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Jade Groove for Arma 2

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 9:31 am
by icebreakr
Image
Does anyone know how to made more faded texture transition in the area about cacti trees (bright sand vs red rocks)?

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 11:24 am
by Aaron
Hi Icebreakr,

Very nice!

Is that a texture baked in L3DT, or are you using alpha maps and splatting the textures in-game? (I know nothing about Arma 2).

If you're using an L3DT texture:

You have a few options for faded texture transitions. The first would be to use texture anti-aliasing. In the texture wizard, turn the anti-aliasing up as high as it will go.

Before you do that, however...

Depending on how you set up your climate, you may also need to modify a settings to enable anti-aliasing for each land type. In the land type editor, go to the 3rd tab (appearance), and set the blend radius to -1. The value of -1 is a 'magic' number* that means the land type will be anti-aliased with whatever radius you set in the texture wizard**. You'll need to set this setting for both the red rocks and the sand land types, if it's not been done already.

If that blending is not sufficient, what I would do is create another land type (and material) to go in between the sand and rocks, using the average of the distribution parameters of the other two types. You could also add some Perlin noise to the type to roughen the interface, and then blur it using texture anti-aliasing.

If you're using alpha maps:

You're in luck, as the beta-release of L3DT v2.9 now supports anti-aliasing of the alpha maps. Thus, you can more-or-less follow the same instructions above (substituting "alpha map wizard" for "texture wizard").

Please let me know how it goes, or if you find any problems.

Regards,
Aaron.

* Sorry about the completely un-obvious magic setting. I'll put it on the to-do list to make the option a separate checkbox or something.

** 0 or positive values for blend radius in the land type can be used to restrict the anti-aliasing radii of individual land types, to give some less blending and others more. For instance, you might make the rock-grass transition sharp (low anti-alias on the rock), but the grass-sand transition smooth (high anti-alias radius for both, or use the magic -1 setting).

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 1:33 pm
by nicethugbert
They look real good, icebreakr.

Aaron, Alpha Map anti-alias transfers when you import the L3DT maps into a game? Even if you use different textures in the game?

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2010 1:55 pm
by Aaron
Hi Nicethugbert,

Yeah. The results of the anti-aliasing are baked onto the alpha maps, so when used in game engines or other renderers, the blending provided by the anti-aliasing will still be present, regardless of your choice of layer textures.

Cheers,
Aaron.

Disclaimer: this is true when using the alpha mapping wizard. If you generate alpha maps by other means (e.g. alpha export express, mask generators, etc.), you won't have any anti-aliasing.

Re: Jade Groove for Arma 2

PostPosted: Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:36 pm
by M1013828
I also find using the perlin noise function can break up the transitions between texture types, nice effect at a distance, but requires a but load of trial and error

Re: Jade Groove for Arma 2

PostPosted: Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:26 pm
by lmaceleighton
I take all the alpha maps and run them through a blur filter sometimes when i need to bleed the edges a bit into each other and give great results. other times I go in by hand first and roughen the edges and then blur the edges by hand. Hope that helps:)

Bobby