Landscape

(Spitfire.be) #1

Whats the best method to create landscape. Is it with making brushes or the best way with easygen?

(IneQuation) #2

Defo Easygen.

(Spitfire.be) #3

Where can i find easygen ?

(kamikazee) #4

May I sugest Google? :wink:

Typing “easygen terrain” in the search box gave me some usefull results, including a few tutorials straight away.

(ChiemseeMan) #5

download from here:
http://www.new-etmaps.de/modules.php?name=Prefabs

(]UBC[ McNite) #6

Check the tramdesign website for the easygen tutorial by Tanya Cheex and you ll have your first terrain within 10 minutes AND looking good.

Anyways all that EasyGen does is to create a lot of brushes that make the terrain surface (and it does an alphamap, and the terrainshaders). So when you export the whole map, you ll have brushes in Radiant.

EasyGen is definitely a very good way to get a nice basic terrain.
However adjusting your terrain to your buildings etc. will be done in Radiant later on.

The purists build their terrain totally from brushwork, all hand-made in Radiant. This is a LOT of work though.

(kamikazee) #7

[quote=]UBC[ McNite]The purists build their terrain totally from brushwork, all hand-made in Radiant. This is a LOT of work though.[/quote]True, but it gives a higher level of satisfaction when it does work out. :smiley:
(<Insert reference to Sock here>)

Actually, it’s even best to do it by hand if it’s about a small area. But I’m sure a terrain based map can take considerably longer when you wouldn’t use such tools as FATE or Easygen…

(carnage) #8

i much prefer building terrian out of brushwork. easygen export is so limited and poor that i find it can take longer to export and clean it up in radient than it would actualy be to just build it in radient in the first place

also for building the entire map terrain in one go easygen all the way but that not how a map is made. you have to carfuly work on each section making sure the width is right etc. if you look at the size of terrain triangles in ET stock map you realaises that there is a lot fewer in each area then you might expect

(Diego) #9

I’m building mine by hand one brush at a time. I also have the luxury of making the brushes very odd shapes and irregular sizes when needed. It is also a good way to prevent getting those stretched out triangular shapes for tall peaks. Making steep hills is so much easier that way because I can use side projection for my textures instead of top projection. I’ve also found that for the majority of the brushes, I can keep them cubes instead of triangles. They will get a seam down the top face if I make it non-planar. But this only gives me problems in the most extreme cases. In those instances, I’ll split the cube into 2 seperate triangular brushes.

(carnage) #10

also building by hand lets you create much more interesting shapes than easygen allows. you can get verticle cliffs without making the slop extreamly high. fate does a much better job of this bt we have herd littel from the developer for some time now

(Magic) #11

I like working with Fate.
You can build your landscape from schratch or you can import a heightmap and work with that.
For a newbie - like me - it was a relif when i found Fate.
Its a easy program to start with.

Fate : http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/index.html

Landscape im working on now : http://www.secret-gamers.com/landscapefate.jpg

(]UBC[ McNite) #12

Magic, did you have a compile of that terrain yet? I don’t want to worry you, but I m pretty sure that lot of small triangles will give you quite some filesize and triscount.

And having done the terrain for Warbell by hand, I have to say that when using an EasyGen terrain as a start, a good reworking by hand will be much easier than using a fate terrain. This is due to the way the triangles are shaped.

(Magic) #13

Yes - i have compiled it - it worked fine.
I had some problem earlier with “max_original_edges” on a other landscape.
I deleted that one and started a new one (learning the hard way :smiley: ).
Was very careful with this one - and it went well.

(]UBC[ McNite) #14

How high is the tris count? Working fine doesn’t mean its going to work as a map with the buildings and players.

To check on tris count type these commands into your console:

/r_speeds 1
/con_drawnotify 1

(]UBC[ McNite) #15

Here s the link to the EasyGen tutorial by TanyaCheex:

http://tramdesign.planetwolfenstein.gamespy.com/tutorials/tut_easygen2.html

and here is the link to the whole resources page of tramdesign.net:
http://tramdesign.planetwolfenstein.gamespy.com/resources.html

(DerSaidin) #16

Looks good Magic

I did my terrin/rockwalls by hand. I made a small tutorial at
http://dersaidin.mercness.net/mapping/index.php?act=tutorial&tut=rockwall

I think Fate would be great for entire maps.