"Cut-out" effect
Hi everyone,
I am trying to make a path paved with bricks/stones that is similar to this Skyrim screenshot:
In this screenshot, it almost looks like the "stony" part of the path is a separate piece of geometry from the terrain that it's resting on. That is the exact effect I am trying to achieve.
But, whenever I paint textures onto a terrain in any engine, the edges of the textures always come out fuzzy, not sharp and separate like they are here. This does not look good when I am trying to use a texture to create the effect of a road paved with stones.
Sorry I am new to this and I am completely stumped: how do you achieve an effect like this, as if parts of the texture were "cut out" so precisely? Is it done with special shaders?
DO you use separate geometry, and, if so, how do you ensure that it follows the exact curves of the terrain so well?
I am trying to make a path paved with bricks/stones that is similar to this Skyrim screenshot:
In this screenshot, it almost looks like the "stony" part of the path is a separate piece of geometry from the terrain that it's resting on. That is the exact effect I am trying to achieve.
But, whenever I paint textures onto a terrain in any engine, the edges of the textures always come out fuzzy, not sharp and separate like they are here. This does not look good when I am trying to use a texture to create the effect of a road paved with stones.
Sorry I am new to this and I am completely stumped: how do you achieve an effect like this, as if parts of the texture were "cut out" so precisely? Is it done with special shaders?
DO you use separate geometry, and, if so, how do you ensure that it follows the exact curves of the terrain so well?
Replies
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndreyMishkinis/20130716/196339/Advanced_Terrain_Texture_Splatting.php
The engine I'm doing this in is Unity (not my choice, I have to use it). Throttlekitty, I took a look at the Gamasutra link and it looks like that algorithm would be able to convey the effect I'm looking for. Ugh too bad I don't yet know much about writing shaders... and I am on a time crunch to finish this thing for a project I am working on.
Sargentcrunch, thank you for the info. I thought Skyrim might have been a using a separate mesh for the road, but what I was confused about is this: in my screenshot and in the game itself, most parts of the road seem to be very long, continuous meshes that follow the curves of the underlying terrain perfectly.
When the road goes uphill the mesh goes uphill with it, when the road is slanted, the mesh is also slanted at the same angle etc.
I am assuming the terrain was generated in an engine. So to get that seprate road mesh, would you e.g. import the underlying terrain into 3ds max, then extrude the parts you want to be the road mesh, and then reduce the geometry until it is optimized like it is in your screenshot? Wouldn't that take a very long time, and wouldn't it be hard to make modular re-usable meshes that way? Would you use scripts to help with this process?
I've used the Creation Kit for Skyrim, I'm %99 positive those are hand placed.