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Climates, textures and materials

One of the trickier subjects in L3DT

Climates, textures and materials

Postby Aaron » Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:18 pm

Hi All,

In the lastest dev build of L3DT Pro, there have been some changes to the climate system that may affect climate developers. I've explained the changes in some detail in the development log, but the basic gist is that all the texturing/bump-mapping information that was previously stored in each land type has been split off into a new class of objects called 'materials'. This change makes the texture generation procedure more efficient, as it allows for materials to be shared between different land types. Also, I've created a new and more streamlined 'material editor' interface that should make the whole process of developing and editing climates much easier.

If you have any questions or other feedback, please reply.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

PS: The changes are backwards-compatible with climates from L3DT 2.4 and later.
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Postby Rummy » Wed Nov 21, 2007 10:45 pm

Great timing, I'm knee deep in a Burma climate, and if it is easier to get the results I'm after, then all the better!

Just tried get this error when loading:

CL3DTApp::LoadMaterialIni error:
- file not found at 'C:\Program Files\Bundysoft\L3DT Professional 2.5.2.20\Settings\materials.ini.xml'.
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Postby Aaron » Wed Nov 21, 2007 11:47 pm

Hi Rummy,

Oops, I forgot to include one of the new settings files (I was a bit rushed this morning). I'll update the installer later today, and post back here when done. I apologise for the inconvenience.

Regards,
Aaron.
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Postby Rummy » Thu Nov 22, 2007 12:40 am

Not a problem at all.
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Postby Aaron » Thu Nov 22, 2007 10:53 am

Hi Rummy,

Okay, I've uploaded a fixed version for you to try. Please note that in this new version, under certain circumstances, the light map calculation will throw a silly error message about group names being invalid. Feel free to ignore it; it doesn't affect anything, and will be fixed in the next update.

Since there's no documentation yet for the material and layer editors, I recommend you have a look in the example climates/materials to get a feel for what the settings mean. In particular, I suggest you look at how in a climate like 'tropical', I've re-used the same grass materials in several land types, but changed the colour-balance in each land type so that they look slightly different (e.g. more green or more brown).

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Similarly, if you'd like to recommend any changes, please do so.

Best regards,
Aaron.
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