creating the terrain-alphamap without using EasyGen?

(]UBC[ McNite) #1

I was just wondering about this one: Is there a way to make a terrain completely manually without using EasyGen in the first place to get the colors for the alphamap?
Everything else (the lot of terrain shaders, brushwork, triangles) can be done by hand.
and how do i get the right size of the alphamap in pixels at the start? Or is it always 1 pixel = 128 units in radiant? That s what it was like in my last 2 maps, but that terrain was created in EasyGen at the very start.

(Detoeni) #2

Pcx size is one pixel per row of verts. In the past I’v just made a small sample terrain in easygen with the right number of diffirent colours. The pcx was then photoshoped/psp’ed to the required shape and layout. Too much like hard work that.

Since alpha volume blending was added to q3map2 I’v been using that. A pcx allows 0% or 100% blends only, alpha volume blending allows 0% to 100% blending + it can be used with dotproduct and dotproduct2 for aditional effect where needed.

(]UBC[ McNite) #3

I know about alpha volume blending, but its too much work imo when u want to edit it. For TheRiver II Redux I only edited the alphamap and that s it. Fast and simple.

The other idea would be to set up a mapping team with someone who knows about alpha-blending :smiley:

(The Wanderer) #4

i don’t know why you would want to go through the nightmare of generating an alphamap manually, but yes it is very much possible. In fact that is how the alphamap was generated before easygen was around.

Like Detoeni said, it’s one alphamap pixel per terrain grid vertex, but honestly you’re much better off just importing the terrain back in easygen and editing the alphamap there rather then manually editing through an image editor.

A much better way, especially when editing existing terrain is to use alphamod brushes on top of your alphamap. Alphamod brushes will overwrite any alphamap settings, so if you have a bad blend somewhere in your easygen terrain, just stick a 0% or 100%(depending on which way you want the blending to go) alphamod brush in there and you’re done.

(carnage) #5

ever though of joining venom stuidos then? http://www.venom-studios.tk

were a serious mod team but now kinda died out and at the moment just make progress on one map that i give you the first ever screen shot below, would be nice to have a few more member again and step production again

as you can see alpha fade it a bit of work but ill compile and show you why i think its woth it

EDIT// here we have the compile, this might be a bad example as it doesnt realy show the advantages over using easygen but its not much more work if you configure you dot2product shader right anyway

(Pytox) #6

Why you don’t finish it then? :slight_smile:

(]UBC[ McNite) #7

That screeny is too dark to see anything (and its too big too).

@ Detoeni

Pcx size is one pixel per row of verts. In the past I’v just made a small sample terrain in easygen with the right number of diffirent colours.

Just had the idea of having the terrain verts in 128x128 BUT when doing the alphamap for the first time to fake 64x64 verts. Theoretically this should make the edges smoother, right? I only wonder whether its going to screw up the mapperformance with regard to FPS.

(SCDS_reyalP) #8

Just had the idea of having the terrain verts in 128x128 BUT when doing the alphamap for the first time to fake 64x64 verts. Theoretically this should make the edges smoother, right? I only wonder whether its going to screw up the mapperformance with regard to FPS.

I have a feeling it is more likely to look wrong than hurt your FPS much.