Moving...

The POTD will be moved to mkbunday.blogspot.com

CGTalk - Last Elf, Piotr Fox Wysocki (3D)

CGTalk - Last Elf, Piotr Fox Wysocki (3D)

CGTalk - Theme Planet Lawyer, Michael Sormann (3D)

CGTalk - Theme Planet Lawyer, Michael Sormann (3D)

CGTalk - Moon Key, Olivier Ponsonnet (3D)

CGTalk - Moon Key, Olivier Ponsonnet (3D)

Technology: Heightmaps vs. Static meshes

Heightmaps: A grayscale image used to displace a mesh. Several textures are usually applied.
Pros: Low GPU usage, LOD, Allows creation of high-quality terrain
Cons: No overhanging
Best For: Large amounts of "base terrain", e.g., extra static meshes placed on the heightmap.

Static mesh: A true 3D mesh.
Pros: Allows for over-hanging
Cons: High GPU usage, Forces creation of low-poly terrain.
Best For: Cliffs, Objects, Buildings, etc.

Technology: Skyboxes, Skydomes, and Skyplanes

Skybox - A full cube mapped around the world geometry.
Pros: Full mapping; bottom of cube need not be hidden
Cons: Less realistic then alternate methods
Best For: General usage, Generic application

Skydome - A cube with no bottom (Is sometimes a half-sphere). Spherical texture mapping.
Pros: Most realistic
Cons: Most GPU-intensive, bottom of cube needs to be hidden, e.g. with terrain
Best For: Non-cosmos scenes, High realism applications

Skyplane - A flat plane placed above world geometry (Can sometimes be curved).
Pros: Best for some fog implementations, least GPU-intensive
Cons: All but top must be hidden
Best For: Valleys, Castles, Mountains, etc.

Tech: cfdisk

Ya'll should know about fdisk-based partioning systems. What? You don't? Well now, this we must correct!

fdisk is a partitioning program included with MS-DOS. It's rather simple, and not all that easy to use, if memory (and wikipedia) serves. But no time to get into that. I want to cover cfdisk, which is what Symphony O/S and GeeXboX - and many others - use for partitioning (Although it can be used stand-alone). There is a great ASCII art illistration at the wikipedia page. This tutorial will be designed for GeeXboX, keeping in mind the current GeeXboX series.

Ok, GeeXboX has finished asking you some questions. Now you are being shown a black, rather DOS-ish screen with a bunch of text. What should you do now? Well, it depends. If you want to clean the disk and make it exclusive to GeeXboX, delete all the partitions. Do this with the following controls:

Up/Down arrow keys: Change the currently selected partition
Left/Right arrow keys: Change the currently selected control, e.g. delete, quit
Enter: Select

Ok, now that you've cleared the disk, select the New control, and hit enter. You will be asked how big the partition should be. The default is the maximum size. Any number bigger then 16 will work fine for GeeXboX. Now tell cfdisk to make it bootable, then hit write. After it's done, quit and continue the installation as before.

I don't have acess to cfdisk to check any of this, so I'm going off of memory for some of it. Caveat Emptor. If you do find any flaws, however, I would like to learn about it, so just tell me in the comments and I might fix it.