FATE - a user-friendly alternative to EasyGen

[CooperHawkes]

So do you have to use shaders fate gives you (i know you can change them) but i mean do you have to use them ?

I repeat:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2

also can you ungroup brushes in func_group ?

You can move them into worldspawn (right-click -> move into worldspawn… or something like that… I cannot remember right now)

Solution: highlight a small area, you will see red and dark red. dark red are the duplicate brushes, unhightlight, select the ones what were dark red and then delete them. save, compile, done

Once again… faq #2 is your friend:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2

Why does Fate keep adding in stupid textures and shaders I don’t want? I just want pure terrain and nothing else
Any help?

Guess what? faq #2
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2
BTW: it is an alpha… I think I pretty clearly state at the website that texturing is VERY experimental at the moment. (Sorry if this sounds rude… but at the moment, unfortunately, you have to live with that incomplete implementation of texture support)

I’m learning how to terrain blend at the current moment and with all these in place it’s confusing me. It would help if I could start blank and figure how to do it by myself

Did I already mention faq #2? Just in case:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2

BTW: If somebody wants to write down a more detailed guide how to get rid of the multi-layer brushes… feel free to do so… I will happily add it to faq2.

could it be posible to adjust the size of the alpha brushes that are exported. they are very nice visualy when they are small but if down the line a very small amount of editing was needed to be done in radient due to map changes etc it would be pretty frustrating to have to work with all thoes tiny brushes

nice idea… maybe I will add that (if there is some space left in the GUI)

My hope is that with version 0.15 or 0.16 there won’t be any need to ever touch the terrain in Radiant again… The user should be able to texture the terrain with Dotproduct(2) and/or alpha volume blending in FATE… I also want to add the possibility to blend more than 2 textures by using multiple brush layers… and the user should be able to easily achieve this in FATE. I have a dream…

[psyco_mario]

You should add a feature (might be in there already), so

It saves a copy of your current map (with a different file name) as a backup, without the terrain in, and saves one with the terrain in after (with a different file name)
so you get
Mapname_Bkup.map < Without terrain
Mapname.map < With terrian

[Taddy]

yes

[urded]

1 Importing EasyGen files could be usefull to save time going from one program to the other and exporting the file
2 I don’t understand that thing about GTK-Radiant…this program works as a plug-in for radiant too or what???
3 You could make it like EasyGen texture mode but with more tools like smoothing textures from one triangle to other or pretty thing like Flash…like didactic tools for fools
4 The same foor OPTIMIZE and GEOMETRY but I think that GEOMETRY is Ok
5 You could FIX the camera to make it as GTK-Radiant camera and maybe make a switch for a GTK-Radiant Camera Mode to a EasyGen Camera Mode

[kamikazee]

1 Importing EasyGen files could be usefull to save time going from one program to the other and exporting the file

This takes some reverse engineering of the Easygen format. And what’s more important: you’ll surely loose the info considdering texturing.

2 I don’t understand that thing about GTK-Radiant…this program works as a plug-in for radiant too or what???

FATE is a standalone tool, only it can now import .map files as a reference. (Similar to Easygen)

3 You could make it like EasyGen texture mode but with more tools like smoothing textures from one triangle to other or pretty thing like Flash…like didactic tools for fools

FATE uses another texturing technique called dotproduct2-blending. It should be possible to paint it as well, but fading it can only be done between endpoints of triangles.

4 The same foor OPTIMIZE and GEOMETRY but I think that GEOMETRY is Ok

I think it’s quite good right now, and even better when the lock tool works.

5 You could FIX the camera to make it as GTK-Radiant camera and maybe make a switch for a GTK-Radiant Camera Mode to a EasyGen Camera Mode

2 current options: FATE mode and GTKRadiant mode. Easygen’s mode is not necessarily better.

[Higgins]

Where is the tutorial for FATE?

[broloi]

Sorry to bump this thread…

I’m wondering if CooperHawkes is still working on FATE, since i like it a lot…

[Darkfrost]

Sorry to bump this thread…

I’m wondering if CooperHawkes is still working on FATE, since i like it a lot…

I thought the same a while ago.

Just wondering, did the version with the .map reference ever come out?

[Magic]

PostPosted: 10 Mar 2007 00:58 Post subject: Reply with quote
thanks Shaderman Smile

I think I will release some sort of unstable preview in the near future, so that you guys will have at least the map import to play around with…

Speaking of map import (which currently just shows your existing brushwork) – I am also thinking about the import of .map terrain brushes and converting them into fate terrain… does this sound like a cool feature to you, or should I skip that in favor of a somewhat earlier release date?

This is what he said 10.mars.

[89blitz]

Its looks like a good took
you can also use EASYGEN;)

[_Troy]

This is the bestever software for generating terrain :o Huge thanks to author, and it makes a perfect pair with Terragen spftware, via importing a heightmap. Hope the work is still going.

[kamikazee]

Its looks like a good took
you can also use EASYGEN;)

Seems you don’t know what FATE can do. It uses a completely different technique compared to EasyGen.

[broloi]

Its looks like a good took
you can also use EASYGEN;)

easygen… errrr… no… i wanna use FATE… FATE is already better than easygen, eventho its still in alfa mod, or thats what i think.

[murka]

yeh i hope a beta will be released soon, best3v4 terrain generator

[carnage]

yeh i hope a beta will be released soon, best3v4 terrain generator

it wouldn’t hold your breath to for that. it has been a long time since this project started and there has been a slowdown in the amount of news releases etc and it still seems there is a considerable amount of work particularity in mesh optimization that needs doing before a realistically usable release can be made

and although it is a brilliant tool and far the best terrain editing program for quake 3 engine games its arrived a little late along the time line as more future engines seem to drop the idea of brushwork terrain in favor of using models. it is more complex but using models does have have a lot of advantages in runtime and during development. so if you are waiting for some kind of terrain or now working on any project i would recommended sitting down with a modeling program and have a play. blender is free and there are some great terrain tutorials over at kats webside http://www.quake3bits.com

perhaps to make the tool more usable for future engines it would be nice to be able to export the mesh directly to a .ASE format either to be used in a map as a model or so we can make the basic terrain in FATE then add finer detail in ones preferred modeling tool?

[broloi]

Ok… i send a mail to him, and here is his answer:

I am glad that you like FATE. :-) 

Currently my real life is taking way too much time and my new job involves a lot of programming tasks... therefore I am usually too exhausted in the evening or at the weekend to do even more programming stuff... it's some sort of supersaturation effect. ;-) 

However, from time to time I am still working on FATE and I hope that I can release a newer version in the next weeks... or months... ;-) you know how it works: "when it's done" ;-) 

The terrain simplification code I wrote didn't turn out to work like expected, so I am rewriting it from scratch ATM. I am hoping to beat the brush count of easygen by a factor of 3 or 4 (less brushes, not more of course ;->) without a visible loss in quality. 

The import of existing map geometry is working pretty well right now, however I do not import patch meshes or models yet... I am not even sure if I will add that, since it does not provide much more information to the user IMO. 

Thanks for waiting so patiently for a new version while being forced to work with the crappy old version 0.13... ;-) 

greetings 

Cooper Hawkes 

[murka]

yay

[Darkfrost]

Woo!

[shaunthorpe]

i just used the gensurf plugin to make my terrain made some poor choices while doing so i am going to scrap it and i tried fatei seen you could not apply textures and easygen keeps giving me errors so yeah it would be cool if fate was done and i could use a generator.

[Violator]

After a lot of messing about I have found a method which kind of works (tbh I’ve got no idea how to get FATE to work :D) -

Create basic hull shell of map in radiant (in the same style as http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16523 (S14Y3R’s excellent tip)

Start EasyGen and set the extents of the terrain (ignore ‘divisions’ - set ‘Widths’ to the terrain width and height (eg 8192 x 8192). It will recalculate ‘Div Width’ from ‘divisions’ and ‘widths’, so reset this to 64x64 or some appropriate power of 2.

Import the rough shell map into Easygen to see where to remove unwanted bits of terrain.

As S14Y3R pointed out above, use triangle exclusion to (rather tediously one at a time - anyone know a better ‘multiselect’ way?) remove the unwanted triangles. Note - don’t change the extents again or all the exclusions will be wiped!

Add the texture layers required (alphamap tab), and paint the texture maps onto the grid. Save the egn file for future tweaking.

Export the map. Click ‘Preview’ to view the terrain shader script. Cut and paste this into your map shader script. Click ‘Continue->’ and save out the file - EasyGen’s job is done. I find the terrain editing in easygen a royal pain so I leave it all to radiant. Importing a heightmap file is also a pain as it also wipes the exclusion triangles (which there is no way of exporting separately).

Finally open your original hull map. Then open another copy of radiant with the exported map from Easygen. Ctrl-alt- select the func_group for the terrain. Hit Ctrl-C to copy. Go back to the original map and hit paste (copying and pasting between copies of radiant is very useful esp. for prefabs etc)