Reallusion has also provided us with a handful of performance enhancements in version 5. These enhancements help with the overall performance of iClone as they strive to reduce the load on the real-time engine while maintaining the quality of the preview and render.
Height Map Terrain |
This is an amazing feature still under development that uses information from an Earth Sculptor (as of the beta version) created terrain and texture images along with an |
LOD Level of Detail |
Height Map Terrain Only Four levels of detail as referenced above switched on by default. Use the Ctrl + L shortcut to toggle it on and off. |
Instance |
An instance is a method of duplicating objects by sharing the same source of data. Any change to one object changes all the objects that are instanced from that object. A Reallusion research note stated that a project with 100 balls is almost the same size as a project with 1 ball. The instancing is taken care of by iClone when duplicating objects. |
Alpha Threshold |
This is a long awaited addition for those of us that have fought with the problem of the top residual line left when using opacity masks on a plane or billboard or multi-layer cloth. This little jewel is a threshold tuner that determines which part to pass through depending on the gray (alpha) level. Increase or decrease the Alpha Threshold if you are having transparency problems. Experimentation is highly encouraged. |
The following image displays two planes using opacity maps to cut out the sky area. The right side plane shows the result of having the Alpha Threshold slider moved up to increase the alpha threshold based on grayscale transparency: