TentacleFoliage
A common theme throughout the project is these tentacles. They are meant to be a generic hazard for the player dealing a little damage to hem the player into the desired play area. If the player goes too far they are eaten up with a unique tentacle animation (not shown here).
There were some issues with tentacles not properly matching the incline of the landscape. This was causing artists to have to flatten ground before placing tentacles or risk hovering or imbedded tentacles.
To solve this I came up with the solution to allow the foliage instance to match the normal of the landscape and then use the shader to rotate individual tentacles back upright. This allows them to very closely match the landscape incline and does not force artists to alter their designs to suit the tentacle requirements.
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Junkster is an unreleased project from by Stormcloud Games. Currently stalled by lack of publisher but with some luck the product will release to the public, but as yet it is unknown when.
Wishlist on steam if you want to see it released: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1675860/Junkster/
View of a typical field of tentacles. Tentacles stretch out into the distance changing lods and removing shader features to simplify rendering. They however always match the incline of the surface they sit on.
Comparison of surface placement methods. Matching surface normal alone looks silly. Not adhering the surface makes tentacles clip or float unless surface is barely inclined.
Solution, match surface normal, use shader to rotate tentacles vertically again.
Video showing shader matching any surface angle.
View of the important part of the much more complicated tentacle material.
View of tentacles material in action in a temperate biome
Video showing foliage tentacles can be animated with VAT (Vertex Animation Textures) to bring more unique motion and behaviour than just a simple wind function.
Tentacles are different per biome, but have comparable behaviour. Temperate biome tentacles wobble more when player is near, desert ones glow. But they can all match surface normal.
Video showing player getting close to desert tentacles and activating their glow feature.