I am wondering if any of you do your terrain from scratch in Radiant, using brushes and writing shaders for the different textures you want? Maps I have the minute don’t need a lot of terrain, and it would be very handy if I could just put terrain in the parts that require it, starting with a simple brush and vertex edit until I get it right.
I am just wondering if this is possible before I try it, and also if it is good/bad practice?
Building the terrain from scratch in Radiant is the best way in most cases, because you know where the textures will blend and all the other stuff, you dont see when you use easygen.
I only know that seven_dc is building his terrain that way.
Anyways it is good practice for brush manipulation.
I am glad to hear that. it really would make it easier for placement of terrain etc and knowing where everything is supposed to be.
Check out the alphamod blending threads in the q3map2 forum. You can get some nice blending of terrain textures if you build the terrain in radiant - and you don’t need an alpha map
Will have a look there, cheers Mr Mustard. I read somewhere too though, (I think it might even have been you teasing Ifurita actually!), that doing this kind of editing on the terrain can leave sparklies and stuff. Is that true?
Yeah. I haven’t got any easygen terrain in my maps. Only dotproduct2 and new alphamod terrains.
I found that easygen greates so many unwanted things that only confused me more… like the alpha map and so many shaders with odd names.
You could check rattys 1337 tutorial:
http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&t=8244
Or for n00bs like you and me go my tutorial
http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&t=8276&highlight=terrain+blending+sevendc
Had a look at your tut seven_dc and tried it out it works 
Rattys is a bit complicated for a noob like me so I will look at it when I have more spare time on my hands.
Having problems with v editing though 
Change one triangle and you have to change all around it too. Where do you stop!!!?
Yeah, watch those sparklies!!! When I v-edit terrain I usually lock two directions (usually I only move z). Also, make sure the grid spacing is what you need (if your grid spacing is 4 but your vertex is half way in between - grid spacing 2, it’ll ‘snap’ to a grid line. Make sure your vertex is where gridline intersect)
Yes, grab all the brushes that share that vertex in common. Then v-edit. This way you move all the vertices at that one location at the same time (ie. no sparklies!)