Short Skirt, Long Jacket

So yesterday I got the crack filling up and running.

Tonight, I improved the routine dramatically.

The Trouble With Texcoords

The problem was, the edge-expanding algorithm I used was detecting way more edges than it needed to. Here’s an image of a normal map generated using this (old, bad) method (I made it render ONLY the skirts, for illustration):

Click to enlarge

As you can see, way more edges through the UV charts were getting expanded than necessary. This was messing up the maps, because there were angles and edges where there didn’t need to be, and it was introducing artifacts, especially at lower mip levels.

The problem arose because each of those “extra” edges marked areas where the vertex positions were the same, but the texcoords were different. Since the original algorithm was using the vertex’s index as the identifying feature, each time there was a texcoord change meant that the indices for neighboring triangles were different, blah blah blah, you get the point.

UV: Vectors, Not Rays

Basically, the system was rewritten to glom together vertices with the same uv map coordinates, and treat them as one single vertex. All of those interior edges get discarded. Because a single “vertex” could actually be composed of multiple source vertices, the edge expanding code had to be modified to take that into account.

Here’s the old way again, followed by the NEW way (And then the new way completely filled in):

Click to enlarge

As you can see, they’re now proper outlines (not outandsometimesinlines), and the actual outer areas are much cleaner.

I Don’t Think That Clown Is Healthy

So, here’s a new render (and its diffuse map). I modified the concrete because I was sick of all of my pictures being grayscale, so here’s my artist’s rendition of “Gray Chair That A Clown Puked Onto”:

Click to enlarge

That’s all! I’m going to release the code that I’m using for all of this, but I want to clean it up just a bit, and add variable gutter width support (instead of the lame hardcoded way that I have it now).

But for now…away!