Man, I *wish* Everquest had clouds like that. Phew....that's a really
cool URL.
The clouds in Everquest are actually just texture maps, done in some paint
program. I'm not sure which they use. It could have been generated by 3D
Studio Ma. You can turn the clouds off completely (I think), or have one
layer or two layer clouds. It's been a while since I've had one layer
going, but I think they have clouds painted on a blue background. The two
layer effect is using the one layer texture in conjunction with a second
layer of clouds in a texture map with transparency turned on. The texture
maps move at different rates, and you get a nice looking cloud
effect. ...At least as nice as current Everquest technology can do. I
would expect EQ2 and other games will have even nicer effects.
Anyway, the cloud textures appear to me to be thrown onto the inside of a
giant sphere that encapsulates the whole outdoor zone that you're in. The
best place to see this effect is on the "good" boat to Kunark, right after
you zone into the Finora Vie area. If you face away from where the boat
will dock, you can see how the sky curves towards the edge of the zone.
I believe they change the tint of the background on the textures as day
progresses to night.
It's a pretty simple technique, but fairly effective.
....At least, that's my guess on how they do it, based solely on
observation. :-)
If anyone here wants to try Everquest, I highly recommend the game. The
graphics aren't state of the art by today's standards (They have to deal
with system requirements for systems that are a year or two old, since
that's when they started it), but the game itself is very
compelling. Pretty addictive too. I saw someone's quote on a message
board once... "Everquest makes Crack look like Diet Coke". Man, that's
the truth.... :-)
Steve
At 04:02 PM 9/29/2000 -0700, Paul Byrne wrote:
>Hi Dave,
>
>Check out http://vterrain.org/Atmosphere/clouds.html
>
>Rgds
>
>Paul
>
>
> >MIME-Version: 1.0
> >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> >X-Priority: 3
> >X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
> >X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200
> >Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 18:51:07 -0400
> >From: David <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Subject: [JAVA3D] Clouds
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >Hi all:
> >
> >I have scoured the web looking for techniques for generating clouds ala
> >Asheron's call and Everquest. Even came up blank on Gamasutra. Can anyone
> >toss me a hint? In particular I am looking for moving clouds. Should I be
> >using a multi-texture for highlighting a plasma function?
> >
> >Dave Yazel
> >
>
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