Gizmo wrote:d-Koy wrote:I am hopeful that the Unity seed file and Tile Set Dimensions doc will answer most questions on the tile set, but I expect there are many that it will not, so I will address those as I can.
I have a question about double sided textures. What is the rule (of thumb?) with them in the cowd-sourced assets. Do you accept them? (And if not, do we really need to use duplicate-mirrored geometry to get the same same ~but more expensive effect?)
I'm a novice with Unity3d, but I read that you have to use a two pass shader to get double sided texturing.
I answered a few similar questions in an email the other day with another participant, thought the info might be valuable to a few of you, here they are...
• Are we allowed to use transparency? If we are, what kind (a simple alpha clip or full on transparency)?
• Should the textures be .png files with an alpha channel, or the diffuse and the alpha be separate images?
Yes, you can use either, Unity by default looks to the alpha channel of the primary diffuse for this if using one of their default shaders. We lean toward .tga format, but .png is fine too I think.
• In what situations would you normally use transparency when making textures for wasteland 2 - for instance it will be hard to fit in 500 tris for the bookshelf model without using some kind of transparency on the bookshelf legs, fabric tears on the rag, the metal rings hanging from the shelf etc.
Yes, you are correct. We use them for quite a few things. Just keep in mind our camera (typically ranging from a 45 degree to almost true top down). And of course the tri count limit is a soft suggestion, if you think a few extra hundred tris are warranted for the amount of detail you are hoping to achieve, I can bend a little
• What about the backfaces? Are they shown at all? Are they shaded differently from front facing faces?
Lighting is always an issue with backfaces (for baked in shadows) so typically we do not tend to use double sided materials on cards, which are also typically more expensive to render. If you want to use cards with alphas, AND the backfaces are distinctly visible, I would suggest duplicating those faces in your modeling software and flipping the normals. Don’t weld the verts though, that can cause issues with the normal. It’s a few extra tri’s I know, so if the back face is not “in your face”, then don’t worry too much about it (this is not a AAA FPS after all, so chances are it won’t be noticed).