Something important for TSE'ers like me
Posted: Wed Aug 09, 2006 4:09 am
Hey, this is something I think would be pretty damn vital all in all..
I just saw a post and the next update on TSE, lighting and shadows, is on its way. And with that comes dynamic lighting and Shadows on terrains! Great news!
However... For people who like to use unique textures like me, this means a MASSIVE loss in detail. A shit load of light detail is added through bumpmaps generated by the terrain normals and bumpmapping in the lightmap process. I plan a full dynamic day/night system and so I can't use lighting baked into the textures anymore, so all things lightmapping become unneeded. This spells out detail-doom for people like me.
However, I can always export the terrain normals and get that loaded in along with the texture and normal map the terrain with that. Catch there is, the normal maps from the lightmapping process aren't on there last I checked. So theres a ton of loss right there. And also, theres no support for a high res terrain normals export. I've tried this before and the aliasing across those distances becomes god-awful, however L3DT pulls it off quite nicly in the high-res lightmapping.
So basically what I'm asking is climate-defined normal maps merged with the terrain normals file, able to be specified at high res, and for the main terrain normal map to be exported and a high but smooth res for use. With TSE as a large part of the L3DT using crowd and growing over there, this would be a WONDERFUL help! Thanks!
I just saw a post and the next update on TSE, lighting and shadows, is on its way. And with that comes dynamic lighting and Shadows on terrains! Great news!
However... For people who like to use unique textures like me, this means a MASSIVE loss in detail. A shit load of light detail is added through bumpmaps generated by the terrain normals and bumpmapping in the lightmap process. I plan a full dynamic day/night system and so I can't use lighting baked into the textures anymore, so all things lightmapping become unneeded. This spells out detail-doom for people like me.
However, I can always export the terrain normals and get that loaded in along with the texture and normal map the terrain with that. Catch there is, the normal maps from the lightmapping process aren't on there last I checked. So theres a ton of loss right there. And also, theres no support for a high res terrain normals export. I've tried this before and the aliasing across those distances becomes god-awful, however L3DT pulls it off quite nicly in the high-res lightmapping.
So basically what I'm asking is climate-defined normal maps merged with the terrain normals file, able to be specified at high res, and for the main terrain normal map to be exported and a high but smooth res for use. With TSE as a large part of the L3DT using crowd and growing over there, this would be a WONDERFUL help! Thanks!