Linnen geometry using transparent shaders

Unity Engine
1

Hi!

I have a simple Linnen geometry on top of a city wall that I am using some 1000 times in my scene. (see attached image)
Using the Linnen as geometry works, but boosts my vertex count really badly. So I want to simulate the linnen using a shader on a simple flat geometry. I tried the transparent vertex lit shader which works fine to cut out the linnne geometry from the flat surface. The problem is that all Linnen are just flat now and I really need to give it some depth (see the other attached image). Any idea how this can be achieved? (bump didn’t work, it will always stay flat when viewed from the side).

thanks,
gabriel

171311--6162--$linnen_with_transparent_shader_114.jpg
171311--6163--$linnen_to_produce_200.jpg

2

Look for parallax shaders

3

Optimally you would use real geometry.
Using expensive shaders to compensate for real geometry will not work out anywhere usefully at worst.

Also I don’t see how it really boost it. if all the linnen objects are distinct objects, only those which are in the view frustrum are beeing rendered.
you might potentially group a few together and merge their meshes to reduce the amount of draw calls.

that should be very lightweight, as even 10’000 polygons more would be peanuts.

4

thanks for the advice. So you think a shader would cost more than real geometry? How do you estimate such things?

I would actually like to group the Linnen. That’s how they are in my modeling tool. The problem also is that I go through quite some work separating out parts of my buildings to go around the 65’000 vertices limit that Unity gives you…

Cheers

5

if its a building, you could actually do the combine mesh script on the whole thing=one draw call per building :-)(or multiple combine mesh scripts, one for each group of small entities