How do you guys do terrain?

[swizzler]

I was wondering how terrain is done in darkmod. I loaded up a copy of the training mission source (that I found here) went to the archery field (thinking hahaha! I will figure this out!) and... it was empty! just a hole filled with caulk textures where the ground should be! so Is there any good guide or tool to make terrain (the map i'm working on contains a bunch of mountain/cliffside.)

[nbohr1more]

Some missions, like "No Honor Among Thieves" and the Training Mission use 3DS Max or Lightwave models for terrain to take advantage of Vertex blended textures. Most missions will just use Patches with Caulked brushed below or even just plain ole Brush work.

 

Ideally, you would create your terrain in Blender as both high and low poly versions then chop both models into segments that align with your visportals then bake normal maps and vertex paint gradients. That would be the ultra-deluxe pipe-dream version...

[swizzler]

Some missions, like "No Honor Among Thieves" and the Training Mission use 3DS Max or Lightwave models for terrain to take advantage of Vertex blended textures. Most missions will just use Patches with Caulked brushed below or even just plain ole Brush work.

 

Ideally, you would create your terrain in Blender as both high and low poly versions then chop both models into segments that align with your visportals then bake normal maps and vertex paint gradients. That would be the ultra-deluxe pipe-dream version...

 

Well I'm (trying) to make an ultra-deluxe pipe-dream map, so that sounds like a good solution for me, and I'm familiar with blender (not so much vertex painting) so that should be an easy place to start.

[nbohr1more]

From what I've gathered, you should probably still design the terrain as patches and place generic scene geometry on it to get an idea of your best visportal positions. Then chop up the terrain in Dark Radiant along the visportal scissor points and export each section as an ASE model. (Unless you have draftsmen-like precision and can pre-plan a well optimized visportal layout.)

 

Good luck!

[7upMan]

swizzler, your avatar just burnt out my eyes. Just sayin', man.

[OrbWeaver]

Ideally, you would create your terrain in Blender as both high and low poly versions then chop both models into segments that align with your visportals then bake normal maps and vertex paint gradients. That would be the ultra-deluxe pipe-dream version...

 

Normal-map baking isn't necessary for terrain, and if you did it you would need a massive normal-map texture to store the result without artifacts. It would also preclude (or at least make very difficult) the use of stock textures with existing normal maps on the terrain.

 

Creating the terrain as a 3D object in Blender and then using vertex colouring to blend between texture is good approach however. A lot of mappers do just use patches with or without decals or other in-editor detail work, and the results can be quite reasonable.

[swizzler]

Normal-map baking isn't necessary for terrain, and if you did it you would need a massive normal-map texture to store the result without artifacts. It would also preclude (or at least make very difficult) the use of stock textures with existing normal maps on the terrain.

 

Creating the terrain as a 3D object in Blender and then using vertex colouring to blend between texture is good approach however. A lot of mappers do just use patches with or without decals or other in-editor detail work, and the results can be quite reasonable.

 

Yeah when he mentioned normal map baking I did a double-take, I was just planning to let the existing terrain textures take care of the normal-mapping anyway.

 

Also does IdTech4 support parallax mapping? I know they just recently got it working on XReal, and that might come in handy for me.

[nbohr1more]

That's why I said ultra-deluxe pipe-dream version.

 

(AluminumHaste just got scolded for not taking the terrain model \ normal map approach over at Doom3world so I guess it is subjective and depends on the layout... )

 

Parallax maps can be implemented but they would have to be squeezed into an already packed surface interaction shader which would lead to a heavy GPU penalty... When the engine goes Open Source parallax mapping will be more viable...

[Serpentine]

You could also have a go with things like EasyGen and such, tho I dont think anyone has written a guide for TDM specifically. It will also not produce particually blended terrain.

 

Something that is quite handy is the ASE/OBJ export scripts in DR, allowing you to mock up terrain or whatever before exporting it for painting and final work in Blender/Max/whatever. Normalmapping (via baking) the whole terrain section might look quite good for skybox type terrain, but otherwise it'd need to be done quite carefully. Since no one has really shown it off yet it's hard to say if the additional vertex color blends will even work with a base normalmap.

[Mortem Desino]

Parallax is a possibility, yes; but to do it efficiently we'd need the source code so we can use different shaders on a per-material basis.

[jdude]

Build it slow

 

Here's something I made a long time ago I think it can easily be adapted to create a flowing outside terrain. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/11340-geometry-detail-and-lighting/page__p__221942__fromsearch__1entry221942

Good luck!

[Melan]

(AluminumHaste just got scolded for not taking the terrain model \ normal map approach over at Doom3world so I guess it is subjective and depends on the layout... )

Dear God, are they the kind of people who will not settle for a lunch below lobster with a bottle of Moët & Chandon?

[rich_is_bored]

nbohr1more would have you believe we eat the tears of map authors for lunch.

[nbohr1more]

LOL

 

Tears for lunch is more of a Quake3world thing.

[Shadowhide]

CoD radiant

 

 

on that video you can see texture blending IN editor,.It possible to import same thing in Dark Radiant ?

 

 

[Serpentine]

on that video you can see texture blending IN editor,.It possible to import same thing in Dark Radiant ?

 

I don't think it's possible for doom3 to get vertex color from anything other than a model, as such brushes and patches arnt possible. Unless someone wants to make some elaborate painter plugin which exports brushes to models for you, I don't think you'll see it.

[nbohr1more]

I did think of a Rube Goldberg way of doing this:

 

1) Make a patch

2) Drag the verts to form terrain

3) Apply textures

4) Flatten the patch verts (akin to a UV unwrap)

5) Used colored (or textured) Blend Lights to paint the transitions between textures

6) Collect a high resolution Envshot of the entire surface

7) Return to a backup of the correct terrain shape

8) Apply one of the envshot TGA's as the texture for the whole terrain (or terrain portion)

 

Possible to automate?

[Serpentine]

I want to be sick, uhhhh

 

I'd just use the ASE export, blender... there's a wiki tutorial somewhere around here.

[nbohr1more]

Yeah, just a funny mental exercise but it did make me wish that blendlights were light reactive so that you could project something akin to Fidcal's grass-edge solution.

 

Edit:

 

The blendlight fragment program is one of the vfp's isn't it...

Edited January 20, 2011 by nbohr1more

[swizzler]

CoD radiant

 

 

on that video you can see texture blending IN editor,.It possible to import same thing in Dark Radiant ?

 

 

 

doubtful, the CoD engine is based off idtech3, and has been modified to an insane level. Also Activision doesn't release any of their engine code modifications (jerks) so They would have to build something to do that from scratch. I don't even think the ubermodified version of the idtech3 engine, xreal has alpha patch support.

Edited January 20, 2011 by swizzler

[Serpentine]

Hmmm was having a dig around earlier, looks like Doom3 can load FLT models, which seem to be quite terrain specific. Might be something to look into if anyone has copious free time.