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Large 3D terrain generator

Progress on v2.4 beta3

Important stuff.

Postby DeathTwister » Fri May 26, 2006 6:03 pm

Hay Trollfiddler,

Humm, maybe move this to a new post here I'll make.

. When I tried to import I had the GUI up and have filled in.....

Mesh
size at 1024
square size at 2
error metric at 2
and tree depth at 6 (should be 5?)
and my height range was 2634
texture
Size 1024
Tree depth 6
leaf size 32 when calculated.

Here is my problem atm.

When I tried to generate a chunk file, it didn't that I could see anywhere (what dir will it go to?) and when I hit the texture generate button, it flat out crashed TSE :cry: going to take another look and shot at it while I get help. you guys are great, once I get this down I'll be a monster hahahaha.

I am not at all sure about that size thing? even though that is what I thought I was supposed to do. I had the texture at 4096+ the one pixel, and I did that to the .raw file as well. But I have tried both ways with the extra pixel and without the extra pixel, seems to crash the same here.

Here is what I am trying to import to TSE.

http://www.theatomizer.com/postedImages/VG1f12.jpg

Haha at least I am trying to, /chuckles, I'll get this or die trying ROTFL.


DT :twisted:
Last edited by DeathTwister on Fri May 26, 2006 7:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Postby DeathTwister » Fri May 26, 2006 6:06 pm

Monks :lol: ,

so do you mean that you have your lghing at 90% in L3DT? I've not tried that.

Yup :wink:

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Postby Aaron » Sat May 27, 2006 5:41 am

Hello,

Here's one more screenshot, showing the new and improved 'temperate' climate. Again, it's using a 16x lightmap and 16x texture, with bump-mapping and per-pixel land types enabled. L3DTVi2 was rendering at 137fps.

As you might be able to see at the rock/grass edges, the edge-is-too-sharp 'problem' previously noted for the 'per-pixel land types' algorithm has been largely fixed.

Cheers,
Aaron.
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Postby Joshua » Sat May 27, 2006 8:35 am

It definately is looking promising. The rock cliff faces are looking especially good.
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Postby monks » Sat May 27, 2006 10:29 am

The rock textues are very nice but the grass is not quite up to the same quality. As someone observed, grass is difficult to do. I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, but if you have lush grass which dominates the land cover, it tends to have height of course, and some specularity because of the moisture, reflectance- yes?
If it's coarse and short, then there tends to be a complex texture: this is L3DT's domain right?. How much further can the technology help- is it simply the textures you are using?

Still it's getting there. The rock/grass edges are especially good on the foreground cliff- top and bottom- that's very convincing.

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Postby DeathTwister » Sat May 27, 2006 1:24 pm

Morning Monks, yawn, finaly got some sleep,

The rock textures are very nice but the grass is not quite up to the same quality. As someone observed, grass is difficult to do. I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, but if you have lush grass which dominates the land cover, it tends to have height of course, and some specularity because of the moisture, reflectance- yes?


Yes I think it was me talking bout the grass being so dang hard, that was why for the most part I put them in the extra folder. some are great, others I hadn't had time to tweak enough yet maybe, as I said I hadn't tested all of the extras I posted, but I wanted to through a few more grasses in. However, they may be great for close ups as I have found in other programs like the texture editor in Torque for adding close up textures. But thanks for the input and yes I agree. I seem to get better grass textures in Bryce then in photos so far, but I'll get it down, trial and error.

Still it's getting there. The rock/grass edges are especially good on the foreground cliff- top and bottom- that's very convincing.


Yup slowly it comes, I am having a gas with textures atm so I'll get the grass down also. I have some beach ones I am trying to get to work and some are now of driftwood on the beach, if I can get that to look good that would be awesome. Will post that experiment here soon when I get something that is good.

I will wait for adding any more climate posts with textures until Aaron has released beta 3 I think as he is changing formats again, and such so will wait and adjust to the new beta. he says early June a week or 2 away, then I'll revamp what I got and post some new after a bit more experimenting.
Maybe I can get the grasses to work well by then /wry smile. I must say I think that edit tool in the resources will help there some so I can get the right angle on grass to begin with (That was a problem), so need to play with that tool some and try try again /smiles.

Also getting on the texture bank next week also.

DT :twisted:
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Postby monks » Sat May 27, 2006 2:21 pm

Yes I think it was me talking bout the grass being so dang hard, that was why for the most part I put them in the extra folder. some are great, others I hadn't had time to tweak enough yet maybe, as I said I hadn't tested all of the extras I posted, but I wanted to through a few more grasses in. However, they may be great for close ups as I have found in other programs like the texture editor in Torque for adding close up textures. But thanks for the input and yes I agree. I seem to get better grass textures in Bryce then in photos so far, but I'll get it down, trial and error.



How would you go about taking a shot for a grass texture? I'm asking because I have a digital camera: only 5 mpx (and probably not that great) but it has half a gig of memory which is sitting there doing not a lot often. I'm not promising bags of them as my time is pretty stretched as it is: think fantastic4 :lol:
How does scale factor into this?




Yup slowly it comes, I am having a gas with textures atm so I'll get the grass down also. I have some beach ones I am trying to get to work and some are now of driftwood on the beach, if I can get that to look good that would be awesome. Will post that experiment here soon when I get something that is good.


Hey yes, that would be very nice. Mine would mostly be inner-city textures, you know pee-stains, graffiti, you get the idea :lol: Maybe I should take a tour of Tolkien-country eh?


Maybe I can get the grasses to work well by then /wry smile. I must say I think that edit tool in the resources will help there some so I can get the right angle on grass to begin with (That was a problem), so need to play with that tool some and try try again /smiles.


Right angle. I was thinking you would take the shot as perpendicular to the surface as possible- is this always the best way?
So what if I had a field of grass- would I take it simply stood over it?

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Postby DeathTwister » Sat May 27, 2006 3:28 pm

Hay Monks,

We should take this discusion I bet to a new topic as we getting off a bit I bet, so lets get this going in a new forum /smiles. I'll copy past a thread into a new post here as it is a good questain and I don't exactly have all the answer yet either. Chime in crew when ya can.

Monks Wrote:
How would you go about taking a shot for a grass texture? I'm asking because I have a digital camera: only 5 mpx (and probably not that great) but it has half a gig of memory which is sitting there doing not a lot often. I'm not promising bags of them as my time is pretty stretched as it is: think fantastic4 Laughing
How does scale factor into this?


Let me refer you to to a post on this site at:
http://www.bundysoft.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=86

A very sweet tool even though I haven't used it yet as the main trick is to get it to be able to not lay down like the shots always are :cry: so his tool should help tremendously I hope. Going to play with that next week after I get what I am trying to do done first. Then the next set of problems ROTFL. coupled with the Mura seamless tool link I gave we should be in good shape.

Monks Wrote:
Hey yes, that would be very nice. Mine would mostly be inner-city textures, you know pee-stains, graffiti, you get the idea Laughing Maybe I should take a tour of Tolkien-country eh?


ROTFL. 8)

Monks wrote:
Right angle. I was thinking you would take the shot as perpendicular to the surface as possible- is this always the best way?
So what if I had a field of grass- would I take it simply stood over it?


Yup yup, as 90 % as possible, that is why it is so hard to get good ones. The tool should help some with the angle of the dangle TeHe :idea:

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Postby DeathTwister » Sat May 27, 2006 3:43 pm

HiHo Aaron,

I know this is off-topic but what is a DoYan? I just saw I went from a Luminary to a DoYan, just wondering what direction I was headed ??? ROTFL :wink: :lol: :oops: 8) :lol: :lol: :lol: :wink: :roll:

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Postby Aaron » Sun May 28, 2006 4:23 am

Hi DT,

DeathTwister wrote: I know this is off-topic but what is a DoYan? I just saw I went from a Luminary to a DoYan, just wondering what direction I was headed ???


Whoops, 'doyan' was a misspelling of 'doyen' (now fixed). A doyen is "the eldest or senior member of a group", which is the rank one attains when has 101 posts in this forum. The next milestone is 200 posts, but I'll leave the rank name as a surprise for then.

Cheers,
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Postby Aaron » Sun May 28, 2006 12:32 pm

Hi Monks,

monks wrote:The rock textues are very nice but the grass is not quite up to the same quality.


You're right, the grass was a bit average. I've added a few more texture-layers ot the grass, and the results are a wee-bit better now:

Old (click for larger view):
Image

New (click for larger view):
Image

If you flick between the two images a few times you'll notice that the new one looks much less 'splodgy' in the middle-distance. In the foreground it's a little-bit better, but I really need to apply a high-res detail map for grass blades (I don't have one at hand right now, but I'm looking).

monks wrote:As someone observed, grass is difficult to do. I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, but if you have lush grass which dominates the land cover, it tends to have height of course, and some specularity because of the moisture, reflectance- yes?


Bingo. The height issue is a real problem, as L3DT can't add 3D blades of grass (it's not a renderer). Some specular lighting would also look good, but but again, that can only be done in a renderer.

monks wrote:If it's coarse and short, then there tends to be a complex texture: this is L3DT's domain right?. How much further can the technology help- is it simply the textures you are using?


Yeah, short grass from a distance. Long grass or close-up requires a proper vegetation renderer. Better textures would improve the close-up quality, but only to a point.

Cheers,
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Postby DeathTwister » Sun May 28, 2006 1:05 pm

Hay guys,

Aaron Wrote:
Whoops, 'doyan' was a misspelling of 'doyen' (now fixed). A doyen is "the eldest or senior member of a group", which is the rank one attains when has 101 posts in this forum. The next milestone is 200 posts, but I'll leave the rank name as a surprise for then.


Haha rotfl Ahh I see /smiles KEWL. Hay Aaron the grass and textures in general lare ook great, WTG dude, looking good. I see the difference and yes looks better.

Monks wrote:
Yeah, short grass from a distance. Long grass or close-up requires a proper vegetation renderer. Better textures would improve the close-up quality, but only to a point.


Ya, I figure make the textures as good as we can, then bring em in to where we want them. But I want the textures to enhance the blades of grass we put after the fact in the engine, and that will have to have more bumping and textures baking in game I am betting as well. But I am still learning all this stuff and have a bit to go before I think I am even getting close to masterhood with this chit. :lol: :wink: hehe KK back to getting my texture to work, have my chunk file, now need to get my texture in the engine, so back to getting head aches and checking posts.

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Postby Joshua » Sun May 28, 2006 8:36 pm

Bingo. The height issue is a real problem, as L3DT can't add 3D blades of grass (it's not a renderer). Some specular lighting would also look good, but but again, that can only be done in a renderer.

This is definitely going to be a challenge, however there are a few suggestions that come to mind.

1. Bake the normal map (or even parallax) detail of the grass images into the textures with something like NVidia's photoshop plugin.

2. Imply species of grass that wouldn't necessarily protrude as far.

3. Don't texture grass. Texture dirt/moss areas. Allow developers to add their own solution (We're using SpeedTreeRT for example), that is geometry or shader, rather than texture based.

4. Improve the grass to a point where it would look fantastic at distances over 10-20 ft. away and just take for granted that if developers want an "up-close" solution, that they will need to create something geometry or shader-based.

5. This would be our custom solution most likely: We texture the high resolution clipmaps with patches of dirt and moss representing the areas that will be covered in grass, with the presupposition that our real-time geometry-based grass will be covering it, and texture the further clipmaps (distance-based) with a "green" solution similar to the one you're working with since the grass will be LOD'ed away.

While none of these are particularly extensive, I thought I'd share them nonetheless.

Although some of these shots have been doctored, take a close look:
http://projectoffset.com/images/Index_n.jpg
In this first image, the grass looks continuous into the distance. As it has been doctored, it's a bit tough to say how the effect was created.
http://speedtree.com/images/in_games/HerosJourney_09.jpg
Here we see that at least up-close, the grass has dirt textures below it.
http://speedtree.com/images/in_games/Gothic3_02.jpg
In the third image, the texture ignores grass, and represents fallen pine needles.
http://speedtree.com/images/in_games/Oblivion_09.jpg
Oblivion takes an unrealistic but interesting approach. The texture that goes below grass isn't supposed to represent grass, but it's green. This extends into the distance while the geometry-based grass fades away.

Thoughts?
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Postby Aaron » Mon May 29, 2006 7:58 am

Hi Joshua,

Joshua wrote:1. Bake the normal map (or even parallax) detail of the grass images into the textures with something like NVidia's photoshop plugin.


I'm not quite sure I understand you here. Baking on the normal-map detail can be done now (bump-mapping, yes?), but surely parallax-mapping is view-dependent, so you have to do that at run-time. Have I misunderstood?

Joshua wrote:2. Imply species of grass that wouldn't necessarily protrude as far.


Yup, that's why there's no 'fields of maize' climate for L3DT. I'm aiming for the 'fairly short lawn' look.

Joshua wrote:3. Don't texture grass. Texture dirt/moss areas. Allow developers to add their own solution (We're using SpeedTreeRT for example), that is geometry or shader, rather than texture based.


That's just a matter of switching the grass textures for dirt/moss and baking-on the appropriate detail/bump-map. I'll make a demo climate for this after I've got beta3 out the door.

Joshua wrote:4. Improve the grass to a point where it would look fantastic at distances over 10-20 ft.


This is what I'm aiming for with the 'temperate' climate (with reference to this image). Further improvements are possible, of course, as I've only spend a few minutes tweaking the grass textures.

Joshua wrote:5. This would be our custom solution most likely: We texture the high resolution clipmaps with patches of dirt and moss representing the areas that will be covered in grass, with the presupposition that our real-time geometry-based grass will be covering it, and texture the further clipmaps (distance-based) with a "green" solution similar to the one you're working with since the grass will be LOD'ed away.


Sounds quite reasonable. Hopefully this won't stray too far into the megatexturing thread, but could you discuss the benefits of using a high-res unique texture for the close-up dirt/moss when compared to splatting the same thing? I would have thought that since the close-up ground texture is only visible over a very small distance (<20m), and is largely obscured by grass geometry, splatting would look pretty good. Just curious.

Cheers,
Aaron.
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Postby DeathTwister » Mon May 29, 2006 1:44 pm

A quick questain if I may, I hope not to far off topic.

When we import our terrains into TSE for those that have TSE that is. Does the bump mapping follow into TSE natuerly? I would think it wouldn't and is L3DT specific, but I am not sure how TSE interpolates all the info when it comes in. I wouild think, correct me if I am wrong please as I am a newbie here, that we would add the bumping with a bump map overlay like in TGE? Does it do it that way as well in TSE? besides the other ways you are talking about Josh?

Joshua Wrote:
1. Bake the normal map (or even parallax) detail of the grass images into the textures with something like NVidia's photoshop plugin.


Is that plugin at their website? what is the name again? I want it /smiles..have a link by chance handy?

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