing I am trying to achieve on this visually, is obviously higher quality than the Playstation era of games.This will obviously be achieved by a slightly higher polycount on models, atleast compared to the Playstation versions. Plus Unreal Engine 3 (Which UDK runs on) supports all kinds of things that the old AC games did not, one major thing being normal and bump maps, you`ll notice that my stuff even when its low poly looks alot more 3d compared to the Playstation games.
I have alot of plans for the visual content, the polygon count may not be high, but one thing I have learned in my years of using 3d is, if you can get something less detailed looking just as good, then you have done a good job at the end of the day.
Plans for visuals include stuff like...
-Scratches on the metal surfaces
-Slight Reflection on the metals on the AC`s
-Emissive textures for glowing sections such as lights
For scratches, I was planning on having them dynamically appear over time, having a few starting on the AC`s at the beginning to make them look slightly used, but then as they get hit ingame , have them gain bullet holes, scorch marks and scratches to make them look more beat up.
For reflection I had noticed in other AC games that the metal was just a dull texture and had no shader to it, so what I thought would be nice is giving the different metals on the AC`s various strengths of reflection to simulate real metals, this way after taking on damage the metals would dull and be covered in damage marks and it would look awsome, this is obviously something to be tweaked though as I dont want a AC looking like a chrome bumper thats just been polished.
As for the last section, emissive textures, for those who dont know what they are, they basically simulate glow in Unreal Engine, so for instance if I want to create a glow on a model, I just create it on the texture throw that into the emissive channel in the material in Unreal Engine and boom, it starts to glow.I am thinking of using this for most of the AC`s head unit eyes, and also other parts that are ment to glow such as the lights on weapons.
Till next time
Dave
