Facing Posters

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    Posters are often used as props, and many games use such billboards for flora, and even classic video games used them for NPC art to save on custom 3D modeling.


    The issue with posters is that if you rotate them off the floor/wall to stick out to suit the purpose of prop, flora, or npcs is that they vanish when viewed edge on - posters can be crossed 90deg to temper the illusion but can result in seeing the double cross images. Videogames long ago solved this by having these poster sprites (optionally) autorotate to normally face the player (client side). This can create the illusion of 3D art using only 2D art

    i actually use a prefab for some of my plugins icons in the world. this is done by creating a prefab and adding the art in billboard mode. if you would like, when i get time i can try to make a plugin for this. tho the images would have to be saved into the plugins directory before hand. but it could allow for taking an image(like in your other post) and treat is as a billboard.

    Quote from james1bow

    i actually use a prefab for some of my plugins icons in the world. this is done by creating a prefab and adding the art in billboard mode. if you would like, when i get time i can try to make a plugin for this. tho the images would have to be saved into the plugins directory before hand. but it could allow for taking an image(like in your other post) and treat is as a billboard.

    So somehow you get unity access even though the game has not done billboards? Why would you not use the existing Graphics dir that posters require - it is because the art becomes part of the plugin itself?

    Quote from krazmuze

    So somehow you get unity access even though the game has not done billboards? Why would you not use the existing Graphics dir that posters require - it is because the art becomes part of the plugin itself?

    The plugins folder is one of the few folders that you never have to worry about it being modified, etc. by an update.

    its kinda confusing to be honest. the api supports unity prefabs. could make a parameterized prefab that accepts an image(Texture). then the prefab is loaded into the world. the images should be stored separately from poster to keep things clean. also posters are converted to .CIMG files.

    So with Posters I put it in Graphics (which I needed to create) then that enabled the browser to select the image and upload to the game (even though I am offline I presume its same UI for online). Not sure why it was not a regular file browser and not sure what upload is actually doing.


    But the feature of being able to add a poster live without restarting the game is important for RPG GM, so would it use a similar browse/upload live feature.

    That's a great idea, I will add an option for posters to behave like billboards :) I'm not 100% sure though if this will make it into the next update...


    But it's basically also possible to achieve that through the Plugin API, as mentioned by james1bow . It doesn't necessarily require prefabs, because a quad with a texture would be sufficient for that. The ModelAsset class provides direct access to some built-in meshes (including a plane/quad). The game also has a built-in billboard component which could be added via Model.addComponent() (the name of the component would be "BillboardComponent").

    Unfortunately the API only provides a not-so-performant way to access custom images... it's possible to get the raw byte data from a custom image and create a new TextureAsset from it (via TextureAsset.load()), but this causes unnecessary overhead because the client has to download both the custom image and the (identical) texture asset... I will add another, more performant way to create a texture asset from a custom image directly ^^


    Quote from krazmuze

    So with Posters I put it in Graphics (which I needed to create) then that enabled the browser to select the image and upload to the game (even though I am offline I presume its same UI for online)

    Oh, when uploading a poster, you should be able to access any location on your hard drive. In the ingame file browser, just use the buttons at the top to get to your computer or the desktop, for example.


    Quote from krazmuze

    not sure what upload is actually doing.

    This adds the image to your ingame library for this world. When playing multiplayer, it uploads it on the server (because posters are visible for all players). In singleplayer, it's basically just "uploading" the image to your current world^^

    Ok I saw the use of Graphics in a youtube tutorial for Posters - I guess that was just that players convention and not used by the game then. Much better if the file browser actually does let me browse!

    Quote from red51

    That's a great idea, I will add an option for posters to behave like billboards :) I'm not 100% sure though if this will make it into the next update...

    Do posters support only .PNG - the browser did not show the .WEBP files - but it would be great if it did as they are 8x smaller without any .JPG compression artifacts.

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    Quote from red51

    That's a great idea, I will add an option for posters to behave like billboards :) I'm not 100% sure though if this will make it into the next update...

    Well I am 100% sure the only thing in the update notes about posters is image management - but nothing specific documented about a facing option. Is it a silent update worth figuring out if it is in there, or is it the idea could not make it in time, or is it you found something that will make the idea infeasible for now, or is it 100% sure that it cannot be done. Please update status - this is the one thing I was waiting for to proceed with my idea of merging TTRPG with RW.

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    Quote from krazmuze

    Well I am 100% sure the only thing in the update notes about posters is image management - but nothing specific documented about a facing option. Is it a silent update worth figuring out if it is in there, or is it the idea could not make it in time, or is it you found something that will make the idea infeasible for now, or is it 100% sure that it cannot be done. Please update status - this is the one thing I was waiting for to proceed with my idea of merging TTRPG with RW.

    I've started working on it, but unfortunately a UI to enable the billboard behaviour is still missing... but I will probably be able to add this option with one of the coming hotfixes (i.e within the next 1-14 days) :)

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    Quote from krazmuze

    Do posters support only .PNG - the browser did not show the .WEBP files - but it would be great if it did as they are 8x smaller without any .JPG compression artifacts.

    No, you can use JPEG as well, but the format in the game will be PNG.

    I don't know if it's possible to upload other regular image formats as well, give it a try. Afaik you can not download WEBP files, because of legal reasons.

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    Quote from Deirdre

    No, you can use JPEG as well, but the format in the game will be PNG.

    I don't know if it's possible to upload other regular image formats as well, give it a try. Afaik you can not download WEBP files, because of legal reasons.

    Not sure what you are saying with .webp these are the standard preferred format now in VTTs because they are the most efficient quality format for serving upload/downloads between GM/players. Sure there might be legal reasons of stealing someones sold art - but that is an issue that is not relevant to format.

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    Quote from red51

    I've started working on it, but unfortunately a UI to enable the billboard behaviour is still missing... but I will probably be able to add this option with one of the coming hotfixes (i.e within the next 1-14 days) :)

    OK great! I have been off playing other games as that is what I need to explore my RW as VTT idea. (a new zombie survival VEIN just came on early access on steam that is basically Project Zomboid if it looked like DayZ)

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    What exactly are you trying to do? i know some about D&D and i think i understand what your trying to with the billboard posters. I have been "tinkering" with interactive billboard images in the API. if you need something like a static billboard image i could put a small plugin together for you. so the way it would work, you place images into a folder. the plugin would allow you load those images into the world. i could make them interactive in case a "DM" needed to move them. would also be able to resize them.

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    Quote from james1bow

    What exactly are you trying to do? i know some about D&D and i think i understand what your trying to with the billboard posters. I have been "tinkering" with interactive billboard images in the API. if you need something like a static billboard image i could put a small plugin together for you. so the way it would work, you place images into a folder. the plugin would allow you load those images into the world. i could make them interactive in case a "DM" needed to move them. would also be able to resize them.

    No point when dev has committed to doing it.

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    red51 I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but it's about posters, so...

    I often use PNGs to depict plants on walls. Hanging the posters a little further away from the wall creates a kind of 3D effect. If you use regular ivy plants, you can layer the ivy or the plant on top of each other. This also works with posters, but unfortunately, it creates a kind of flickering effect. Is there a way to reduce this effect so that posters can be layered without the glitches? With rectangular images, it doesn't matter because you can see the outline. With well-cut PNGs, however, you can't see it, and it shouldn't be visible. However, especially with plants, I often need to layer these posters to depict a continuous plant, and the resulting flickering and glitches are quite noticeable. Can you do anything about this?

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    Note that is helps with the layer problem - but a lot of games use billboard posters so flora is 2.5D not 3D. I played a survival game for a long time before I even realized the apples on the tree was facing billboards! So this feature will be useful for flora gardens not just RPGs. You never really notice that all the flora is looking at you, well until you notice it then it freaks you out!


    I am interested in the resolution though because for secret doors the workaround of using posters that look like the wall was suggested to hide the secret door. And I was thinking of using an actual picture poster over the secret door poster to signpost the hiding that it was a secret door. First metagame thing a player will do look behind the pictures for secrets!

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    We already had the poster secret doors in the Java version. It was so secret that the players didn't know they could walk through the poster. 😅

    When there weren't any suitable doors in Unity yet, I also used poster doors.

    I love these posters; you can do so much with them. I used decals for wine bottles, but in this case, it's not really worth it, even though it looks very nice. You need a lot of decals for a bar, and these stickers are relatively small.

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