"World Detail" is the name I gave a system that I created while working on a game project called "By Our Blood".
Because Unity does not have a built-in vertex painting tool, I had to come up with my own solution to blending materials on surfaces to make them look more interesting.
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Detail is "painted" by placing any number of shapes in the level. From these simple shapes, a texture is generated containing the "detail mask" at every coordinate contained in the texture. The masks are based on "signed-distance functions" but have been modified to return 0 at the surface and 1 at the center of the shape, with values <0 outside of the shape which get clamped to 0 in the texture.
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The system separates the computation into chunks, which hold a mask texture each. During gameplay and optionally in the editor, chunks are dynamically loaded and unloaded in order to support any map size without compromising quality or performance. Each chunk texture is mapped to the smallest requires space that contains affected geometry within a chunk to maximize the usage of the limited resolution.
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This project shows mainly my own work but "By Our Blood" has been a collaboration between myself and the following:
- Carlos Jost (Project Management, Design)
- Isabela Costa Rotta (Design)
- Leonie Wagner (3D Prop Art)
- Pariya Naseri-Hagh (Character Art, UI)
- Lara Gülpen (Lead Programmer)
- Juan Ortiz (Programming)
- Yamanefe Ugurlu (Programming, Music)