Terrain

(Higgins) #1

Ive started a new map, but Iam not happy with the terrain. Its all to much for me to take in, on how to alpha blend and crap.

I am asking if any one would be very kind and help make me my terrain. I am looking to get the same results from saber peak.

Let me know if any one can help me out.

(Shaderman) #2

Ask FATE to help you.

(carnage) #3

he wont get the same results as saber peak with fate

when it comes to alpha belnding your terrain its likely that as the map goes on there will be all number of tweaks/modifications to it and if someone else builds it its not likely to be exactly what you wanted

try downloading the sample maps from socks simland and read the articles about alpha blending. it might be eaiser to understand when you can see a working example in front of you

(Higgins) #4

I couldnt find any tutorials on how to use fate.

I really dont like any kind of scripting, so I wouldnt find looking at socks stuff helpful.

(]UBC[ McNite) #5

Here is the link to the articles by sock:
http://simland.planetquake.gamespy.com//pages/articles/terrain1_1.htm

I wouldn’t suggest fate for creating a pre-terrain that you want to modify towards alphablending, for one simple reason: the hexagonal pattern is MUCH more difficult to modify by hand than the simple 2-triangles-make-a-square pattern of EasyGen.

My suggestion is: Get your terrain done with EasyGen and a heightmap (get a good tutorial here).
Forget about the texture stuff in EasyGen.
Import the terrain, caulk it completely.
Then write yourself 2-3 terrain shaders: 1 for grass, 1 for rock, 1 for whateveryouneed.
Then give the visible surface of the terrain the shaders you want.
(Yes there will be horrible edges between the shaders)
Then write yourself the blending shaders you need, eg. grass-rock.
Put that texture only over the terrain triangles where rock and grass really meet.

That s (almost) how I did it for warbell. Check out the map, you ll see it looks pretty good.
(Ok for warbell I created the terrain completely by hand, no EasyGen, and modifyed almost every terrain triangle by hand to adjust them to get a perfect result.)

(kamikazee) #6

If you caulk the terrain anyway, you better use GTKGensurf. After that, caulk and proceed as McNite said.
The reason is that Easygen may show a smooth terrain but can export a jagged map. GTKGensurf just generates it and you got a direct result in GTKRadiant.

(carnage) #7

Gensurf terrain can be tedious to tweek though. perhaps use easygen to generate a bitmap hightmap and then use this to generate terrain from gensurf

(]UBC[ McNite) #8

Forgot that you need to snap the whole terrain to grid after teh export from EasyGen. For that select the whole func_group, freeze the X and Y direction so the vertexes can only move along Z-axis, and then do snap-to-grid (with grid4 preferably, or grid8). For manually tweaking a terrain, never go lower than grid4.

(Higgins) #9

I already have my terrain done, I just dont like it, because it was made with easygen, and the textures are destorted on the cliffs.

I have looked at socks tutorial, but it just kind of depressed me trying to think how to do it. I may look at it in detail, but I think it would be of better help if some one could be nice and make me one. I dont care how it looks, as long as it would have rocky cliffs with plants on, with sand for the sea bed and islands.

(Diego) #10

I already have my terrain done, I just dont like it, because it was made with easygen, and the textures are destorted on the cliffs.

The reason your textures are distorted is because your cliffs, as part of the terrain entity, receive textures that are projected top-down. To get rid of the stretching, the textures need to be projected from the side.

You have a couple of manual options to work around this.

  1. Select all of the cliffs with a stretched texture, remove them from the terrain entity, and then manually re-apply the textures.
  2. Delete the stretched brushes and build new cliffs by hand.
(carnage) #11

I already have my terrain done, I just dont like it, because it was made with easygen, and the textures are destorted on the cliffs.

I have looked at socks tutorial, but it just kind of depressed me trying to think how to do it. I may look at it in detail, but I think it would be of better help if some one could be nice and make me one. I dont care how it looks, as long as it would have rocky cliffs with plants on, with sand for the sea bed and islands.

if you made ur terrain with easygen and dont like thi angles and stuff on the cliff you can use the triangle swap tool and that can help.

its called the flip terrain tool on the bottom bar of the top buttons menu. select 2 traigles so when looked from above you have a square shape then use the tool

(CooperHawkes) #12

Sorry that I have to say this… but you are starting to get on my nerves with your continuous bashing against the hexagonal pattern in various threads… Firstly, you might download version 0.13 instead (which is out for more than half a year now) which supports also the old fashioned quad style mesh.

Regarding the next version: I once more got stuck in real life and my spare time for coding is very limited… please bear with me. The thing you might expect most is the massive reduction of triangle count. Stay tuned :wink:

@Diego: with FATE you wont get distorted textures… the standard FATE shaders do all that stuff for you out of the box.

(carnage) #13

Sorry that I have to say this… but you are starting to get on my nerves with your continuous bashing against the hexagonal pattern in various threads… Firstly, you might download version 0.13 instead (which is out for more than half a year now) which supports also the old fashioned quad style mesh.

Regarding the next version: I once more got stuck in real life and my spare time for coding is very limited… please bear with me. The thing you might expect most is the massive reduction of triangle count. Stay tuned :wink:

@Diego: with FATE you wont get distorted textures… the standard FATE shaders do all that stuff for you out of the box.[/quote]

perhaps its right that the square pattern is easier to edit but that removes a lot of the advantages of actuly using the alpha blending the dot2product method offers. using the square pattern you esentialy limit yourself to the same results you get with traditional terrain textureing. with unconventioanl gid shapes it allows you to create much more curved and natural looking belnd shapes

id say the best grid pattern is to infact not have one at all since you will be able get the blends in exacty the layout you want and be able to channel tris into the areas that need them for smoothing while keeping simple areas relativly low in performace cost. with the triangle reduction that seems to be getting implemted into fate the actual fate export could end up very similar to this

(Diego) #14

Having tried Easygen and gensurf, I’ve been building my terrain by hand so that I can use quads and brushes of irregular shape and alignment to get alpha blends where I want them. But I’ll take a look at FATE for my next map. I’m too far into it to change now.