The node/beam model handles large scale vehicle deformation perfectly. The thread I made regarding driving surfaces to handle small resolution surface imperfections on the terrain you're driving on made me wonder if something similar could be used to handle small resolution bodywork damage. Say you handled the terrain collision with a bitmap that acted as a height-map for the terrain collision model. I'm wondering if applying a bitmap to a car that changed values when a force is applied to an area would allow you to create small dents and dings in bodywork. So you'd apply a force to the collision model, that would translate to a change in the data in the relevant part of the bitmap that would act as a height-map to distort the 3D mesh of the vehicle slightly. When that happens you have actually simulated a dent that didn't translate to structural damage to the car, just a scar on the bodywork.
The poly count on the vehicles would have to be insane to make small dents actually noticeable, let alone good looking. It would make much more sense to simply replace the texture in the area of contact with one that has slight scratches and bump map to simulate dents.
Well, there's also HW tessellation but I agree that normal mapping, maybe combined with parallax mapping would do the job well. It would likely require that every instance of a particular car had it's own texture for this effect, that is very well mapped on the car and none of the triangles share any part of it.
Just like the system we had in RoR but with the ability to add a normal map and spec map (although its my understanding that CryEngine doesnt actually support reflective shaders on moving objects, so that might not even be unnecessary) So basically a completed vehicle would have a texture, a normal map, a damaged texture, and a damaged normal map. Then swap the shaders on and slightly around the point of impact (which is probably much harder said then done, and thats assuming that CryEngine even supports the ability to edit materials during run time. I havnt messed with it, so i wouldnt know)
the problem with parallax mapping and things like that are they just look terrible. GTA IV used a similar system to what I described and when dealing with very slight bodywork damage the effect was realistic enough. That's all I'm talking about. the good thing about beamNG is that the resolution of the meshes is higher than GTA IV according to Gabester. Damage textures are a good idea in theory but as we found in RoR, they just looked terrible in the way they where handled.
I think the way we used to do it in RoR is a great idea if it is perfected. For instance there is an old video of the Toyota Helux on youtube that looked pretty legit as far as small dents were concerned. This is the video. I thought it was pretty amazing when it first cam out cause I was still bashing around in the old Challenger at that point.
Another aspect of small object physics (or small in terms of scales in RoR ) are punctures. So the question is, could some mechanism of punctures, like from bullets, be implemented? I was thinking about something like on-the-fly nodes and rods automatic adding system which would which could do that in places where stresses approaches critical values of used materials (is even sth like critical stress implemented in Beam?); thus making bending and shredding in those places possible to occur (in local scale). So is it possible this or any other way? Because, think, the idea of realistically modeled firearms created punctures and consequent damages in fps games something worthwhile pursuing.
*Sigh. Are we really going to look at everything from a literal perspective? What I mean by that is the games used a damage model consisting of an invincible central cabin surrounded by destructible parts (like bumpers and panels). These could be deformed (unrealistically) to look like dents. Plus, both games implemented a beautiful system for scratches and mud, which highlighted these small random dents. So yes, these games did have dents. From a realistic view, they merely had a random system for producing pre-defined dents and/or scratches.
I was hardly on about damage texture mapping, anyone can do that. I was on about something similar to GTA IV's system but on a micro scale. A system that accounts for small dents while the beam system accounts for the macro scale damage we already see. We don't need to increase the resolution of the meshes to do it either, just displace some vertices to create a dent.
I don't understand much of what you said (unfortunately), but it sounds really cool. I hope that it's possible!
Went to make a thread and found this one. Sorry for reviving such an old thread but is something like this in the works? As the first post states, BeamNG.Drive only handles large scale deformation and damage, and I know this is due to limitations and if the poly count was any higher on the nodes and beams that the game would lag like crazy. But some of the ideas here would work, like that video posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrt4r8AoQLI Or perhaps the polycount could be significantly increased once things start to run more so on the GPU? Dunno, just throwing ideas out there.
I still think its possible. The vertices on the mesh are held in a position relative to a node, or group of nodes. Displacing the vertices relative to the nodes if enough force is applied would probably be possible and as long as you limit how much they can be displaced then you shouldn't have anything stupid going on. I'm not on about detailed dents here, just the ability to squish the bodywork lightly even if the crash hasn't damaged the node/beam structure much. Displacing a few vertices in the visual model would make a 'dent'. You'd be potentially able to ripple the bodywork on large panels like the roof if you land upside down even if you haven't crushed any pillars.
Well it was either bump this thread or start another identical thread =P I didn't want to add more of the same threads, since that is recommended against in the forum rules.
I'm certainly not a coder, but what about the concept of having a multi-resolution jbeam cage? In the case of a small impact the area of damage would be subdivided to show greater dent detail in that way you would still be using existing methods and would not have to introduce extra functions like a bump or displacement map etc..
The displacement map is probably a better idea, as Gabe said adding extra nodes real time is a can of worms they'd rather not open back when people were discussing the idea of cutting cars in half, and I don't think that's changed. And besides, eventually large areas of the car would be subdivided to absurd levels. Not to mention the lag, but it's a known fact that having a too detailed N/B can make a vehicle behave quite thoroughly like it is made of Jell-O. Also, I think Hati's idea might be a good alternative to damage textures, because if I remember correctly they said something about not knowing how to do dynamic texture blending yet with Torque.
