L3DT Users' Community

Maybe this topic has come up before, but L3DT is a great resource for generating tileable textures. With added plugins it could become a tremendous resource.

I did this one in a few minutes with L3DT and Gimp.

Essentially to create the effect above, I generated a relatively flat map with wrapped edges turned on.

I set scale to tiny and lakes to few.

Then I calculated the height map.

I took the height map and in gimp, used a black brush to make the seams where the morter between the bricks go. To make sure that the edges were seamless, I used the layer transform to offset the image some number of pixels to make the edges wrap, so that I wouldn't have to paint to the edges.

I then ran a noise filter on it, then blurred it, until I liked the look.

I imported the hightmap back into L3DT and generated a texture from it with water effects off.

I took the resulting texture and painted the bricks in GIMP using a brush set 50% opacity.

That's how I did it.

The nice thing is that you even get a bump map in the process.

Hi Jack,

Wow, I had never thought of using L3DT in that way. Well done indeed.

I wonder, if I added an mouse tool for painting land types on the L3DT attributes map, and you defined a climate with land types for, say, bricks and mortar, could you do the whole thing in L3DT, and would that make it easier?

Hmmm...I guess you would also need some tools for modifying the heightfield, to put in the mortar noise (on the to do list, of course.)

Anyway, well done again. This is a great idea, and I think one that will be supported better in the future.

Best regards,
Aaron.

This does open up possibilities

I used noise for the mortar, just to show a quick way to do it. If it were all done in L3DT then a sand texture could be substituted.

Also, when I reimported the height map, I lost my climate and wrap settings. So when I got the texture back into Gimp, there was a faint line visible that I needed to blur out. It was obvious when I did Layer-Transform-Offset to shift the image.

When importing heighfields, it would be useful to have a wrap setting to clean those lines up in L3DT.

Nice idea!

Hi Jack,

At the moment the import process creates a new project, which nukes your climate/wrapping settings. I guess what we want here is a way to import a map into an existing project. I can add this in a plugin, m’thinks.

JD wrote:When importing heighfields, it would be useful to have a wrap setting to clean those lines up in L3DT.

Do you mean an edge-blurring algorithm, or simply setting the wrap flag? I think the importer does have a wrap flag checkbox, so I guess it’s the former. Hmmm…I wonder if I can do this in a plugin also (answer: yes.)

I guess there are a few more items on my to-do list now.

Cheers,
Aaron.

excellant !, now just to find the time to experiment with it.
SeerBlue

Good lateral thinking mate

Thanks Aaron!

I see that flag now. That's all I needed The artifacts occurred when I started a new project and imported the Hightmap with Edge Wrapping off, Just I would expect to

aaron wrote:Hi Jack,

At the moment the import process creates a new project, which nukes your climate/wrapping settings. I guess what we want here is a way to import a map into an existing project. I can add this in a plugin, m’thinks.

JD wrote:When importing heighfields, it would be useful to have a wrap setting to clean those lines up in L3DT.

Do you mean an edge-blurring algorithm, or simply setting the wrap flag? I think the importer does have a wrap flag checkbox, so I guess it’s the former. Hmmm…I wonder if I can do this in a plugin also (answer: yes.)

I guess there are a few more items on my to-do list now.

Cheers,
Aaron.

awman............i can't see the picture on the first post. It has a red "x" in it............

I had that picture posted on my old Comcast site. I got upgraded to Road Runner. They migrated my website, then later deleted it, as I think they have some better plan for home pages.

Now I can't even figure out how to ftp stuff up to it. But it's easier than ever, if you can ever find out how!

I may revisit this later, and do a better post with the steps shown.

The picture was simply some brick work.

Pez_man wrote:awman............i can't see the picture on the first post. It has a red "x" in it............

oh.... nevermind then i'm not sad. It seemed like an iteresting picture though