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Designing *small* terrain?

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Designing *small* terrain?

Postby brookst » Mon Apr 05, 2010 7:50 pm

Hi, everyone. I'm having a blast playing with L3DT... but I can't quite get it to do what I want.

I'm trying to design small areas of terrain -- on the order of 0.5km x 0.5km. But no matter what I try, I end up with terrain that seems more suitable for much larger areas: more features packed into the space than is reasonable, and huge height variations.

For instance, I just ran a terrain with the following parameters:
Code: Select all
Width: 1024, Height 768, Horz. scale (m): 0.5
----
HF/DM ratio: 32
----
Avg. altitude: 80% land
Alt. range: 100% flat
Scale of features: 100% tiny
Noise strength: 10% (1 notch from none)
Noise shape: 100% rolling
Cliffs and terraces: 10% (1 notch from none)
Erosion: 50%
Lakes: 10% (1 notch from none)
Climate: Temperate
----
Hi-res attributes (2)
----
Hi-res normals (2)
----
Sun direction: 0, Elevation: 90
----
High-res light map (2)
----
high-res texture (2)


...and the result is the most mountanous .5km you've ever seen. There's 55m of range, but what's more, there are several 30+m peaks. It's like a hedge maze, scaled up.

Am I missing something or misunderstanding a parameter, or am an I edge case for L3DT and it's really not meant for this kind of landscape?

Thanks!
-Brooks
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Postby Aaron » Tue Apr 06, 2010 12:46 pm

Hi Brookst,

Alas, the design/inflate terrain algorithm in L3DT hasn't really been optimised for small-scale terrain. Clearly I've put some minimum threshold for elevation in there somewhere; I'll see if I can fix this shortly.

As a temporary workaround, would the 'Operations->Heightfield->Change vertical range' menu option help here? (user guide) This should allow you to reduce the excessive vertical range of the heightfield after it's been generated.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Update: Yes, indeed there was a minimum altitude range threshold set in the design map generator. I've reduced this threshold in the next developmental build, which will allow you to generate very-nearly-flat maps. I'll post back here when it's available for download. In the mean-time, the 'change vertical range' option will allow you to achieve the same result.
Last edited by Aaron on Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby David Walters » Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:08 pm

Have you tried, and I realise this is a bit of a cheap hack, making a larger terrain (perhaps with a subsequent boost to the horizontal scale to flatten things further) and then cropping the heightfield down to a smaller portion?
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Postby brookst » Wed Apr 07, 2010 5:33 pm

Thanks for the speedy response and the quick change, Aaron. I'll look forward to the next dev build!

David, that seems like a reasonable solution... but I'm going to be generating about 50 of these things, so the extra workflow kind of hurts. For now, I'll use the change vertical range approach until the next build appears.

Thanks!
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Postby Aaron » Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:38 am

Hi Brookst,

I've included the fix in the latest developmental build of L3DT Pro (v2.8 build 19), which is on the downloads page now. Please let me know if you require the update in a different version (i.e. Standard or L3DT for Torque).

Best regards,
Aaron.
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