Making Terrain

(sadsack) #1

What is the best program for making terrain for ET.
I have gensurf but it not very good.
Is there any other programs that you can export in a .map file.
thank you
renny

(Mateos) #2

EasyGen:

If you have any issue, I wrote the tutorial, I can update it if needed.

There’s as well FATE, but it requires manual texturing and shader making, for a beginner it’s not recommended ^^’

(ailmanki) #3

You can try my way…lol
It has its good sides, and its bad sides doing it that way.

[thread]36344[/thread]

(twt_thunder) #4

But I will say Mateos that blending terrain myself is probably better as it wont be that much tris on terrain and you can use some of the terrain as structural something that can help VIS a lot.

(Mateos) #5

If you want to use part of the terrain as structural, I hope they’re vertical or horizontal ^^’

(twt_thunder) #6

was thinking about “the floor” if you understand

#7

Brush-primitives!

Make a big brush

Make it 8 grid thick

Caulk it

Apply the shader you want/the texture you want,

Deselect it

Make a new brush

Make it.about 248 grid long and wide
(a square from x y weiw)

Make it about 32 grid thick (z scale)

Then, meny - brushes - cone - choose 12 sided,

A cone will appear instead of the box.

Place it on the previus flat brush

Tadaa -a hill

Make more of them!

Vertexes is good for cliffs - but you probably already know how to use them?

(.Chris.) #8

Just put a caulk brush under the terrain.

(twt_thunder) #9

yea if there is room enough… lol
sometimes things happen under terrain too ^^

(Mateos) #10

If you have the same height for both terrain and caulk, there will be Z fighting only in GtkRadiant; Ingame it will be fine, and you’ll have the structural thingy doing its stuff :slight_smile:

And if you want to add some noise to the terrain so it isn’t flat-flat, you’ll be forced to have some structural caulk :confused:

If you look at all core map sources, they’re all made this way: the terrain is a big fun_group, detail, and when you hide it (CTRL+D I think), you’ll have lot of caulk and sometimes few building parts textured with something else :slight_smile:

(sadsack) #11

Hi All,
Well ailmanki that is a lot to read, I copy it, will set down to night and see if I can under stand it.
Mateos, I am going to try easy gen, that looks like what I want. thank you. thanks to the rest of you for your help thunder 13, Oveove and Chris.

While loop wait I am not doing code ha ha ha while I am here let me ask you all this.
I am going to have three layers in my map.
Layer 1 will be rolling hills that all.
layer 2 will be a set of tunnels below layer.
Layer3 will be more tunnels below layer 2.
Now when I am walking on layer1(in ET) Does the computer draw layer 2and 3?
Same thing when I am let say layer 2 does it draw layer 1 and 3?
thank you all
renny

(Mateos) #12

If you do correctly the VIS blocking with structural brushes (your terrain will be detail), it should be fine :slight_smile:

See:
http://www.pythononline.co.uk/et/tutorial18.htm

(sadsack) #13

Thank you Mateos
renny

(sadsack) #14

Very nice, you are the man!!!

(sadsack) #15

Well I got a nice small land scape made here.
A photo or two
Thanks for all your help
renny

(stealth6) #16

Anybody working on terrain should also look into phong shading: http://www.simonoc.com/pages/articles/phongshading2.htm

It’s not very hard and makes the lighting look much better!

EDIT: You can also check out q3map_tcGen ivector, it’s a little more advanced, but once you understand it, it makes texturing terrain a whole lot easier. http://q3map2.robotrenegade.com/docs/shader_manual/q3map-global-directives.html#q3map_tcGen
It’s also used in blending: http://www.simonoc.com/pages/articles/terrain2_2.htm

(Mateos) #17

If I can add a little something to your links stealth6:

textures/1944_huertgen/terrain_base
{
	q3map_nonPlanar
	q3map_shadeAngle 60
	q3map_lightmapAxis z
	q3map_tcMod rotate 37
	//q3map_lightmapMergable
	q3map_lightmapSize 512 512
	q3map_lightmapSampleSize 32
	q3map_tcGen ivector ( 256 0 0 ) ( 0 256 0 )
}

This part can be used in any other shader, terrain related, using:

q3map_baseShader textures/1944_huertgen/terrain_base

Works fine as textures are 512x512 (always /2, or they look blurry), fine for seamless lighting with higher-resolution lightmaps (also more precise with the 32 value if I’m not wrong); I have Mergable disabled here because I had an issue with 50% of the terrain being very dark, but it is recommended to have the whole terrain in a single lightmap. Thus the higher resolution, too :slight_smile:

It is like this on Fuel Dump I think, I modified it for my own purposes ^^ The FD one is already nice :slight_smile:

(sadsack) #18

Ok that is alot, it will take some time to read all that. I will read it too.
thanks
renny

(obsidian) #19

Absolutely this:

http://www.simonoc.com/pages/articles/terrain1_1.htm

Also, why make terrain structural when you can just bury structural caulk in the terrain to do the same job but a million times more efficiently? Make your compiler happy.