Sponsored By

Leaf Translucency

Leaf translucency has 3 determinants: how close the leaf is to the image of the sun, the angle between the leaf and the sun and the translucency of each part of the leaf. See how it works in Overgrowth's Phoenix Engine.

David Rosen, Blogger

August 19, 2009

1 Min Read

I was pretty happy with how the Overgrowth trees look when lit from the front, as shown in this shot:

Mountain trees

But what about when lit from the back?

Direct lighting

This didn't look quite right to me because leaves are translucent; and here we should be seeing light coming through the leaves. I went out to a park to take some reference pictures of real leaf translucency:

Reference photo

So what dermines how much light we see filtering through the back of a leaf? One factor is how close the leaf is to the image of the sun. Another factor is the angle between the leaf and the sun. The final factor is the translucency of each part of the leaf. Here is a picture showing these three components:

Translucency breakdown

When they are all combined, we get a correctly lit tree!

Final result

What do you think of our leaf translucency? Are there any ways that we could improve it?

Follow us here!
Facebook iconModDB iconSteam iconTwitter iconYouTube icon

Read more about:

2009Blogs

About the Author(s)

Daily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inbox

You May Also Like