L3DT for Spring, anyone?

[Forboding Angel]

sweet ass. Did you get my email perchance?

[Aaron]

Hi Forboding,

Thank-you very much! I'm D/L the climates now.

I've recently improved the speed of the anti-aliasing, which means I think you might now be able to do the sand blending all in L3DT more quickly than you can by rendering the texture twice and combining in PS. Here's a quick screenshot of a map using slightly modified versions of your old greenworld and desert climates, both of which have a beach sand layer added:



Here's a zoom-in on the beach:



The beach sand land types here are defined by altitude range, so they don't require the water table to be flooded.

Hmmm...I should probably add some bump-mapping to the beach sand to match up with the rest of the climate.

Oh yes, if I have time I might try to tweak the gradient parameters in your climates so that you won't have to change the horizontal scale of the map to 6.5m. If the gradient parameters are decreased by ~1/3, the climate should work as intended when using the default 10m resolution (in theory...).

Anyway, in the next few days I'll send you an updated installer for testing, which will have your climates pre-installed, and also have an updated Spring plugin that will bake the metal patches onto the texture.

Thanks again!

Cheerio,
Aaron.

[Forboding Angel]

AHH YEAH!!! fknswt, can't wait dude!

Oh btw, for the sand bumpmap, use the regular flat sand bumpmap from desertworld, for consistency's sake ;p

[Aaron]

Hi Forboding Angel,

Thanks again for the climates! I've uploaded another update that includes your greenworld, desertworld and mars climates. I've made a few changes here and there, including:

• Removal of water parameters. These climates now work without needing the water table to be flooded.
• Changes some anti-aliasing settings. These climates now work best with texture antialiasing at 4x. Texture antialiasing was also sped-up in this latest release.
• A beach sand land type was added to the greenworld and desertworld climates for terrain below sea-level. With antialiasing at 4x or 8x, the blending is managed quiet smoothly.
• I think I played around with some other settings in my experimentation, so please let me know if I've messed something up.

Here are some really quick screenies:





In other news, the update also includes an improved Spring export plugin that can paint metal patches onto the texture. There are a few shifty tricks to make this work (including using the feature map, image drape and indexed palette options), and I'll try to finish writing the tutorial on the subject shortly. What I have written so-far is at:

http://www.bundysoft.com/wiki/doku.php?id=tutorials:ta_spring:aaron

Cheerio,
Aaron.

[Forboding Angel]

looks great aaron, I'll check it out asap ;p

[Aaron]

Hello again,

I've finished my quick guide to making Spring maps with the L3DTio_Spring plugin:

http://www.bundysoft.com/wiki/doku.php? ... ring:aaron

This now includes a sub-page that explains how to make the visible metal patches:

http://www.bundysoft.com/wiki/doku.php? ... talpatches

Feedback is welcome!

Cheerio,
Aaron.

[carldt]

Wow those screenshots look great.

Just letting you know I'm still alive and will pick up my 7ZIP plugin where I left it. Was really busy with work etc last couple of months