clip maps? eh.. and a hair tut..

Support Basics & Interface
1

http://www.menithings.com/manual/Tilt_Hair_01.php?action=how

this is a tut on making cg hair but thats not why i’m posting it.

it mentions “clip maps”

There are enormous advantages to using a clip map in this application. Clip maps are seen by shadow map lights (transparency mapped objects are seen as pure solids), plus clip maps render much more quickly than transparency mapped objects.

this would be a great addition to blender. if i understand it correctly its a texture map that is set to effect transparency except that when rendered your get correct shadows,

since its works with shadow maps thats not ray tracing right?

anyone know if this feature could work with blenders render engine?

2

it couldn’t work with blender

I can’t think of where it wouldn’t require a raytracer in fact.

If I may continue rambling, may it be useful to let a map on a texture adjust the depth value stored in the lamps z buffer so that the bias setting can get a similar efect? (the “holes” in the face’s shadow would only exist for a given distance)

It would be very awkward to work with or explain though.
I can’t think of why there would be too much trouble implementing it, but I don’t know what kind of compression is done to lamp z buffers.