Two graphical entities, smooth blending between them (e.g. asphalt and grass)

Posted by Gabriel Conrad on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Gabriel Conrad
Published on 2012-09-27T15:24:10Z Indexed on 2012/09/27 15:52 UTC
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Supposedly in a scenario there are, among other things, a tarmac strip and a meadow. The tarmac has an asphalt texture and its model is a triangle strip long that might bifurcate at some point into other tinier strips, and suppose that the meadow is covered with grass.

What can be done to make the two graphical entities seem less cut out from a photo and just pasted one on top of the other at the edges? To better understand the problem, picture a strip of asphalt and a plane covered with grass. The grass texture should also "enter" the tarmac strip a little bit at the edges (i.e. feathering effect).

My ideas involve two approaches:

  • put two textures on the tarmac entity, but that involves a serious restriction in how the strip is modeled and its texture coordinates are mapped

or

  • try and apply a post-processing filter that mimics a bloom effect where "grass" is used instead of light. This could be a terrible failure to achieve correct results.

So, is there a better or at least a more obvious way that's widely used in the game dev industry?

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