Quote: "Whilst making a cup of tea I hit upon the idea of NOT transporting the depth through the alpha and instead render out a completely separate depth image. The advantage would be that no new shaders need be written, and all fixed function rendering would work without any tweaks. Well it may have started with that simple concept, but it ended with a rather nice 'bonus' in that once I had used the RED channel to transport my depth (with clever use of fog), I had GREEN and BLUE channels spare. So guess what I used them for Displacement mapping. Long boring techie story short, this new technique allows the rendering of objects to the depth camera which allow a distortion pattern to be applied to the final render. This technique can be used for things like refraction in windows, heat hazes above fires, a hot desert ripple in the distance and my personal favourite, the cloaked enemy character I am sure new model packs will be available to provide the media that goes with these ideas, but it's great to know the technology will be available right in the middle of V117, waiting to be exploited. Even X10 did not have heat wave distortion and invisible enemies, and all done with humble PS 2.0 shaders"
Wow!
You never cease to amaze me Lee.
We are so fortunate because of you.
As always, I am looking forward to seeing what your innovative mind comes up with next.
Thanks Lee for sharing your genius.
Quote: "A disclaimer though - it's FREAKING HARD and a lot of work to rig a character for lip-syncing. There are 23 bones (!!!) that drive the facial animation into 15 possible mouth phenome positions. It's very painstaking and delicate work to get the mouth shapes to look natural.
On the plus side, it's awesome though. It will open the doors for adventure games and interaction in FPSC."
Yes, the lip-syncing will open new doors, windows, and a lot more.
Machinima, cutscenes, and other short videos will be so much better with it.
Quote: "Amazing how a just a new head mesh replacing the old blocky heads breathes new life into these old characters. "
Yes, it is amazing, but the old blocky heads were nice too and certainly served their purpose well for the older processors and video cards.
This stuff is looking so good, and I am sooooo glad you are here working on it Bond.
Thanks for being a friend to all of us here.
Your work is truely appreciated more than we can express, and I have enjoyed watching your skills progress these last 5 years.
Even though I have told you a thousand times, I'll say it again...
THANKS!
