[Bug: Unconfirmed] Coral Outline

[dboyd420]

There seems to be a dark outline around the corals that you can't see until a fish swims behind it. I've check on multiple machines and they all have this. It looks really strange when a yellow tang swims behind the white bubble coral and there is a black border between the two.

[Jim Sachs]

Oh, yeah - I was working on that a couple of months ago and got sidetracked.

[Surferminn]

Awww..., he beat me to it and reported it first. I'll add my notes here too. I've been looking at the outlining of the corals for awhile now, waiting for the fishes to swim behind them to capture a screen shots. Here are my observations and some of the shots taken.

1. The outlining seems tied to the lighting. When lights are darkened, then the outline around the coral follow suit and are dark. When the lights are lightened, then the outline also follow suit and the outline becomes a lighter color. I surmise this is to blend into the background. But as said above, the fishes swimming behind gives it away. The outlines while not as vivid in the single shots below are much more vivid in live scrolling.

2. Having said that, the rock in front of the lacey orange coral has some obvious outline that is always there and noticeable without fishes having to swim behind it. To me, at times, the outline make the rock look like a cut out placed there and takes away from the 3D effect. The outline is not so vivid in the screen shot below but when scrolling live, is definitely visible - scrolling seems to enhance some things and wash away others.

3. The pink coral with clusters of individual soft bumps/lumps have gray outlines at the top and looks like you placed in 3 rows/clusters of them one behind the other but forgot to erase the gray lines?? I personally don't like the gray lines because it almost make them look like cut outs too. When taking a single screen shot, the gray lines are not very visible, but when scrolling, they are visible. Too picky?

4. I note that the outlines are not there for all the coral as I was waiting for the fishes to swim behind the coral, I noted that some parts of some of the corals did not have an outline and some hardly noticeable when the fishes swam behind them. So there seemed to be some inconsistency -- due to your getting sidetracked apparently.

5. In taking screen shots of the corals and their outlines, the single shot also revealed what looked like artefacts or "heatwaves" surrounding the coral edges which is not noticeable at all when live scrolling is on. So I don't know if you stopped the scrolling if these things captured around the edges of the coral in a frozen screen capture would also be there.

6. In scrolling fast the outlines around some of the corals jumps out a little bit and become pronounce but disappear in normal slow scrolling when you take your finger off the button.

[feldon34]

I think in the particular instance of the purplish strands of coral, the outlining "is what it is". To do a smooth blended background requires a larger texture and/or larger alpha map. I'm not sure what Jim has said about this in the past. Generally Jim doesn't like to use any more than 1 or 4 shades of blending from what I have seen.

[Surferminn]

Edit no. 6. above. The outline becoming more pronounce when you speed scroll (keep your fingers on the left / right buttons) only happens on some corals AND only when you have the lighting on dark background light. The outline then turns kinda teal especially on the golden color branch coral sitting on top of the rock. However, if you set the lighting really bright, there is no outlining visible when you speed scroll.

[dboyd420]

Jim, all the outlines look really good in beta 3. There are a couple coral that still have it. Not sure what it is called, but the tall purple coral on the right side still has this outline. It is very pronounced on the piece that is in front of anouther. This outline also changes color to match the lighting as Surferminn pointed out. The mushrooms next to it have a grey outline that doesn't match the lighting change.

[Jim Sachs]

I'll investigate.