I don’t know if there’s a standard name for these kinds of textures.
I don’t know how to transport this what I’m trying to say easily:
“Grow Maps” is a special gray map that ‘grows’ from roots to branches.
It can be used for visual effects like ‘infection’ or ‘ice flowers blooming’ or ‘showing wounds depending on health’.
“Travel Maps” are similar, and are used mostly for glowing dots, that travel on the body of a game character.
The starcraft ghosts and protos buildings are good examples for this - traveling and glowing blue dots on the surface.
Okay, my examples are not the best - I created each of them in around 5 minutes.
The Grow Maps might then be used as dynamic alpha to blend with a different texture.
Or they might be used with a simple color like black (for infected veins) or red (for bleeding wounds).
Hope you can at least guess what I’m trying to say.
What do you think?
I think that trees are green ^^ (as thats your only question)
But I guess to archive what you want you nee dto use a shader that combines both maps togehter base dona few uniforms that determine how for each frame.
You might also want to take alook at glow maps , as witha few iterating textures you could archive that last effect quite easily.
Oh, I didn’t make it authistic-geek-proof!
“What do you think about this whole idea?” would be correct then.
And yes, I would make my own shader for it, but I’m not good enough at jME-speak at the moment.
And I am currently more into the whole modeling and polishing models for my asset pack and BlendSwap right now.
Maybe this feature might be requested more often.
I think of many uses for these maps - the upper three examples are just three more often practically relevant uses.
I could make more than the three images and four purposes mentioned.
Hell yes!
Looks similar to the one from Doom 3 - where enemies dissolve (to free up resources I guess).
Growing is a reverse dissolve. I guess you use the 'discard' fragment operation?
<cite>@zarch said:</cite>
The concept makes sense. You could even combine the grow map with other textures to create some really interesting effects.
<cite>@Ogli said:</cite>
The Grow Maps might then be used as dynamic alpha to blend with a different texture.
Or they might be used with a simple color like black (for infected veins) or red (for bleeding wounds).
Just what I thought - so maybe they should be two different effects - with color - with texture.
The idea isn’t new btw.
The grow effect can be seen in some videos on the web, e.g. statues covered by thin layer of plants, or … of course … zerg creeper in sc2.
The question is:
Does this belong into the engine, as a ready to use effect for everyone
Or does this belong into a shader library, as a ready to use effect for everyone
?
I would say this belongs to the contrib repo, as a guidline for others, as you most likley do change the shaders for any moderatly complex game to match your ideas better anyway.
