best option for terrain

(Crater Creator) #1

I’m working on my first real map in Radiant. It is to be a large, outdoor map, at 500 yds x 500 yds, with snowy terrain, water, and lots of trees. I’ve done a mock-up of the map’s layout using Maya, which I can turn into a grayscale heightmap:

Since it’s hard to substantially edit the terrain once it’s in place, my plan is to finish the terrain, and then add everything else on top of it. My question is, what would be the best method for adding the terrain to this kind of map? I’ve searched the forums and learned about EasyGen and FATE, in addition to the GenSurf utility that comes with GTKRadiant. So far, GenSurf’s 64x64 grid limit seems limiting, and EasyGen’s limit looks to be just 32x32. I would like to be able to blend multiple textures onto the terrain; 2 would be adequate but 3 or more would look better. I’d also prefer a Mac compatible tool, but that’s not essential.

(Flippy) #2

If you really plan on making the terrain very large, with alot of trees, like you say, you better start by laying out the map in dividing it into seperate blocks.
Read up on VIS blocking, it is essential in large outdoor maps.

If you would make the map in your picture, there is hardly any vis blocking you can do, and even without trees it’s gonna be a bitch FPS wise…

I don’t know which limits you are talking about? number of squares / units / ?
Anyway easygen and fate are much better than gtkgensurf, but it all depends on what you like best…
fate gives you much smoother control over your terrain imo, but I haven’t used it in a long while, and last time I used it, you couldn’t use textures yet… If you still can’t use textures in FATE, i’d go with easygen since then you can have your blending textures all done easily.

(S14Y3R) #3

Hi there, yea Fate’s 3d tools are cool, but ppl have alot of trouble with “off grid” brushes, and no alphamap/texture support.

Easy gen has decent tools, per-vertex-quick-edit, can paint alphamap right on your terrain, and can “knock-out” holes in the terrain for buildings.

You can change the terrain “resolution” eg, 32u tris, 128u tris for the same heightmap. Be careful though, you can get an obsene/insane amount of brushes.

Nemisis has a good EasyGen Tute, explaining everything, just set your paths for ET instead of MoH.

EasyGen still creates the old style vertex lit shader, have a look at the fueldump terrain shader to convert your shader to lightmap, or have a look at
Nibsworld to get things lightmapped. (Nemisis doesn’t cover that for some reason)

The next step up(way better looking) from lightmap is dotproduct2+alphablending textures, but you have to manually texture your terrain instead of using an alphamap. You can read up on that at SimonOc’s site

A good workaround for the “lumpy” look is phongshading, Simon has an article on that too.

-vis blocking is impossible on large terrains, but you can use foghulling to limit visibility and improve fps. (Like in Baserace) Check out Obsidian’s article on foghulling.

That should get you rolling, eh? 8) Nice looking terrain btw, gl.

(]UBC[ McNite) #4

Yepp I think you should go for EasyGen since you already have a greyscale heightmap. EasyGen does the shaders automatically too, and you can easily change your terrain textures via editing the alphamap directly with a graphics program.
You can even edit the whole terrain in Radiant and still use the alphamap, but you have to let the triangles like they are iirc.

Anything more niftly like hand-edited terrain will need another solution than alphamapping imo.

As for the triangle size: don’t pick anything smaller than 128x128 or your triscount and fps will drop to “unplayable”.

As said before, better make sure the parts of your map are well separated from each other for the sake of good FPS, you might want to read about VIS and VIS-blocking and how it works, to tune your basic map layout. Right now I can see trouble coming your way in the lower left corner of your map.

But for a first map, EasyGen and phong-shading which you can add yourself in the terrain shaders are the way to go. Check on my map TheRiver II Redux, that one s done that way.

(BaronBlabla) #5

I do all my terrain MANUALLY, it’s the most accurate way of making terrain, I will show you tomorrow or another day, I need to get some sleep now.

Baron

(Crater Creator) #6

Thanks for some prompt replies, everyone. It’s nice to see an active, helpful community here.

It looks like I wasn’t clear when I mentioned the grid limit. I was referring to the GenSurf manual, which states that you can’t use more than 64x64 divisions for a terrain, regardless of size. I did try more divisions, but that created a major performance hit, so I assumed anything more than 64x64 quads was going to be buggy, and therefore avoided.

As I was making the terrain for this map, I tried to fight the typical ‘box canyon’ style, because I think it’s overused and implausible. I do still plan to use water and impenetrable forests as different kinds of barriers, but for a lot of boundaries I still had to resort to flat ground bordered by high cliffs. One nice thing about that is you don’t need as many polygons to represent the shape. For instance, when I convert the terrain to polygons in Maya, it doesn’t need more than 2000 polys to approximate the shape. I wonder if I can still take advantage of that polygon-saving technique with one of the Q3 terrain tools, like GenSurf’s decimate option for instance.

I have read about vis blocking, and I realize it’s a concern for a large map like mine. The first iteration of the terrain was basically one giant open plain, with a mountain in the back. I marked up my mockup to illustrate my plans on vis blocking, and paths players will take in the map:

As shown here, I split the map in half; you’ll never be able to see over the center mountain range. As I understand it, I should add a portal around area 2 in order to help the compiler split the map in half. I’m also planning to add fog, though it occurs to me now that it may interfere with the strong ‘cold morning’ light I was planning.

Here’s a run-down of the map’s mechanics:

The Allies spawn at point 1, over an unusually wide area to simulate parachuting into the area. Between the fog and the trees, it won’t be as wide open as it looks now; there will be cover. From there, they clear the mountain pass at point 2, where the Axis can spawn in the beginning. The Allies hold the mountain pass while trying to get to point 3, which is a railway checkpoint. Once they sabotage the radio inside the checkpoint building, the train that was waiting in the tunnel moves left, crashing through the main gate of point 5. Now the Allies can enter point 5, a large railway station.

Once the train breaks through, the Axis must spawn within the station. The Allies can build a command post at an abandoned log cabin, point 4, for a forward spawn point. They also have a more direct path from point 1, marked in yellow, after the train has cleared out of the tunnel. Their final objective is to destroy a pair of tanker cars holding a critical supply of heating oil.

Back on the subject of terrain, it sounds like EasyGen is the way to go. I’ve downloaded the program; I intend to check it out and see if it will do what I need.