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Author
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Topic: Terrain tools needed:
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Diego Lozano
Pilot
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posted 11-27- 12:28 AM
   
1. A program that can slice up a terrain model into 400 tiles.
2. A program that can "retile" or un-slice or reassemble 400 tifs into a 5120x5120 pixel Supertif. I know Untile4 does this but, it wont work for me.
3. Airfield/Town placement tutorial...ahem..TG?With these and Nats terrain tutorial, we'd be set to start building some pretty awesome scenery! IP: Logged |
AGAS - 5
Pilot
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posted 11-27- 01:55 AM
I'll second that  Cheers,
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AGAS 5
CAC Skins IP: Logged |
wakeup tailgunner
Pilot
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posted 11-27- 04:52 AM
I have started an airfield tutorial. There are still some aspects I need to add, since a lot of stuff is still trial and error. I need to make sure I know why things work / don't work!If you can get me a copy of that Blank terrain, I will use that for a tutorial base. Adding islands, adding airfields, adding objects to airfields etc. Even making airfields a funny shape..... I'll do it step by step, and document every step of the way! I promise!!!!!! IP: Logged |
Diego Lozano
Pilot
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posted 11-27- 11:27 AM
Agas,
Looking foward to seeing your work. What area is that, NW Aussie?TG,
Go download it now from here http://www.simfiles.com/ and let me know if its what you needed. IP: Logged |
AGAS - 5
Pilot
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posted 11-27- 05:29 PM
Geez Diego....ya picked it in one !That's N/W Northern Territory at the bottom right with Bathurst Is just off shore. The bigger Is top left is Timor, with a bit of the Indonesian Archipelago across the remainder of the top. Scale is not right - but I'll claim creative license on that one. Getting your tearrain now - well done Cheers,
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AGAS 5
CAC Skins
[This message has been edited by AGAS - 5 (edited 11-27-2000).] IP: Logged |
Nat
Pilot
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posted 11-27- 08:49 PM
Hey AGAS, first one into the breach I see Soon as you want to start making the terrain let me know, I'll pass on what info I can and any help, remember though, I only know about 3DSM not AC3D ~Nat~ ------------------
7./JG3 "Naturlich"
"SDOE... What and where would you like to fly today?"
http://members.nbci.com/naturlich/index.htm </B> IP: Logged |
AGAS - 5
Pilot
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posted 11-27- 10:01 PM
Thanks Nat! I'm on AC3D here, but be in no doubt - I'll be asking for  LOTS of help soon  My first question is a little off track though... I registered my AC3D a while back - but I can't update to the new version, as I can't remember my login password to update and have changed my email (hense no notification of the recent update)  I was thinking of shooting off a 'help' email to Andy Colebourne, but are there any other suggestions??? Cheers, AGAS 5 IP: Logged |
Sv
Pilot
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posted 11-27- 10:21 PM
Just ask Andy, he is good about that.To add to your list Diego Lozano: 4. A more efficiant way to navigate the terrain in OPS
5. A way to mass select objects and align their height to the terrain height.
6. A way to merge the terrain sm files into one mesh, the opposite of #1 ------------------
-Sv =FC=
WWI in SDOE!
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Gecko
Pilot
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posted 11-28- 07:00 AM
Just curious, is there any special property associated with terrains, or can they be built just the same way as other OP objects? Why I am askin this is because I want to know whether supertextures are absolutely necessary if one wants to build some ground from scratch, or can one use regular 256x256 textures and build their own model that way (with repeating textures, perhaps, i.e. Mig Alley style).-Gecko =FC= IP: Logged |
Sv
Pilot
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posted 11-28- 09:14 AM
Terrain is just like other objects, BUT - there are different challenges. I don't think you could load in the entire terrain with a huge texture as one big mesh. Also, I don't think that OpenPlane supports repeating textures, does it? Maybe it can, but I have never seen this and I don't know how to do it.One thing Bryan was working on is a DEM app that converts DEM to OpenPlane terrain, cool! IP: Logged |
Gecko
Pilot
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posted 11-28- 09:33 AM
Thanks, Sv!I didn't try it yet, but I imagine repeating textures could be done by setting the texturing coordinates outside the (u=(0,1),v=(0,1)) range. It all depends on how the 3D engine treats textures (this is one standard way of doing it), but perhaps this option can be toggled in the textures flag. Anyway, is there a problem with having 400 smaller textures rather than a single large one, and separate the terrain into 400 objects? It does sound very tiring, though . That DEM thingy does sound cool, doesn't it? Although I do believe such plugins should be available for 3D Studio (I haven't looked for them, though). -Gecko =FC= IP: Logged |
Sv
Pilot
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posted 11-28- 10:25 AM
Cutting it up is only part of the task, the names also need to be correct, and the tiles need to be positioned correctly. Also they need the texture coords set correctly and the texture tiles need to be named correctly.A tool good do this, I don't think it is a large challenge. I am getting better at reading and writing binary files, but I have no idea how to dice a 3d mesh! IP: Logged |
Nat
Pilot
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posted 11-28- 04:54 PM
there is a very good reason for using 400 tiles and 400 textures, main one is that if try to load a texture thats 40*40 miles in size (needs around 70mb RAM) you're likely to crash or get around 1 FPS, as an example, the Ark Royal is low poly, but stretching the texture over it hurts FPS, imagine that on a terrain scale and you see the problem. Also, I don't know how maney polys a terrain is, but this would seriously kill the FPS if you loaded one model for the whole terrain, a good example of this is the fog settings, all the fog really does is alter the switchin for terrain models, I'm sure you know that with the fog out at Max you get serious FR hits and thats not even showing the whole terrain, with a single model it has to load the whole terrain and map the whole terrain.. game crashes I'm sure will be the end result. I agree it would be cool, and a damn sight easier if we could do things that way, but we can't, the other thing to consider is do you know a program that can texture map with a 5120*5120 pixel image? Do you even have enough RAM to load that image in a 3D prog?? When I had 96mb ram I really struggled working on terrain textures, even with 196 I have now it's still a bit of a pain.~Nat~
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7./JG3 "Naturlich"
"SDOE... What and where would you like to fly today?"
http://members.nbci.com/naturlich/index.htm </B> IP: Logged |
Bryan Russell
Pilot
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posted 11-28- 08:27 PM
Bear in mind that a supertexture is a convienant way of represnting lots of textures so the SM file namelist isn't full of texture names.It just happens that the supertexture's used are mostly cut up from a very large texture. Think of supertextures as a naming convention rather than a way to chop up a large texture and then you will see that by adjusting the obTileID for each terrain object you can specify which texture will be used for each terrain tile. Or at least for the polygons that have the texture id of the supertexture texture entry. You could, for example, change all of the obTileID's to the same number and it would use the same texture for the entire terrain. The far clipping plane determines how far the terrain is drawn, the fog just makes the transition easier on the eye. If you have a large far clip value and low fog, the engine will still draw the terrain out to a far distance, and cause the same FPS hit. If you used a single large mesh it wouldn't draw and texture the entire terrain, however, it wouldn't be able to use the terrain object as a higher level clipping or collision test and so it would be forced to check every single poly individually. The end result is the same anyway, really, really low FPS, so that little tidbit doesn't really add anything to the problem, but I was already an a roll typing
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