Sprites to effect far off objects

[bnewton81]

Has anyone ever used a sprite to be say, a moon or a planet and then added a track to constraint? Like I was wondering if there would be a way to make celestial objects or other far away objects work like sprites but not interfere with buildings or other occulders. My thinking was that this would allow for a greater amount of detail to be seen while also keeping the texture smaller than it would have to be if it were part of say, the sky sphere. Am I right in thinking this? Does this make sense to try?

[dendwaler]

yes, i did,
the boat in "turtle isle" is just a sprite on a plane following a track, i did not use a constraint however nor the sprite property, may its more a billboard.
The surrounding isles are sprites as well, only the isles which you can reach are meshes.
To use this technic for a planet will be exactly the same.
With objects on a longe distance you won't notice any visual difference between sprites and meshes.

[kaelisebonrai]

Relto's celestial bodies (sun and moon(s)?) are just flat planes, in much the same way you describe, though I believe they're not sprites =)

Note: There is not a 100% 1:1 feature parity with blender and Uru, so you might not be able to use every little feature of blender in Uru. I believe the pyprp2 devs are working on using constraints to handle sprites, though, as they're mostly similar.

But afaik, this isn't anywhere near ready yet, and from what I understand, there's not much development being done on pyprp2 right now.

[dendwaler]

I call every flat 2D plane, a sprite, however the sprite as intended in plasma has some special properties
such as turning its face directly to the player or to the camera. On a long distance this is not needed, because the view angle does not realy change , but then it is called a billboard i think.

Pity to hear PyPRP2 is bit on a hold. I cannot use it the way it is now, because i cannot finish anything when basics are not implemented.
Its horrible to have to finish an age builded in 2.59 in 2.49 then its better to build directly in 2.49

[Aloys]

PyPRP2 still being in development, right now the best option might still be to export to Max and make the Plasma integration here...

[bnewton81]

I call all 2d planes sprites too. =) Awesome, glad to know I'm on the right track. Probably is a billboard. I always wondered how I was going to project any detail from an object that was part of the skybox. Thank you very much for your help everyone.