Best program for making levels/landscapes?

oneup

Hey everybody,

I'm interested in getting back into doing 3d stuff and I want to know what the best program for making landscapes is. I dont care about engine specific stuff, I would just like to know whether max, maya, xsi, silo, or any others would be the most efficient tool to use.

Thanks in advance!

Robert Headley

With Silo's newly formed sculpting tools, I would imagine it would be qualified for Land scape creation, really tho, use whatever program you are most comfortable with.

pior

For landscape specific tools google for :

Terragen
Bryce
Vue d'Esprie - now called Vue

There are others, including one with a kind of Russian name that was known for it's world animation tools back in the day.

Many CG magazines have tutorials explaining these. They are quite fast to pick up as they don't rely on tedious polygon editing : mostly sliders for mountain height, clouds aso.

Good luck!

Mongrelman

You could use Terragen, and export that mesh into the Blender test build that has scupting tools and work it more there.

And as pior said, Vue. I've seen great stuff from that.

Mark Dygert

I'm a enviromental artist and I use max8. Here is a brief run down of my workflow. Most of my enviroments end up being large outdoor places. We do pre-rendered work but I always keep my scene low poly since it effects my render times. If you are new to max then I would say stick with the off the shelf packages they have thier limits and at somepoint will generate something that looks very close to something someone else did because of the stock textures and models. This isn't to say you can't buy more plants at outragous prices or maybe even use your own but people are lazy and don't so you look at a scene and can almost tell what program they used.

My Work-flow.
- In photoshop I paint a B/W displacement map white is the mountains black is the low land valley areas.
- I create a plane with just enough polys to get the job done, add the displacement modifier select my displacement map, add noise and your basic ground mesh is done. You can spend hours painting on the displacement in photoshop and watching it update in the max viewport. You can also go the cheap route and find height maps for mountain ranges online. But I like the total control I have over the scene. I would rather bend my scene to my needs instead of bend the gameplay to fit the scene.
- There are times I will displace not only along the Z axis but apply smaller displacement maps to the Y and X also to make cliff faces or caves. I also go in and use the vertex paint push pull option to fine tune the mesh in certain areas.
- Then I use Xrefs and Proxie objects to display low poly primitive placeholders in the viewports but higher poly models when rendered.
- I also have walk thru mode bound to Shift-C, which is just like flying around a first person shooter without gravity.
- I also use several scatter modifiers to place trees, rocks, grass planes. These have options to scatter along a seperate B/W map I can pain so I literly paint where I want the trees to go and how dense. Now I do have to make the grass planes, trees and rocks myself which forces me to not relay on the same models everyone else uses with the off the shelf programs.
- I make a few tilelabe textures. Then use blend materials that have a "vertex color" for the mask. What this allows me to do is use the vertex paint modifier to paint my mask right on the 3D landscape. you can place a dirt trail through a grass field, use it to break up the repeating effect in textures.

I wish I could show you some examples but the NDA isn't up yet. =[

Bryce was free for a while, If the offer is still going on grab it try it out.

About the only one I would think of really getting is Vue, but then my AD tells me my work flow is just as fast and looks just as good and itsn't relaying on thier prebuilt models, I tell him he lies, we laugh and I go back to work trying not to look at the adds for Vue on CGSociety.com

Justin Meisse

I've been messing around with this program: PnP TerrainCreator since I can't figure out how to scatter grass and trees in Maya and it seems to produce a fairly decent in game look: nice pic

Robert Headley

tech is really moving away form heighmap created terrain.

I think he's better of learning how to create terrain in a non specialized tool.

oneup

Thanks for posting your workflow vig, that really helps a lot. I really like the b/w heightmap and the ability to see it change in real time. Also the ability to paint the tree map, and the vertex painting feature are exactly what I need. It also sounds like it would be a hell of a lot faster than what im doing now.
Until I thought about asking you guys I was manually creating the landscape polygon by polygon on top of a countour line heightmap I created in photoshop. Looks sorta like this:

[img]http://home.earthlink.net/~mongoose09/line map.jpg[/img]
haha.

Vue looks pretty cool. Can it do what Vig was talking about? There are three different types of the program that are available, Pro Studio $399, Espirit $199 and Easel $99.

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_6/

The only one that is appealing is the $99 one, because of the price (I just bought a macbook pro). How much would max 8 cost?

Thanks a lot guys, this really helps a lot.

MoP

World Machine is pretty cool.

hawken

vista 2.0 on the amiga!

saturnfive

As far as efficiency for the creation of terrain for game levels goes, I don't think you can touch the Unreal engine's terrain editor. It's very fast to create and paint height mapped terrains and It's what I'd use to create your example above. Texture painting through alpha blends is very straightforward and it also has a nice decolayer system for foliage etc.

If time isn't so much of an issue you can get more control (especially for cliffs, undercuts etc.) using a 3D program and might find Maya or Modo more useful than others as they both feature mesh painting and you'd be able to paint textures onto the terrain with alpha blends rather than being limited to vertex alpha, which becomes more awkward once you start using several different textures.

Vig: I havn't tried displacement maps in Max for terrain- I'll have to give that a go.

Mark Dygert

Displacement maps are nice but can be expensive (polywise) because you can use it as just a height map OR you can select a few faces and displace horizontally. You really have to be careful with displacement maps to get good results in some areas you sometimes need a bunch of polys.

/me climbs on soap box (feel free to skip down)
I have to agree that UnrealEd does a fair job of low poly height map generation but it doesn't work to pull things horizontally yet (unless I missed it). I say "yet" because I think it is a natural feature to add to the next version unless the tech just won't allow it for some wierd reason =/ The one thing that holds UnrealEd back for me is the camera control I have forced myself to live with it, but a walk-thru/fly-by camera mode would be much appreciated as it is the closest thing to ingame navigation you can get without compiling and running the game. You get a better sense of timing, pacing, depth, scale so many important asspects without ever having to run the game. I think the camera control is the one thing that holds most newbies back and is the single reason we don't see more custom maps and mods. Sure it keeps the tools in the hands of an elite few that are deticated to learning a crazy camera set up but when you're a company that focused on mod support why not add it? I cross my fingers and hope for the next version.

I really wish UnrealEd Max and Maya would add/allow "displacement brushes" which work off custom B/W image maps, based on pen presure oh and the touch bars on the tablets rotate the bursh, or better yet one controls rotation and the other scatter. Someday, someday...

As for the displacement map updating in real time as you paint, its not that quick. Max updates when it detects the file has changed as in a newer version is saved. Depending on the complexity of the scene and size of the displacement map it sometimes takes a few seconds to update. I run Photoshop on one monitor and Max on a 2nd and it is nice to save, look over and see it updating.

saturnfive

Vig: You're right, in the case of the UnrealEd version that ships with UT2004, you can only raise and lower verts. However, I believe they have some funky system in the UT2007 version / UE3 that allows some kind of sideways displacement. You can use matinee to create a flythrough camera view that will play in the editor. The UEd mouse controls are actually pretty good once you get used to them, though a FP walkthrough mode would be a nice addition.

Out of interest, it sounds like you stick with displacement throughout the creation process? I can see the speed advantage of starting off with a displacement map, but wouldn't you want to edit the polys directly after that? why do you edit your displacement maps instead of using paint deformation or whatever on the polys themselves?

Mark Dygert

I use displacement maps for the rough layout then go in and push, pull, relax verts around using the paint tools. This is where I wish they would let me use custom displacement brushes to push pull areas. Most of the time the displacement I paint works just fine and I don't have to go to the poly. I can, and don't have any problem doing it, I just don't need to 75%. As I got better at painting displacement maps the less edit poly work I have to do. At times I have poly modeled a few large interesting details such as cliff faces, over hangs and rooty out-croppings and place them seperately and merg them into the mesh.

Also the closer I keep the mesh to the plane the easier my unwrapping goes. When I start cutting pieces, deleting polys and welding things it starts to make my unwrap job a wee bit more complicated. Even with the advacement in unwrap tools Max8 brought I still don't like making things more complicated than they need to be.

I didn't mean to give the impression that I never go into Edit poly and get my hands dirty, because I do.

okkun

What MoP said, World Machine is great.

If you need control over the shape of the landscape you can create a rough heighmap in whatever program you're comfortable with, bring it in to WM and slap some corrosion/weathering on it. I've gotten some great results with very little effort. The maps coming out of it are great for texture creation as well as each deposition, height and corrosion etc. can be output to a separate maps.

Mark Dygert

I'll have to check it out, it seems too high poly for most games but for pre-rendered work it could be pretty nice. Thanks MoP and okkun.

kat

[ QUOTE ]
...I dont care about engine specific stuff...

[/ QUOTE ]You should be really as that informs the decision you'll make as to what tools you use, assuming you're talking about 'modding' rather than employment; the latter you don't need to worry about in the context of your original question.

Most games that come with their own proprietary level editor will most likely have had their terrains built with those tools. Failing that, you then have to look at what model formats are supported and whether or not there are any 3rd party exporters/importers for your 3D app of choice.

I've seen many *arguments* over the years similar to your initial question "what is best", the simple answer is "there isn't one", all you can do is work with what you've got and that's usually Maya or Max; or failing that again, use whatever tool the developers used (or the file format at least).

IronHawk

Thanks for posting your workflow Vig.

markkieboy

WM is truly great but I had no idea that it could generate masks for corrosion, desposition etc...that would be the holy grail as far as I'm concerned.

I'm going to have to take a look at this..NOW

I'd really appreciate any tips on how to deirve these masks in WM

cheers

MarK

Joshua Stubbles

Not every engine comes with it's own editor. And not every team can develop their own tools & applications. He was looking for a way to generate terrain without engine-specific tools. Vig and others have posted great info in here though, which should help oneup a lot.

Eric Chadwick

markkieboy, when you add an Erosion node in World Machine, it has four outputs... height, flow, wear, deposition.

Only beef I have is some of the erosion comes out too linear, have to muck it up a bit in Photoshop.

ElysiumGX

If you're asking about terrain for games:

In XSI, you can apply a weight map to a surface, and connect a push modifier to that weight map. From the weight panel tool, you can paint the deformation onto the surface in the viewports. Easy way to do this is simply select Paint Push Tool in the properties window. With that, you can control smoothness from the weight panel and amplitude from the Push modifier properties. After you're done, you can export that, or use the mesh to render out a displacement and light map for a game engine. I believe textures can be assigned to weights and painted similar to most terrain editors, but I haven't tried it.

An old tutorial demonstrating weight painting can be found here:
http://www.digitaltutors.com/digital_tutors/video.php?v=609&f=q

If you want software designed as a stand-alone world editor, try this:
http://www.freeworld3d.org/

Easy terrain editing tools, texture painting, and export/import of maps. I liked using it, but would rather have a way to play my maps.

McIlroy

Lots of great tools for level artists out there . I was just watching a video tutorial the other day that used Titan Quests level editor and it seems to be pretty darn good for making terrian and levels . Here is a link to the tutorial videos but they are huge !

http://titanquestvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guides.Detail&id=29

MoP

Eric: Mostly the "linear" look comes from using the "geological time enhancememt" or whatever it's called, I usually try to do several erosion passes at different resolutions to get some good variation going on.

I have another erosion filter besides the main one, it's very good but I have no idea where it came from, it's not in the default set, and I can't find it as a download, so I just copy & paste it from file to file

Michael Knubben

edit: I am an idiot. That'll be all
mop, i'm going to have a look at this, mind posting a new file with the filter in?

MoP

Hmm, Pea, I did some googling this morning and determined that this Erosion operator is actually from a previous version of WM (I'm on 1.25), its title is "Monte-Carlo Water Erosion", but it's referred to on several websites as "Original Erosion"... so if you can find a download of an earlier version of WM, you should be able to copy it out of there, I think.
I don't know the legality of distributing something like this, so I'll err on the side of caution at the moment.

Actually, this thread should probably be in 2D/3D discussion. Moving now...