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Horizontal and vertical scale question. (For Oblivion)

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Horizontal and vertical scale question. (For Oblivion)

Postby Martinloki » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:02 am

This is probably clearly explained somewhere, but I've read all I could find, and am still confused.

How do I set up a seperate horizontal and vertical scale?

(If you can answer the above question and don't care why it is asked, you can skip the rest of this post.)

For some god awful reason, TESCSIV (the map editor for Oblivion) uses a ratio of 1:2 for the x\y:z axis. that is, for every movement of 1 in the x or y, you get a final movement of 1, but for each movement of 1 in the z axis, you get a movement of 2 in the final result. (Short version, everything is twice as tall as it should be.)

I'd like to set up the vertical axis to allow me to view and edit the heightmap as it will look like after import.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

(I may have rambled off there, not sure. Let me know if you need clarification.)
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Postby Aaron » Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:40 pm

Hi Martinloki,

The horizontal scale is set in the appropriate dialog box when you create or import the terrain. You can change it afterwards using the 'operations->heightfield->change horiz. scale' menu option.

L3DT uses floating point coordinates for the Z axis, so it doesn't have a vertical scale in the same sense that Oblivion does.

However, if you first edit your terrain to 'look right' in L3DT, you might then use the 'operations->heightfield->change vert. scale' option to stretch/compress the terrain in the Z axis to fit with TESCSIV (see user guide). However, this all depends on file formats. Can you tell me what terrain format you use to import into TESCSIV?

Cheerio,
Aaron.
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Postby Martinloki » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:11 pm

I intend on using USHORT (spanned or meters) 16 Bit .raw.

Thank you.
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Postby Aaron » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:49 am

Hi Martinloki,

Hmmm...I'd suggest you try both and see what works best with TESCSIV. If neither work, I'll included an updated RAW plugin in the next dev build that will let you manually set the vertical scaling in the RAW files.

Best regards,
Aaron.
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Postby Aaron » Tue Dec 11, 2007 9:17 pm

Hi Martinloki,

In the latest dev build of L3DT (v2.5.2.23, on the downloads page) I've included an updated RAW plugin that can export with a vertical scale that you can set manually. To use this, click on the 'options' button in the export wizard, and select the '16-bit unsigned (manual scale)' mode, then set the 'ManualScale' number to the desired scale (screenshot here). I think the scale number you'll want to use for TESCSIV exports is one half of the horizontal scale used for the heightmap.

Cheerio,
Aaron.
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Postby Martinloki » Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:52 am

THANK YOU!!!!

That has helped immensely.

16 Bit (Manual Scale) Raw with a scale factor of 0.114286 allows me to run Tesannwyn without any scale argument and end up with the exact same terrain (+- 3m) in TESCS.

This means that I can create a 100m feature, click export, run a bat file, and I now have it in TESCS.

(Now I just crave the overlay in saphire ;) )
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Postby Aaron » Sun Dec 16, 2007 10:29 am

Hi Martinloki,

Here's an updated version of Sapphire that supports image overlay:

http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/downloads/plugins/bin/Sapphire-bin.zip

To use a texture overlay in Sapphire, you first have to load the overlay image in L3DT using the 'File->Import->Custom map layer' option. Then you can open Sapphire, and use the the 'Options->Select texture' option to select the imported image.

Please let me know if there are any problems.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

PS: It may also help to use the 'Options->Runtime light over texture' option in Sapphire to provide some topological shading.
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