L3DT Users' Community

Users' projects :: RE: Vegetation ZeoGraphs

Author: David Walters
Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 9:57 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 5

demi wrote:

I must have missed this somewhere but I though this project was inactive for awhile.

I think that Aaron recently mentioned this was an area he was looking into now. I for one am very keen as vegetation is the next thing I want to add to my terrain engine.

demi wrote:

Can this data be read from outside L3DT?

Yeah, you can export the output of this graph to any file format that L3DT can write a normal heightfield to and use it in your own code.

I haven't though -- I don't have a vegetation renderer in place yet.

This is more of a theoretical exercise at this stage, and a demo of some potential things you can do in ZeoGraph.

Help and support :: RE: Torque exporter 'materials.cs' error

Author: Zaibatsu
Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 3:11 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 2

Followed your exact instructions, I was overlooking the fact that although I had chosen the exact folder for the terrain file.

I had only chosen the project folder for the game and not the game folder.

Thanks alot for your help aaron.

This really is a great piece of software !

Users' projects :: RE: Vegetation ZeoGraphs

Author: demi
Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 12:40 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 5

I must have missed this somewhere but I though this project was inactive for awhile. I wonder how this will work with my idea. Can this data be read from outside L3DT?

Help and support :: RE: Mixing climates

Author: aaron
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:17 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

Hi LoneDwarf,

The land types in the 'artificial' climate are intended to be only used with the manual texture / attributes map painting brushes (see roads tutorial for example). They have no distribution parameters because these land types (e.g. concrete, bricks) don't exist in nature; they exist only where people put them.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Help and support :: RE: Torque exporter 'materials.cs' error

Author: aaron
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 8:32 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 2

Hi Zaibatsu,

This error occurs when your game project's 'materials.cs' file is already open in another program (T3D or another editor?), or when the directory into which it is to be written does not yet exist.

The materials.cs file is written into the '\art\terrains' folder within your game directory. Does this directory exist in your project?

For reference, with the FPS example the full path to this folder is:

C:\Torque\Torque 3D 2009 SDK 1.0\Examples\FPS Example\game\art\terrains

Best regards,
Aaron.

Help and support :: Torque exporter 'materials.cs' error

Author: Zaibatsu
Subject: Torque exporter 'materials.cs' error
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:15 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 2

Hi , I've seem to got the jist of creating the maps, but I appear to be receiving errors when exporting to torque 3D

L3DTio_TorqueTER::SaveMaterialCS error:
- cannot open file for writing

L3DTio_TorqueTER::ExportTER7 error:
- cannot save material CS

L3DTio_TorqueTER::ExtExportTer7UI error:
- TER export failed

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Feature requests :: RE: ZeoGraph requests

Author: David Walters
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:48 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 22

Telarus wrote:

Hi David,

I've been following your posts about the graph editor, great stuff. I managed the RGB height display hack myself (with a good tip from Aaron). In polygon render mode Sapphire uses a small .png file as a custom RGB heightscale [It's in C:\Users\_UserName\L3DT\resources\Pro 2.8.0.7\Sapphire\elev.png -- This is also where the land and water surface detail maps are.]. It's default size is 20x128px, but it can go as big as you want. This gives the Green->Tan and Blue->Black of the heightfield and seafloor.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, but sorry that's not quite what I need

My post was a bit misleading though. What I meant is to generate an RGB texture from all points of a heightfield - to essentially create the same RGB image as you get when you view it in the main L3DT window.

Using the word 'heightfield' is a bit misleading here - it's really a "density field" I'm trying to look at. I wanted to see if dense bits appear where they should. Currently you can't turn a field back into an image for use in Saphirre.

It's kind of a luxury feature really -- you can use export to make this work via disk

Users' projects :: RE: Vegetation ZeoGraphs

Author: David Walters
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:34 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 5

Telarus wrote:

Awesome stuff.

Thanks, it's fun to put these together

I'm half expecting (and hoping) this particular example will be redundant soon, when Aaron comes along with a better thought out system incorporating type assignments -- I'm glad that my example is helping to drum up a bit of support though.

I also thought this morning that maybe you could make a different graph for underwater plants like kelp and such - probably I'd just use the Salinity map directly instead of inverting it. You'd need a bit of a modulation on water depth too, to keep it out of the shallows.

Feature requests :: RE: ZeoGraph requests

Author: David Walters
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 9:28 am (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 22

aaron wrote:

In Sapphire, that option is in the menu at 'Options->Terrain->Select texture'.

heh, whoops

Feature requests :: RE: ZeoGraph requests

Author: aaron
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 11:20 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 22

Hi David,

Thanks again for your feedback and suggestions. I'll have a bit more of a think about them, and post back soon.

Quote:

4a. A more elaborate request would be to allow Saphirre to choose from all available RGB maps in a project for use as terrain texture.

In Sapphire, that option is in the menu at 'Options->Terrain->Select texture'.

Cheers,
Aaron.

Feature requests :: RE: ZeoGraph requests

Author: Telarus
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 8:58 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 22

David Walters wrote:

4. Height to RGB filter
I'd like to be able to visualise the maps I create in Saphirre - I think one way to do this would be the ability to overwrite the texture map with an RGB conversion of a heightfield. A simple greyscale palette from min to max altitude would be perfect - especially as this would probably be in the 0,1 range for the work I'm doing.

4a. A more elaborate request would be to allow Saphirre to choose from all available RGB maps in a project for use as terrain texture. Either for custom maps output from ZeoGraph, or to visualise things like the specular map or lightmap in isolation.

Again, thanks for the support. The stuff you've added so far has really helped.

Users' projects :: RE: Vegetation ZeoGraphs

Author: Telarus
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 8:54 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 5

Awesome stuff.

Help and support :: RE: Mixing climates

Author: LoneDwarf
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 5:12 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

Looking at the Artificial climate I see that it basically has all the values in it to zero or none. So I guess it's really just a template of some sort.

Sorry for the interruption, carry on...

Help and support :: RE: Mixing climates

Author: LoneDwarf
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:33 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

I did some more tests. It seems that only the Artificial climate has this issue. I get blending between Arctic, Desert, Temperate and Spring Mars. I know it's called Artificial but is this intended behavior?

Help and support :: Mixing climates

Author: LoneDwarf
Subject: Mixing climates
Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 3:41 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 3

I noticed in the 'Designing a Fjord' tutorial that the arctic climate was painted on top of the mountains. I have tried taking the artificial climate and putting some arctic in it as a test. With this test I can see where the two climates meet as if there is no blending at all.