terrain detail

[draga]

Hello,

I'm wondering how Technopolies reached out that terrain texture detail.
At me, the Terrain is very pixeled...(at texture resoltution of 2048x2048)..

How can I get a nice detailed terrain??
Is there some tricks?

[EgonOlsen]

I think techno created those textures at startup IIRC, but i've no idea of the logic on which this was based. Maybe rolz can answer this directly, if you manage to contact him in some way.

[draga]

ok, thanks..I'll try to go in contact with him.

[EgonOlsen]

Another option would be to use some detail textures. Or are you already doing this?

[draga]

you mean, another texture in blending mode over a terrain and uv repeat it??
I already have used that technique.

I have recognized that new game have a comlex ground texturing with probably normal mapping.
I'am wondering how they can get the ground texture so high detailed...
Because the texture size of 4096*4096 pixel of a terrain plane is very pixeled (seeable artefacts)
Do they use megaTexture's ??

[Grandmaster B]

Probably the game uses multiple meshes for the terrain. Think of a tile based map in 3D. Each tile type/image has its own mesh. The fading effect are tiles that have zero alpha at the borders.

Look at this screenshot: *Removed*
There you can see the "tiles" and the faded borders.

[EgonOlsen]

As far as i remember, those blendings were baked into the textures. Techno ran a texture creation process when started for the first time that created them.

[draga]

@Grandmaster B
And who forms the terrain??
You mean that (tile) meshes lie on the terrain and also have the form of the terrain part?


@EgonOlsen
But than the texture size must be huge? or the terrain was cuted thus several textures can work to reach the detail?!

[Grandmaster B]

Yes, sort of. Do a search on "Multilayer Terrain".

[EgonOlsen]

@EgonOlsen
But than the texture size must be huge? or the terrain was cuted thus several textures can work to reach the detail?!

It used several small textures. Too bad that it isn't available anymore...

[draga]

Should I code an editor?
or is there other ways with Maya or other 3d modeling tool?

[Grandmaster B]

I wrote a fancy editor but first i used stencil maps to build the meshes. However, there are several methods, some are shader driven using only one mesh others draw the terrain several times. I was developing with a AMD K2 350MHz and a TNT2 so i had to optimize a lot, drawing the mesh more than once was not possible so i had to cut out invisible parts of the layers/meshes.

Multilayer terrain only means that you usually draw the terrain several times or in layers instead of stretching or tiling one texture over the whole mesh. You can use stencils, alphas, shaders or meshes to render the layers. This really depends on what you try to do.

You may also take a look at Megatexturing and you will probably need quadtree culling.

If you need a editor depends mostly on how many terrains, levels, worlds you want to create, you hopefully do not try to make a MMORPG so i guess you dont need a editor.

Here is a image of my multi-layer terrain and world editor, was probably a waste of time (except for learning purpose):
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/543

Edit: Here is also a video of the "game"...:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe0DCrOG0WQ

[draga]

wow, man that looks great
Works the editor and game with jpct?

[Grandmaster B]

Thanks
This is made in C/C++ and OpenGL but it can definately be developed with Java+jPCT. Do you know "Tribal Trouble" its also developed in Java.

[raft]

yeap, it definetely looks great
are there any LoD, adding/removing meshes or similar things there ? or does it simply render such a big scene ?

btw, "Tribal Trouble" is great. they generate their terrains procedurally on the fly

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