posted 12-31- 10:59 AM               

OK, I've managed to map all the tiles, and also to get them to line up properly when imported into OPS, this means we can finaly build full terrains,

How it kinda all works is like this (Max only) Given that you have a basic map of your terrain, better in greyscale, only needs be 512x512 or now. (this will be a displacement map.. black for low, white for high)
set your untis to 1FL = 1 mile
Make a patch Grid (using Quad) to the size of 40.01x40.01 (this stops a thin blue joining line from appearing on the terrain)
for good detail set the segs to 20x20 although you could try 10x10
Convert it to an Editable Mesh
use the Displace modifier, and select the texture for your terrain for Map and Bitmap
set the strength to about 0.33 (play with this setting till your happy)
OK, you're happy with the way it looks now, collapse everything you did.
You now have a single tile thats 40x40 in the shape of the terrain you want, now comes the fun part..
if you use 20x20 segs: (for 10x10 half the number below)
go into face select
select the bottom left corner square of 6x6 polys and detach them, name it object00 for eas of use later. The select the next set of 6x6 along, this will become object01 and so on working left to right, bottom to top.
after about an hour you have 0-399 (400) tiles. These now have to be centred on the X,Y axis NOT the Z (Tail, please can you do that script then we can post it for anyone with the balls to do all this)
OK, after that you now have a stack of 400 tiles in the center, these need to me mapped.
Go into Mesh select, select faces, and select them all from the top view, now map them as you would normaly using any 256x256 texture, and every tile in the stack will take on the texture co-ords for a 256x256 texture
Export them all as an Object, but don't use Materials
Now in ops, open up a base terrain, I used Midway, ans import each of your tiles into the corresponding tile in the terrain (remember they have mirror tiles around the edge, don't work on these)
You'll see now that the tile you import displays the texture of the tile you've replaced

Now all you need to do is create your full sized texture (5120x5120) dice it up, and set up the terrain as a stand alone instead of a replacement (small changes in the SM file, texture names)

Once you've done that, you have your terrain, the final thing you do is pass it over to TailGunner so he can place airfields and towns on it.. LMAO

Guys.. I've finaly done it! (well, I still gotta finish putting it all together, but it works!)

The only real annoying part is the cutting up of the single tile into 400 parts.. but hey, maybe there's a way to write a script to do this, I have no idea about max script, but if anyone knows how to do these, lets talk.

happy happy joy joy

~Nat~