to all the mappers out there

(carnage) #1

hi, this year and the next i will be working on a big programing course for my A2 courswork. And for my project it looks like i will be making a terain creator for the .map format and primarly for ET so i can directly run q3map2 on a pre created .bat file to give users a nice look around before having to switch over to the editor

it looks like it will work by working a alterable size image that can ither be created from scratch or imported from something like photoshop… the idea is to make it a lot more user frendly than gensurf and make the editing easier as i have found it quite hard to get the scale right

it will work entirly by manipulating the 2d image so i can uses things like blending to smooth the terain…

i realy need any surgestions of what you would like to see posible in it and what controls you would like

so far i have

import image tool
raise brightness tool
lower brigness tool
raise/lower with built in belnding for much smoother hills
veraible randomizer for making flat areas slightly uneven
blend hight to increase smoothness
scale of how many units each pixel will make the brush grid blocks

tools not avaidable in gensurf

plane spilt - aplying a second image over the first that controls how many tris individuals pixes creates using a maths curve formula then taking a number of samples to make the terain higher polly… this idea of the map controling this is that it alows areas to be higher polly that areas than may be in the distance
intelegent angle creations - have had problems with gensurf creating brushes where the wrong two vertices sepreate the two tris creating edgy looking terain

view modes

steep angle shower… shows sides over 45 degred in red getting darker depending on the steepness
greyscale mode - the primary manipuation mode representing height
tris map - showing whitch pixes create the highest polly splits
terain texture mode - although ime not shure exactly how to do this yet i need to look at blending gensurf style tereain shaders first

i realy could use anything you think i have missed or would like to see added
i think the tool will be entirely 2d using a top down images but alowing very easy and smooth manipuation
and useing a easily changable light and colour ambince combined with a list of sky shaders to use to run a fast light compile so mappers can get a quick feel or the terain before going to readient then back to gensurf wasting time

(Ifurita) #2

I’d like a tool where you could describe a path to be raised or lowered, with adjustable paint brush sizes. For example, if I wanted to carve out a stream bed on a flat plane in easygen, I have to drop in multiple modifiers. I’d much rather describe a cutting depth and width, and then be able to mouse over my path and cut it out. You could use the equivalent of opacity or hardness to describe how well defined the edges are. You could use the same tools to raise up a series of ridge lines.

Oh yes, please add support for alpha blending :smiley:

(carnage) #3

well i could set it so the user choses a max and min height when using a tool… so when u used the lowering tool with smooth sides you could set it to only lower to a setain level so you can create a relitively flat valey or river bed

also i am going to put load of options in that may not have been obvious like u set the speed that the terain lowers are raises for better control… also u chose the size of the lowering area and the size of the smooth fallof around it

ime not exactly hot on shaders though and have never created them for terain… i no the output is simple text file so that wont be a problem as long as someone wants to teach me how

(The Wanderer) #4

I’m not quite sure what your tool does to tell you the truth. Sounds like it’s a terrain making tool but you say it’s entirely in 2d? I’m not quite sure how this will work.

The best terrain generating utility out there in my opinion is easygen(which is what you should look at and borrow features from). It does all the things you’ve mentioned above and a whole lot more.
It allows for “manual� manipulation of the terrain at the vertex level(much easier, precise and reliable than radiant), plus it has a variety of modifiers such as noise, smooth etc. for area manipulation. You can also texture your terrain very easily by just “painting� your textures, and it generates the alphamap and shaders for you automatically. You can preview your textured terrain, you can even import brushwork from radiant(like buildings etc) to see how it will fit with your terrain. And of course you can generate terrain from heightmaps or if necessary generate a heightmap from an easygen terrain.
Look at it and borrow as many features as you can.

Your plane split idea however is interesting. If I understand you correctly you plan to implement some kind of LOD where you can define certain portions of the terrain to be split into a finer grid for more detail and other portions with less detail be defined with larger brushes. Having tried something like this in the past myself I can tell you that the biggest problem with this it is T-junctions. Wherever your finer terrain brushes meet the coarse terrain brushes they will cause T-junctions which will defeat the whole purpose of having different size brushes for the terrain(it will pretty much be the same as if your whole terrain was made at the highest detail). You can of course compile with notjunc but this will cause sparklies.
Also you might have some problems with the texturing and the alphamap of terrain with different size brushes.

(Mark.C) #5

How about an auto-generate terrain tool ? So the editor makes you a completely random terrain at the click of a button. Beats thinking of what to make for hours :stuck_out_tongue:

(carnage) #6

the T-junctions should only cause splits on the surounding grid terain and they will run to the outer existing vertices so they will be half the tris count as the high but the ones next to it will have no effect

easygen is a good solution and wroks in 3d. but this is a A2 project and i cant plant to use 3d whitch i have never programed before and risk blowing the whole thing… this tool could be used with easygen as the primry function is to manipulate the greyscale hightmap you could take it to that stage then export it… then play in easygen

then if you wanted bring your new height map from easygen back to this tool and uses the terain spliting feature and integent vertex devide to get a higher quailty .map file

one advantage that in this that is achevable in easy gen but i dont think you can do it directly is that you can compile while in the tool to get a quick idea how its going… most likey a light fast and you can chose from a list of sky shaders or enter your own + add ambient and colour… the compile shoudnt take more than a few munites at the wanted settings

plz remeber that this is also a tool to get a detialed large terain but i would still recorment with this or easy gen that you fine tune it in radient

as for random terain not shure it would be any use as its unlikely it would ever produce something with a good gameflow