grrrrrrrrr easygen....

(Venom) #1

Im finally ready to use easygen. What i did is build my map with most of the buildings about where i wanted them. I then started a new easygen file and imported my map. Ive read all the easygen tutorials i could find, but most of them are using heightmaps, and i suck at photoshop. Plus this isnt really a job that can be done efficiantly with a heightmap (as far as i know?). what im lookin for is some tips to make my terrain more smooth and not blocky like. i can make it smoother and stuff, its just that causes the problem of the terrain coming through the floor of my building. i really need some good advice on how to make easygen better and smoother and fit my buildings better.

Thanks
Venom

([rD]MrPink) #2

If the terrain goes inside your buildings just select the walls it is inside of and use CSG subtract, and then select the terrain that is inside the building and delete it.

(G0-Gerbil) #3

Don’t use CSG subtract.
Deleting the terrain bits should be enough - if you ‘need’ to chop into a particular terrain triangle, then you will have to do some moving - either horizontally so your buildings fit better inside the terrain triangles, or vertically so they can sit on top of the terrain.

Pretty much the only safe thing you can do with terrain is delete bits and move it AS A WHOLE.
Never cut up terrain bits. (You can vertex edit them vertically, but that’s really only for minor tweaking, the thought of doing this on a whole map scares me…).

I’m working on terrain now, and it’s a pain.
I’m tweaking everything that I can in the heightmap - it takes a little bit longer than doing it in radiant, but it means I have all the source I need to recreate the terrain exactly via (notso)easygen. If you cock up your terrain and you’ve been editting it only in radiant, it’s either ‘last backup’ or ‘tear hair out’ time :frowning:

([rD]MrPink) #4

Well, the reason I say use CSG subtract, even though it doesn’t matter on the floor too much, if a hill goes into a wall some of that terrain brush may be inside and some may be outside.

(StormShadow) #5

I wouldnt subtract terrain…

Anyway, if your using easygen and dont want to use a heightmap (which i wouldnt reccomend) you can use the modifiers to build hills and pits, and raise, lower and flatten terrain. Try themm out they can be quite useful… but remember to save a lot because its quite easy to screw something up.

I would reccomend making a greyscale bitmap in photoshop (you only need very basic ps skills - knowledge of the dodge, burn and sponge tools, and thats about it) and editing it to suit your needs in easygen by using the modifiers.

(Ubiquitous) #6

When I would use heightmaps for easygen in RTCW, I would often struggle, and get needlessly frustrated with it. I could rarely get the terrain to look exactly like I wanted it to. However, I have recently been building my terrain from scratch with modifiers like the cones and hills. Its like night and day. Building it from scratch is much easier, and you have more control over what you are building.

(G0-Gerbil) #7

Also I think (although I’ve never used it) if you’ve done your map and want to create terrain, you can load in .MAPs into easygen to allow you to line up your terrain properly.

I wouldn’t load the whole map, just some key buildings and reference points - otherwise it’ll probably all start to crawl…

(Venom) #8

thanks for all your replys. but see thats what i did. i made most of my map in radiant then imported it into easygen to align the terrain. my main probem is when im using the modifiers, it all looks blocky and plain. if you guys have some tips on making a heightmap with PS or PSP ill try that, but i dont really know how now.

(Wils) #9

While CSG Subtract is A Bad Thing, ET and Q3Map2 are a lot more forgiving of b0rked terrain geometry than RTCW.

You should be able to get away with adding extra brushes and resizing existing ones to fit around your buildings, even if this screws up the rows/columns of the terrain mesh in that area.

You can then merge those new brushes with your terrain entity and treat it as normal, and it should work fine in game (even across texture blends specified in the alphamap).

There’s no real need to make 128/192/256 unit buildings to match your terrain any more (or pad out the foundations to cover any gaps, etc) - you can just fit the terrain to the buildings.

(G0-Gerbil) #10

Woah that’s a new one on me, cheers for that info :slight_smile:

Venom - easy way to smooth things to start with is to export your blocky heightmap from easygen, then load it into paint shop pro / photoshop / whatever and play with the blur filters. Gaussian is probably a good start.

Then re-import it into easygen and see how much of a difference it makes.

Repeat as required.

(heeen) #11

you can re-load your terrain func_group from any map and re-edit it in easygen, save it as map, delete the old terrein in your map and load the new one as prefab. be sure to exclude deleted triangles when re-exporting (some “export excluded triangles” option disabled)

(heeen) #12

even works with multiple terrains in one map

(G0-Gerbil) #13

Does it recreate the heightmap and load in the alphamap / terrain shaders properly too?

(heeen) #14

yes, afaik.
you can re-export the heightmap from the imported map, too

(G0-Gerbil) #15

Cool - currently the most annoying thing about easygen is that when I’ve loading in a new heightmap it doesn’t remember what textures were assigned to each palette index - any clues what’s up with this?

(cicero) #16

I use Gensurf for my terrain modeling and the times when I get some terrain inside for exemple one of my houses I either just raise the lower brush (my floor), press subtract and lower it again or make a new brush covering the terrain that’s inside my house press subtrakt and then delet that brush. this way I always have “solid ground” under my buildnings…

Well this is just one way to do it…

Yours…

(Stektr33) #17

Here’s something I posted about keyboard/mouse shortcuts of commonly used functions in EasyGen. I’ve used the modifiers as a pure alternative to height maps (personal preference). It’s kinda buried in the thread so I’ll post here as well.
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4122&highlight=

(Venom) #18

How do i make a good heightmap? do i make the backround black and make it white where i want hills and stuff or what?

(Stektr33) #19

Basically, yes.
But I believe the bitmap has to be a certain dimension (33x33), but I have read a post that isn’t necessarily the case. Either way, I know 33x33 works…so you can start with that dimension.

(Frankesk) #20

bitmaps can be any size.

bitmaps can be any size.

bitmaps can be any size.

bitmaps can be any size.

:slight_smile:

(!!!) 33x33 are only the sizes used in the tutorial.

when you import a bitmap of NxM pixels, easygen creates a terrain with (N-1)x(M-1) divisions and, identically, NxM vertices