I’m making a vehicle model. I’m assuming that because it is a dynamic model that all the shadows are going to be dynamically generated. Because of this I’m guessing there’s no need to mess with making lightmaps and that using double-sided polys and textures are acceptable. Is this correct?
Hi Whammy,
With movable objects you don’t need to have lightmaps setup, that is correct.
With double-sided materials, this can be OK for some things, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it if you can get away without it just because you’re adding extra overhead that may not be needed.
Make sure you’re profiling your game often and this can help avoid any bottlenecks you may run into.
You do want to have an Ambient Occlusion bitmap for your vehicle though.
Good call on the AO map. I hadn’t thought about that. My thoughts about double-sided textures was for things like fender flairs and other thin objects on the vehicle. Double sided makes them easier to model with less polys. But if there’s a performance issue, it’s no big deal to do it the single-sided way.
One other question - I’m guessing that you want to turn ‘cast shadows’ off on the little stuff. True?
Using double sided materials is fine, within reason. I just wouldn’t recommend using it on everything just because you can.
If you have a lot of small pieces that are casting dynamic shadows this can potentially cause a hit, but without profiling and testing I can’t say. This is why it’s important to profile.
This recent stream on profiling can help tremendously:
