in side the atlas

[nod114]

hello all
I was wondering when you export a map in to torque is the map at all smoothed down and not so ruff or is more like what you see in l3dt 3d view mode is what you get? Again i am just wondering.

[lmaceleighton]

I will say that confused me at first too. It isnt exactly the same, but generally very close. it may be that the way light-maps are generated are different making one terrain look smoother over another, but I am sure Aaron can give a better answer as to why the appear a bit different at times.

[Aaron]

Hi Nod114,

In an Atlas file the terrain is stored as a 3D mesh, not as a heightfield. The geometry is usually a little less-detailed than the full-resolution heightfield, but that's the point; it's much faster to render. However, please note that it's impossible to modify the terrain geometry in an atlas file without without re-generating the whole mesh, so on-the-fly editing is a no-no.

The textures are, I think, stored without modification. In previous versions of TGEA, the renderer would not render the highest level of detail for high-res textures. This may have been fixed in the last release of TGEA, but I don't know.

L3DT and TGEA lighting are different, so you should use one or the other for the terrain, but not both.

Best regards,
Aaron.

[nod114]

Ok that sounds pretty cool.