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Hi,

I know theoritically, billboarding is a technique that makes a plain always facing the camera. I found that there are two approaches in DBpro:

1. Call SET OBJECT TO CAMERA ORIENTATION on the plain.
2. Call POINT OBJECT to point the plain to the camera position.

Both also looks fine to me. I am wondering which is the actual way of billboarding?

One more question on advance billboarding:

- I want to create a long and thin cylinder using billboarding.
- I create an image that looks like a long and thin cylinder and texture it on the plain.

The question is, how do I rotate the plain to make it look like cylinder. The requirement are:

NOTE: To keep it simple for this stage, assumed that the height of the long/thin cylinder is standing upright parallel the Y-axis, i.e. the plain is standing with its height along the world the Y-axis

1. When my camera is orbiting the "cylinder" parallel to the XZ plane, I will need to rotate the plain to face the camera.

2. When my camera is orbiting the "cylinder" parallel to the YZ plane, I CANNOT rotate the plain as the will make it DOES NOT look like a cylinder. Yes, I know it will not look like a cylinder when the camera is on top of the "cylinder", just ignore that for the moment.

This is a simple case to let you guys understand the idea of the billboarding that I need. In actual situation, the cylinder might be in any arbitary orientation, i.e. not necessarily always standing upright along to the Y-axis. This make the calculation even messy, and I am totally out of ideas.

Hehehe... any math freaks or billboarding expert out there?
Thanks!

@Bulleyes

"I am wondering which is the actual way of billboarding?"

Probably number 2 but I'd say which ever way you want it is the actual way.

"One more question on advance billboarding:

- I want to create a long and thin cylinder using billboarding.
- I create an image that looks like a long and thin cylinder and texture it on the plain.

The question is, how do I rotate the plain to make it look like cylinder."

I believe this will be most informative. It is an excerpt from the book Real time rendering second edition which I highly recommend.
http://www.flipcode.com/articles/article_rtr2billboards.shtml
Scroll down to the bottom and look under the section entitled Axial Billboard. He explains it a lot better than I could.

sweet! Thanks a lot, Neophyte. That article is really what i am looking for. And the book which that article is excerpted looks kinda informative.

@Bulleyes

"sweet! Thanks a lot, Neophyte"

Anytime.

Oh, and the book is definately a must have if you have the money. I have my own copy and I find it quite informative.