Hi Demi,
demi wrote:You know I really like this program. It is fantastic and soon I will have some screenies up.
Aww thanks. I can't wait to see the pretty pics
demi wrote:One thing that would be nice is to export my whole map in a series of mosaics to .x format.
Sure, that sounds reasonable. Sometime in the new-year I'll add mosaic .x files either directly to L3DT, or to a map converter program I'm building with the SDK. The second option is my preference at the moment, as the .x writer will then be available as a plugin for other developers, as well as being used in L3DT when I rebuild big chunks of it next year (using the SDK).
demi wrote:One drawback is that the pixels don't line up from one file to the next and since I made the texture from the master it to does not align exactly but not really a big deal. The mesh alignment takes awhile to do though.
Ah, that's caused by another problem m'thinks. For two tile meshes to match up, they have to share at least one row/column of vertices, and this does not happen in L3DT at the moment. Each tile needs to be re-packed with one extra row and column of vertices from it's next neighbours. I.e. tile x0_y0 needs to have, at its right edge, an extra column containing the left-most values from tile x1_y0. Same goes for the y-direction.
L3DTVi2 gets around this problem by fetching the extra data from neighbouring tiles before the terrain is sent of for heightfield->mesh conversion and rendering. However, the water-map renderer (which is just a translucent heightfield renderer) does not yet do this trick, which explains why you can see seams in mosaic water maps (
see this image).
Same goes for mosaic textures, which similarly need to be re-packed. If you look closely at mosaic textures in L3DTVi2 you’ll see subtle lines at the tile-edges. I don't have a screenshot of this from L3DTVi2 handy, but you can see the same thing in the lovely images posted recently dEaThMaStEr using TSE (look at the rock/snow interface at centre-bottom):
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/7082/mountain10lt.jpgHaving an option to re-pack mosaics for export has been on my to-do list for a while. It's probably another thing to be added through the SDK.
demi wrote:If I could export the entire map as a mosaic in .x I think it would solve the issues since the adjoining squares would be exactly aligned.
Yes, if the tiles are re-packed too.
Cheers,
Aaron.
PS: Are any veterans of the mailing-list getting a distinct feeling of
deja vu here? I'm sure we discussed this a few months back, but I can't seem to find the message. Oh, maybe it was a private communication with someone. Nope, can't find it in my mail either. Oh well, I'm losing my mind, again.