The Broken Hourglass Weekly Update
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 775
Typically, an artist will be required to produce multiple occlusion maps, rather than simply providing a silhouette of the entire area. This is to ensure that colliding or overlapping objects are accounted for separately, and to eliminate the optical illusion that would be produced by a set of walls joining at a 90 degree angle in a greater-than or less-than shape. For this reason, artists will typically produce two wall maps--one with walls running from a general NW to SE line, and the other with walls running from a general NE to SW line. This will be followed by one or more maps of just the objects in the area--again, multiple maps being used if there are many overlapping objects which might tend to create right-angles and optical illusions. Usually, the bottom 8 pixels or so of an object or wall are "cut off" in the occlusion map--this is to prevent sprites from accidentally becoming occluded by objects they get too close to while still "in front" of the object. This can be achieved by simply raising the floor in the area before rendering the occlusion map.
