Terrains

[Bensta]

Hi there!

Now i'm mainly a level designer, i havent used gamecore much at all apart from alittle at the start, But now its time to start my project on gamecore

A few things are bugging me about the terrain, as its diffrent from what im used to.

I finally got a custom terrain imported.. had to use jpg for some reason, all other file types wouldnt work?

Is it possible to use a custom colourmap (1 large image or split up) and apply detail textures withing gc, or am i limited to just tileable textures?... Basicly is there any way to do my terrain textures in an external program like geocontrol or terragen etc?

And whats the process of making diffrent terrains? do i make copys manully of the editable one? or is there a way inside gc to create new terrains?

[pixel_legolas]

hm, the formats should be tga, psd, jpg nad probably something else too. But has to be power of 2 like 512x512, 1024x1024 etc


I dont know how to answer about colormap but you do like this in gc

First you add a base texture on the first layer, and tile how you want. Then you add another layer and blend on details.

Like the first layer can be grass for example. Second layer is maybe sand and you paint where you want sand to be and it will blend the sand with the grass.

There is also hegiht based textures so you can make the texture blend from rocky texture on a mountain to snow on the top just be adjusting the height value

[Bensta]

Hey thanks for reply, Think i'm slowly figureing it out now thanks

http://i42.tinypic.com/bde9u.jpg

[BigDaz]

I looked for a program like Terragen that would create terrain textures but haven't found one. They export the terrain heightmap so you can import that into GC very easily, but exporting a texture to go with it isn't as easy as it sounds apparently. The only way to do it in Terragen is to screenshot the terrain from above and use that but it's not very effective.

[Bensta]

Ah, well i use geocontrol, and that does export textures. Very good it is too

http://www.geocontrol2.com/e_index.htm

[BigDaz]

Cool, I'll give it a try.

[pixel_legolas]

hm maybe but we don't want a big texture stretched over the terrain, that sounds ineffective to me Maybe if it can be converted and used as tiled ones it is good

[Bensta]

Yea agreed, would be good if someway we could split the image up yea, but being very new to GC's terrain system, not sure if its possible.  Only way i can think of is splitting the heightmap too. But that would be sloppy.

Is the terrain 8bit only? seems that way from the many heightmp file types ive tried....

[ross.rockafellow]

You can tessellate the terrain pretty high. So high it brings my work machine to its knees in fact. Its under Edit Terrain -> options tab, you can adjust the divisions and dimensions of the mesh.

Also for the kind of control your talking about you have two main options. Use a bunch of small terrains (this is best for lighting) or make a custom mesh in something like Max and import that (broken into smaller pieces, for lighting).

As far as texture I tend to do a lot of layer painting. I have 3 "main" layers and like 5 deco layers (with spawners) that I paint on the terrain surface (over the other main textures) [use the Layer opacity paint type and select the layer you want to paint. Left click is add, right click is subtract]

In fact I have a few tutorial videos on this subject that haven't got up to the youtube channel yet. But I'll post up the documents on the tutorial so you can follow along (as best as you can without the video). Let me know if that helped.

[ross.rockafellow]

Okay so I crashed my file share 3 times... grr

Your getting these docs as a wall of text here, sorry:

[ross.rockafellow]

Tutorial 1.2 ? So you want to edit a terrain.

This tutorial uses the ?terrain1? tutorial video. It is best to watch the video first then follow along. The videos are short.


The last tutorial and the ?gettingStarted? video covered:

Starting a new project. Create new project, select empty project and save the blank world to the created project directory.
The world floor. Add a terrain from template.
The world clipping. Augmenting the far clip plane with the environment menu.
The world ceiling. Enabling and augmenting the gamecore Sky System with the environment menu.



   So from the last tutorial we added a blank terrain to our created world, that's all well and good, but there's not a lot of flat gray terrain in the world. Lets edit our terrain. If you are following along from the last tutorial we are going to open that project. If you are starting at this tutorial add an editable terrain to your world from the add → load object → from template dialogue box.

   To get started lets open up the projVid1.wld. This can be found either in your recent projects window or by clicking OPEN EXISTING PROJECT. Navigate to the tutVids project and select it, then select and open the projVid1.wld. Now we have our nice set up world with our boring terrain object. Time to add some spice.

   We will be using the object surfaces and edit terrain buttons (on the top right of the editor window labeled PANELS) to make our terrain special. To start with select your terrain from the window or object list (you'll get a green box around what you have selected) and click the Object Surfaces button. Right under those buttons is a window with the objects surfaces listed. Our terrain object has two surfaces currently listed: Water and Layer 1. When you select a surface you get the object surfaces dialogue box (if the box didn't come up automatically select the surface and click the edit surface button in the object surfaces window). Select the Layer 1 surface.

   In the object surfaces dialogue box there are a lot of options, we'll be using the basic tab for right now. (there will be many other tutorials to address the object surfaces in greater length). Under the diffuse channel click on the ellipse (?) to open the file navigator. The automatically created terrain folder has a terrain texture in it called grid.psd. Add it by selecting and opening it.

   That grid is not exactly what I would call spicy. Lets use a real texture. I have included a few and gamecore has supplied a few (better than the grid). Go back and click on the diffuse ellipse and open the file navigator, I added my textures in the objects folder (that gamecore created for me). Navigate back a level (or to wherever you put your textures) and add the rockyEarth_TILE.psd. Now we have a decent ground texture on our terrain.

   Okay Layer 1 is set up, lets set up the water layer. We are going to use a reflective water texture that gamecore ships with. Click on the Water layer in the object surfaces window. When the object surfaces dialogue box comes up we are going to select LOAD FROM TEMPLATE (its near the top, under import/export). This brings up the file navigator, double click the water folder.
Add the water_reflective texture by selecting and opening.

   Hey, where is my water, you say? Its coming. Click on the Edit Terrain button in the panels window, the terrain window will open under the panels window. There are three tabs, the one we are concerned with now is Painting. Under the painting tab there is a Brush Mode drop-down box with a bunch of options for painting on your texture. Your mouse cursor becomes the paint brush, the small circle is the main strength, the bigger circle is the fall-off. Brush size, softness, and strength are all on sliders and can be adjusted as you see fit to shape your terrain. Set up a brush that seems good to you and start painting. When painting in Raise/Lower brush mode left mouse is raise and right mouse is lower. Okay so raise a piece of texture...

   Holy crap, there is my water and it looks weird! Its okay, that just because right now the water layer and layer 1 are basically on the same exact level. Raise your terrain off the water level. Play with brush size and strength when doing so. Okay once all your terrain is off the water level use right-click to lower some sections down under the water (notice how under the water the texture remains). Play with some of the Brush Modes. In the video I use Noise and Smooth to help shape the terrain better.

   One nice thing we can do is export our terrain shape so we have a base to go back to just in case. In the edit terrain window click export to export a height map (this will record the terrain painting not the texture information). Save it out with whatever name you want. I used hmap1.

   So now you have a simple edited terrain or complex depending on how much playing you did. Save out the world again (we will be using it for one more tutorial).


This tutorial and the ?terrain1? video covered:

Adding a diffuse map to the terrain surface.
Using a template texture for reflective water.
The basics of the terrain painter.
The basics of terrain layers.
Exporting a height map.

[ross.rockafellow]

Tutorial 1.3 ? So you want to edit multiple terrain layers.

This tutorial uses the ?terrain2? tutorial video. It is best to watch the video first then follow along. The videos are short.


The last tutorial and the ?terrain1? video covered:

Adding a diffuse map to the terrain surface.
Using a template texture for reflective water.
The basics of the terrain painter.
The basics of terrain layers.
Exporting a height map.


   So from the last tutorial we edited the blank terrain in our created world. If you are following along from the last tutorial we are going to open that project. If you are starting at this tutorial add an editable terrain to your world from the add → load object → from template dialogue box. Place the rockyearth_TILE.psd texture (or whatever you have handy) on layer 1 of the terrain and add the included (in gamecore) water_reflective texture to the water layer (from the object surfaces → load from template). Do some height panting to add some variety to the terrain.

   To get started lets open up the projVid1.wld. This can be found either in your recent projects window or by clicking OPEN EXISTING PROJECT. Navigate to the tutVids project and select it, then select and open the projVid1.wld. When you load up the world you might get a texture error. It just doesn't like that you don't have the water texture in your folders, its held in gamecore. You can just ignore this (as the water loads properly anyways). Now we have our world loaded with a edited terrain and a few textures, lets add some layers to our terrain to create texture transitions based on height.

   Okay so to start lets select our terrain by either clicking on it or selecting it from the items object list (the bottom right window). Click the Edit Terrain button from the panel window (the button is the Light button until you select the terrain). Remember how we used the Painting tab only last tutorial, this time we're adding the use of the Layers tab, click it now. In the list window you should see Layer 1 (the rocky earth layer, water is built in and left off this list). Click the ADD button to add a new terrain layer. This layer is called Layer 2.

   Now that we have a new terrain layer we should edit it's surface and add a new texture. I have included a grass texture called grass01_TILE.psd, put that in the objects folder of this project (or with the rockyEarth texture... or wherever you want really so long as you can navigate there). So with the terrain selected still click Object Surfaces. Select the Layer 2 surface of the terrain and edit the surface. Click the diffuse map ellipse to get the file navigator. Navigate to the grass texture (or any other texture you fancy) and open it to add it to the surface. Okay well that's nice, but I see no grass...

   The reason your not seeing grass at the moment is we haven't set up the layer heights on the terrain surface. Lets go back to Edit Terrain and while still on the Layers tab select Layer 2. Under the layer window are some radio buttons and sliders. To the right of height and transition is the above/below radio button, lets set Layer 2 (grass layer) to below. Right above height and transition is another set of radio buttons. Set this button to Height plus opacity map (minus would work too for this as there is no opacity map on this layer).

   Okay, so now, under the waterline, is our grass texture (yay). Lets play with the height and transition to create a blend between the two textures (that have no business blending). Use the height slider to make the grass ?grow? up the peaks of your terrain. Find a height that you like and start dragging the transition slider to create good blend (if you are using the textures I included there is no good blend, just get a feel for how the sliders augment the textures).

   If you notice you can paint on the terrain still and the lowering of the terrain will make the new grass layer show. You could set up all your terrain textures before you paint any height or detail on it if you like. If you select Layer 1 and click the radio button to Height minus opacity map your terrain will black out, no big deal, just set it back to No height based opacity.

   So now you can edit a multi-layer terrain. Go nuts, put 5 layers up and don't be like me, use textures that are a little more similar (and scaled right). Play with some of the other brush modes in the terrain painter, you have everything you need now to create really good terrains in gamecore, use this awesome power wisely (again, better textures, can't stress this enough). Happy editing.

   

This tutorial and the ?terrain2? video covered:

Adding terrain layers.
Painting textures based on height of terrain.
Terrain Layers radio buttons and sliders

[Bensta]

You can tessellate the terrain pretty high. So high it brings my work machine to its knees in fact. Its under Edit Terrain -> options tab, you can adjust the divisions and dimensions of the mesh.

Ah sorry my didnt make myself clear, i ment importing terrains, the only image file ive been able to import is a 8 bit file., which loses alot of detail.
Thanks for the tut sure that will come in handy.

[ross.rockafellow]

I'm having a little trouble with this. Do you mean just color mode. I can create 8 bit color mode textures in photoshop, add an alpha and save out a 32bit/pixel .tga and import that just fine. I cannot import a 16 or 32 bit color mode texture into gamecore, but I'm pretty sure that is for good reason. You should be able to get the detail you want at 8 bit color.

As I understand the technical side (and I very well could be wrong): A resolution of 1024 x 768, 32 bit color takes about 3 MBs (1024 x 768 x 4 RGBA channels x 8 bits), a 1600 x 1200 resolution at 32 bit color requires around 7.2 MBs. The computer must provide at least 47 million pixels every second for a 1024 x 768, 32 bit color, 30 fps animation. The 1280x720 at 30fps with 8 bit color is about 24mil. All of this will vary depending on content of course

You can bring in 24bit/pixel and 32bit/pixel textures. Our HDRi post processes is 64bit. If your compressing your texture down don't go over 4:1 or you'll get artifacts. I've been making a few quick texture in photoshop at 32 bit color and then changing the mode down to 8bit RGB and while it does flatten the image I don't seem to lose detail.

Is this closer to what your talking about?

[cysphere]

Do you mean a heightmap or heightfield, that is stored in 8bit greytones (256 values of grey)?