AC3D Forums - View Single Post

Ham · 19th January 2009, 05:54 PM

Ok well if you are making it for a game, its going to be up to how to how the engine
supports animated textures. Most likely you are going to be switching textures
or texture coordinates, and won't require pre-rendering the signs.

So for example if it was a GIF, you would make a multi frame GIF,
place it on your 3D model and the game engine would be told
to play the frames of the GIF in order in a loop and it would
appear that the sign is changing.

Same for a movie media file like quicktime or the like.

My game engine doesn't do this, we use a pattern of images.
So for instance a throbbing neon OPEN sign would be
a single image, divided by say 2x2 repetitions of the word OPEN,
and each repetition would have a slight change in some
color value, let say each letter goes from dark to light.

The initial texture coordinate is set to the first state of the image,
then the game engine is told to cycle the texture coordinates by
a preset value, say the image is 4 images on a single 64x64 pixel area, then it would shift over 32 pixels to reveal image 2, shift back 32 pixels and down 32 pixels for image 3, etc
This creates the illusion of animation.

Thats all kind of technical, but you'll need to know how your game engine
can handle animation and then develop your signs accordingly.

If it is a 2D game, then you'll be pre-rendering and if the rendering program doesn't support creating animation, you can recombine all the frames into an animation file format, or have the engine display individual images as animation frames to create the same effect.

I hope that helps.

19th January 2009, 05:54 PM	#6
Ham Member Expert member Join Date: May 2006 Location: international Posts: 96	Re: Animation. Ok well if you are making it for a game, its going to be up to how to how the engine supports animated textures. Most likely you are going to be switching textures or texture coordinates, and won't require pre-rendering the signs. So for example if it was a GIF, you would make a multi frame GIF, place it on your 3D model and the game engine would be told to play the frames of the GIF in order in a loop and it would appear that the sign is changing. Same for a movie media file like quicktime or the like. My game engine doesn't do this, we use a pattern of images. So for instance a throbbing neon OPEN sign would be a single image, divided by say 2x2 repetitions of the word OPEN, and each repetition would have a slight change in some color value, let say each letter goes from dark to light. The initial texture coordinate is set to the first state of the image, then the game engine is told to cycle the texture coordinates by a preset value, say the image is 4 images on a single 64x64 pixel area, then it would shift over 32 pixels to reveal image 2, shift back 32 pixels and down 32 pixels for image 3, etc This creates the illusion of animation. Thats all kind of technical, but you'll need to know how your game engine can handle animation and then develop your signs accordingly. If it is a 2D game, then you'll be pre-rendering and if the rendering program doesn't support creating animation, you can recombine all the frames into an animation file format, or have the engine display individual images as animation frames to create the same effect. I hope that helps.