Thread: New Fish Models
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Old 06-22-2009, 01:14 PM   #16
rctneil
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Join Date: Jul 2008

Posts: 239
Originally posted by Jim Sachs:
That was my original plan with each fish-type (tangs, triggerfish, etc.), but it turned out that each species had enough differences in the body shape to warrant its own model.

What I'm struggling with right now is creating a whole new paradigm for the fish models. Up to now, the fish have consisted of 6 parts: the body, 2 side fins, 2 low fins, and the eye (a single sphere). This worked well when monitors were 1024x768, but modern resolutions show the areas where these separate pieces join together. My plan has always been to make them single objects, like a real fish. Just the vertices would be rotated to move fins and eyes, not individual objects.

The problem is what gets drawn in what order. When transparency is involved, you have to draw in layers. For instance, a transparent fin must be blended with previously-drawn pixels of the body. When the fin is a separate object, I can keep track of the angle of the fish and draw the objects in the proper order. But I have yet to find a way of doing this if the fish is all one object.  

By the sounds of the above, it seems like we'll have a whole tank ful of newly modelled fish by the end of the week!



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