Geometry Data Caster
In-game customization of assets is a prevalent feature in video games, often relying on shaders that depend on the original model’s data, such as material IDs and UVs. This reliance complicates the creation of proxies and impostors with traditional material baking.
Geometry data caster offer a solution by baking original mesh data into textures. The available data fields include:
- Coordinates
- UVs
- Normals
- Tangents
- Bitangents
- Colors
- Triangle IDs
- Vertex IDs
You can also cast user-defined triangle, vertex, and corner fields, providing even more flexibility. By using geometry data caster in conjunction with shaders, you can create proxies that maintain the adaptivity of the original asset.
Geometry data caster integrate seamlessly with other Simplygon features. Here are some examples of its application:
- Level of Detail Chains: For assets that players can customize with texture decals in UV space, the initial LOD levels are created using Triangle Reducer, while the final LOD level is created with Remesher. Geometry data casters allow you to bake original UV data into a texture, which can then be used by a shader to recreate the original asset's appearance. This shader can be baked into a texture to optimize rendering during runtime.
- Vegetation Optimization: When optimizing vegetation assets with the billboard clouds feature, geometry data caster enable the impostor's shader to access original material IDs, allowing for the creation of different asset variants.
To discover how geometry data caster can meet your specific needs, contact us for an evaluation.