How to get pixel perfect rendering when camera is far away?

itgiawa

I'm trying to create a top down 3D world that is almost isometric. In other words I want very slight perspective and very slight parallax effect. So I moved my camera very far away and zoomed in to a narrow field of view. This created the effect I wanted, but has the downside of warping my pixel perfect art. Warped:

Un-warped:

Anyone know how to create the effect I want without warping my pixels? Thanks!

cybereality

Maybe try using an orthographic camera projection. You will lose perspective, but it might help with some stuff. The issue is probably the mipmap levels. You can try writing your own shader for the ground, and always sampling from mipmap 0.0. This will cost you performance, but you can guarantee the highest quality. I think you can also disable mipmaping on a per texture basis in the import settings. This would be the easiest thing and not require any change to camera or shaders.

itgiawa

@cybereality I did disable the mipmap on import settings. I'll look into it some more, but if its not the mipmap do you have any other ideas? Or if I do use orthographic do you know of any way I might be able to simulate the parallax effect? I don't really need perspective, but I do want parallax. Maybe I can write that into the vertex shader? I might give that a try... My world is a voxel engine and I dont interact with anything on the lower levels anyway so it should be fine to just move it all over a bit

cybereality

If you want parallax/perspective then orthographic won't work. I've done what you said in other engines, with zooming out a camera and reducing a FOV and it should work. I can do some tests later, it's probably something with the texture.

itgiawa

@cybereality thank you! I really appreciate it

itgiawa

@cybereality I was able get clean zooming and and out to work by changing my pixel size on my animatedSprite3D from 0.001 to 0.1. However, the sprite is now enormous! Do you know if there is anyway I can shrink it down without causing the pixels to warp when I zoom in and out? Maybe I can scale up the rest of my game? I'm not really sure whats going on here. I wonder if you have any insight. I did play with the mipmaps and all the import settings, and even tried increasing the resolution of my sprite, but the only thing that seems to fix the issue is increasing pixel size.

cybereality

Yes. What you can do is scale the sprite (in GIMP or another image editor) without filtering so it is larger. For example, if the sprite is 16 x 16 pixels scale it to 32 x 32 pixels (or 64 x 64 pixels) and then change the scaling in Godot to 0.5 (or 0.25). This will look the same, but when you zoom in it will have more resolution.

itgiawa

@cybereality Thanks for the advice. I tried scaling the image resolution up 10x and reimporting and rekeying the sprite, but it seemed to have no effect in game. The problem is occurs when Im zoomed out or zoomed in. There are only a few times when my FOV is just right that things are pixel perfect, all other times some pixels are distorted. For some reason having a low pixel size seems to distort things...

Megalomaniak

@itgiawa said: There are only a few times when my FOV is just right that things are pixel perfect, all other times some pixels are distorted.

Something like this? https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/1666#issuecomment-761898780

itgiawa

@Megalomaniak yup! thats my problem. Thank you

cybereality

@Megalomaniak Is there an easy way to reproduce this? I want to fix this with my add-on, and it shouldn't be hard, but I downloaded some pixel art and it looks perfectly fine on my system with the default Godot settings. Maybe I am missing something?

Megalomaniak

I wouldn't be surprised if your add-on already does kinda solve it, albeit differently from integer scaling. But it would likely also introduce some subtle blurring quite possibly.

cybereality

Yes, it does in a way, but not without softening the image. I'm trying to get it clear like integer scaling. What I am saying (even without my plug-in) is that the default Godot scaling looks fine on my system. Here is a scene I put together with 16x16 sprites blown up to full screen 1440p.

Even with the sprites moving, everything looks fine. I don't see any distortion or incorrect pixels. But maybe this is not the right content, I don't know.

itgiawa

@cybereality you should be able to reproduce it by downloading this project. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1btuxUGFJEp81-6Uu2uGrE8ZmQ3pvnoUF/view?usp=sharing use [ to zoom in and ] to zoom out Also what does your plug in do? My plan to solve it is to figure out what the screen size is and then use that to ensure that every zoom level in my game is pixel perfect for each sprite. I'm not sure what the math looks like yet, but I think its possible. I dont mind that some players can see more map than others, nor do I mind that different billboards overlap across pixels. I just want each individual billboard to be pixel perfect.

cybereality

My plug-in is able to scale the viewport to arbitrary sizes and resample it to native resolution. The way it works, though, it was designed for 3D and does add some AA/blurring, which is wanted for 3D but not for 2D pixel games. So I'm trying to get better 2D support since I know most Godot users are probably making 2D/pixel art games.

itgiawa

@cybereality I probably dont mind a little blurring. In fact i think pixel art looks better with some crt filter or blurring. you gota link to your repo?

cybereality

See this thread. Watch the video so you can see the 2D capabilities, it looks more like a Genesis game.

https://godotforums.org/discussion/28385/godot-super-scaling-upscale-or-downscale-your-game-for-increased-performance-or-visuals