L3DT Users' Community

Hi,

I was wondering if it is possible to have different rock textures at the same level and gradient in a climate file? So that, for example, an outcrop of granite might be sitting next to an outcrop of marble.

I've tried setting the land type params to be the same (except the texture files of course) for a few different types of rock, but L3DT seems to ignore all but the first one. Or perhaps it's blending them or overlaying them in some way that I can't spot.

Anyway, appreciate if anyone can tell me if such a thing is possible and how it might be done.

Thanks a lot,

T.

Hi trollfiddler,

Hmmm...an interesting question. The short answer is that there can only be one 'winning' land type for each pixel, so if you have two absolutely identical land types only one will ever be shown (always the first one, for algorithmic reasons). What you need to do is introduce a very subtle difference between the two land types. This could be as simple as giving one of the land types a minuscule perlin-noise value, eg:

Noise->Gen1->Amp = 0.001
Noise->Gen1->Freq = 0.02
Noise->Gen1->nOct = 1

This will give a variation from one land type to another something like this:



You can achieve more complicated blending using more octaves, as well as using the 2nd generator (Gen2) at a different spatial frequency, eg:



If you don't want it to look quite so random, you'll probably have to edit the attributes map manually (see guide). Please not that this last option is currently only achievable by loading the attributes map in an external image-editor.

Cheers,
Aaron.

Ho, where there's a will there's a way :-) I've just raised you higher up my "sneaky bar stewards" list. Thanks a million.

Hi Aaron,

Just an update to say I've tried manually painting the attributes map and it works fine. Well, apart from a thick white border around any of the colours I paint. The border is not visible in paint shop pro, but when the attributes map is opened, the borders are there and are also transferred to the texture.

Any idea what might be causing this?

Thanks,

T.

Hi Trollfidder,

I think you get white pixels when a colour in the painted attributes map doesn't exactly match a display colour for one of the defined land types. This could happen if you've used a paintbrush-like tool, where at the outer-edges of the brush-stroke the colour will be a mixture of the brush colour and the colour beneath it. There shouldn't be a problem if you use a completely 'solid' brush.

Cheers,
Aaron.

Aha! That sounds like a promising direction to go in. Thanks a lot.

I have the opposite problem to DeathTwister, I'm a programmer not an artist :-)

Looks like it's time to hunt through the brush settings in PSP and see what sense I can make of them.

Cheers,

T.

Hi Trollfiddler,

trollfiddler wrote:Looks like it's time to hunt through the brush settings in PSP and see what sense I can make of them.

This is going to sound nasty, but perhaps 'paint.exe' is the way to go here, since it's so crude as to not have any blending ability. Using the eye-dropper and brush tools should work OK.

Cheers,
Aaron.