Dev news : PiXXL pale oak log and planks
That's a 1.21.4+ new block, with weird mobs and a strange biome.
I really love the overall feel of those new blocks. I've already been working on other such blocks as you might have seen on my previous post.
Here I designed the most common of pale blocks, pale oak planks and pale oak logs.
Tech talk
I have to mention a couple of changes and technical details though.
I wasn't happy with how logs looked, mostly the top part. Those were among the first blocks I designed and I haven't dared changing that up until now.
I didn't touch the earlier blocks but I felt I could start improving on log tops with this new block, while remaining very close to the previous variants.
I used my new "vanillize" node which I designed recently to dramatically improve on the conversion from vanilla to PiXXL process.
In this case you can see I'm blending the center part of the tree with the bark edges (I know I could have used a material blend node), plugging all this to my new node, which will integrate all this seamlessly, making sure all elements interact correctly with each other. It looks like this :
For example this ensures the ambient occlusion takes everything into account:
the heighmap generated from the original 16x16 texture with all parameters such as greyscale weights and levels,
the additional heightmap used to create very specific parts to vary height (i.e. with composite blocks that have lots of materials),
the detailed heightmap from the materials used for PiXXL,
the detailed AO map
Same with other material parameters. You get the gist.
What I changed/fixed here is the consistency of all this, which was sourely lacking from the previous incarnations.
Now the heightmap and normalmap match, as well as AO. I "forced" some elements to minimize glitches but it's overall pretty consistent. No more normals that feel like the bark edges were recessed relative to the center. Now, as it was supposed to be, they look flush.
I also added some more height variations so it doesn't look too flat.
