Billboard Clouds

Lioric · Post by **Lioric** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:39 pm

The grid plane selector is mostly complete and functional, the billboard cloud generator can be used and seems to be very stable

What its needed is a performance benchmark to determine the optimizable parts, but specially what can be added is a custom memory allocator (a mem pool) to speed up the process

The texture packer can be improved to produce better texture space usage

But what its mostly needed is a demo to showcase it

syedhs · Post by **syedhs** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:15 pm

I think as long as the tool is stable, most people dont really bother about the performance as it is used offline. The performance will be more apparent however after we had familiarized ourselves with the tool

swx · Post by **swx** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 10:11 pm

I'm sorry I haven't been able to commit any updates lately. I've been really busy with my studies, and it will get even worse the next few months, but I'll try to make some time for improving the generator.

jsommers · Post by **jsommers** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 8:30 am

Could we get a status report on this project?

It seems to me that the project was going in the right direction but now is slowing down considerably.

I understand that you have school studies but isn't this paid work?

Post by **jacmoe** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 7:23 pm

It has all the status report you need.

SoC is over:
http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option= ... 4&Itemid=2

By visiting the Billboard Clouds project page @ the Ogre Wiki, and by reading the previous replies to this topic, the state of the project should become apparent.

You want to lend a helping hand?

Alexander · Post by **Alexander** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 1:22 am

That link is dead (I've checked a few weeks ago as well). What was the final word on this project? Is it still in development?

Post by **jacmoe** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 8:48 pm

Is it really that hard to read a couple posts back?
And click the link?

swx wrote:I'm sorry I haven't been able to commit any updates lately. I've been really busy with my studies, and it will get even worse the next few months, but I'll try to make some time for improving the generator.

If the link to the SoC projects is pointing into the void, maybe it would easy enough to find it on the wiki?

Like here?

Alexander · Post by **Alexander** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 2:06 am

Well Jacmoe, I guess I was looking forward to hearing from the author (swx) on this. I don't mean to imply that I am in the dark about the project, it is just a polite way of asking if it's still being worked on and for any additional information.

It seems from your tone, that you think I'm giving the author a hard time so I want to make it clear that I am just interested in how the project has progressed since Oct 15. No offense intended.

Post by **jacmoe** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 11:28 am

Nah. Sorry for being cranky.
I guess I somehow managed to connect your and jsommers' post. Nothing wrong in showing your interest in the project!
I am looking forward to using this myself!

Alexander · Post by **Alexander** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 3:21 pm

Yea, I'm really interested in JohnJ's work and whether this technology can be combined with it.

Post by **Assaf Raman** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 9:45 am

[EDIT]swx:[/EDIT]
I had a look on your texture packing algorithm.
I think saw something that can cause a performance hit.
You try to build the packed texture multiple times, each time a quarter of the previous size so you will find the smallest fitting texture for all the sub textures.
Each time you don't only calculate the position of each sub texture but also copy it to the distension texture.
So there are cases where you copy more then once the actual content of each sub texture.

Shouldn't you copy only when you find the target size?

Am I missing something?

syedhs · Post by **syedhs** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:39 am

Crashy? Or is it swx?

Post by **jacmoe** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:56 pm

swx -> Billboard Clouds.
Crashy -> Crowds and Instancing.

Post by **Assaf Raman** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 12:58 pm

Sorry

tgraupmann · Post by **tgraupmann** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:10 pm

This technique looks very similar to how I came up with a black hole effect.

The trick is using layered billboards moving at different rates.

Post by **Assaf Raman** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:36 pm

tgraupmann: It looks like what you have created is a "Particle System" and not a "hi-poly model imposter that uses a cloud of billboards".

tgraupmann · Post by **tgraupmann** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 10:18 pm

True. I only used quad meshes (billboards). Ya got me.

But I have been making use of lod_distances lately. It's a nice feature.

vilgeits · Post by **vilgeits** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:31 pm

I have downloaded it from CVS but i don't know how use it

.

Test.exe ever crashes (even if i put tree.obj together)

Any help? A readme.txt could be great.

Thanks in advance.

Lioric · Post by **Lioric** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:09 pm

Could you trace or step debug to find where the issue in your machine is?

What are the contents of the ogre.log file?

vilgeits · Post by **vilgeits** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:52 am

Code: Select all

bc.textures[i] = createOgreTexture( *tex );

that line fails, and Exception: Unknown Error is shown in the console.

Lioric · Post by **Lioric** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 5:37 pm

And what are the ogre.log contents?

Step into the CreateOgreTex method to find the cause

swx · Post by **swx** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:25 pm

I might get around trying to improve and make the billboard clouds compiler more stable soon

Lots and lots of courses and exams this spring though ( I really want to be able to do my thesis stuff this fall

)

I've done some wxWidgets programming lately, so I might be able to do some kind of GUI program for making and viewing the billboard clouds, sure would beat working with the command line

I've also upgraded my cpu to a dual core now, so perhaps I will try to make it multithreaded to reduce the build times.

swx · Post by **swx** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:31 pm

The compiler might fail with some error if your hardware doesn't support the offscreen render surfaces required... I should really add detection of support for various things and give more proper error messages or try to use things that are supported.

Jules Robichaud Gagnon · Tue Feb 06, 2007 4:07 pm

I'm very impressed by this work and we plan to use it when it will be completed.

I tested the export and it generated this:

I used the Assaf Raman's model on page 3.

I didn't modify any parameter in the export, i was impressed to get something. I ended with two textures of 64mb.

I'd be interested to see what you get when you get something correct.

Carlsen · Post by **Carlsen** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 5:30 pm

Anyone have thoughts on how well billboard clouds are suited for StaticGeometry batching?

It seems a huge problems that all the billboard textures are unique.. Billboard clouds are very poor at sharing textures, which is kinda required for batching, right?

I guess you can create one large texture for each cloud, which would help a bit. Then all trees instances of the same model (billboard cloud) could at least be batched together.