[Proclone]

I've been thinking about methods to detail units without bringing their polycpounts much higher. Methods would involve alpha'd panels in key areas and specific UV setups to accomplish certain things.

I don't really want to start going into it without making a test unit but I thoght I'd make a thread here to keep track of things.

Initial thoughts include methods of increasing the detail of tank tread and wheels. If anyone's been looking closely at the shots of teh Sherman released form Blitz 2 you might notice that it's wheels are free standing.. IE not painted onto the side of a black box like so many others.

this was the first experiement I tried and it worked pretty well. It allows for a unit to have wheels and the player to see the treads moving beaneatht hem, not to mention being able to see through to the underside of the tank.

However this is a limited optimization since it had a few flaws. Mainly when applied to a unit like the sherman which wasn't built for it the wheels lacked depth and the "teeth" of the treads didn't animate with the tracks as they should.

I've come up with a few new building methods that could add a lot to the aesthetic appeal of the treads by allowing for the teeth to move along with the treads and putting a brand of depth into the wheels via multiple layers of alphas. ONe thing I'm concerned about is the system impack multiple layers will have on the unit's memory footprint as outlined in the Graphical optimizations thread (additive alphas slow down).

Once I get a test unit running I'll post more here. Eventually hopefully this'll have enough solid information to develop a proper piee of research.