Terrain Texturing Tips
polycounter lvl 10
I'm currently throwing together a little scene (3D Max) for fun, just roughing it out at the moment and feeling my way forward, learning as I go, but i've hit a bit of a roadblock, what is the best way of going about texturing the terrain itself?
As it stands i've just tiled a generic grass texture all over a subdivided plane that i've pushed and prodded much like you would in any regular level editor, be it Unreal or whatever (as opposed to using a height map which I find rather unruly).....but obviously I don't want grass everywhere, I'd like to be able to seamlessly transition between dirt, rock, pavement etc
So, what are my options?
Do I paint one massive texture? Or is that overly excessive and wasteful? Granted i'm only doing this for the sake of doing it and it'll only be used in a static render, but if there are better techniques i'd like to learn to use them.
Also is there anyway to sort of "sketch" onto the plane in 3D max itself as a rough guide (ergo, road goes here, buildings are here, tracks are here) for when I actually export and start painting the UVW map, or do I just guesstimate with a lot of back and forth between the programs?
Would it be better to split the terrain up into half a dozen meshes, each with their own UVW map and try to blend the seems with some clever photoshoppery?
A fleeting thought I had, but something i've never really worked with or tried was creating a multi-sub object material. Assign a dirt, a grass and a rock texture, each with opacity maps and then tile that over the entire plane.....would that work or something along the same lines?
Quick pic for reference.
Love,
Puck
As it stands i've just tiled a generic grass texture all over a subdivided plane that i've pushed and prodded much like you would in any regular level editor, be it Unreal or whatever (as opposed to using a height map which I find rather unruly).....but obviously I don't want grass everywhere, I'd like to be able to seamlessly transition between dirt, rock, pavement etc
So, what are my options?
Do I paint one massive texture? Or is that overly excessive and wasteful? Granted i'm only doing this for the sake of doing it and it'll only be used in a static render, but if there are better techniques i'd like to learn to use them.
Also is there anyway to sort of "sketch" onto the plane in 3D max itself as a rough guide (ergo, road goes here, buildings are here, tracks are here) for when I actually export and start painting the UVW map, or do I just guesstimate with a lot of back and forth between the programs?
Would it be better to split the terrain up into half a dozen meshes, each with their own UVW map and try to blend the seems with some clever photoshoppery?
A fleeting thought I had, but something i've never really worked with or tried was creating a multi-sub object material. Assign a dirt, a grass and a rock texture, each with opacity maps and then tile that over the entire plane.....would that work or something along the same lines?
Quick pic for reference.
Love,
Puck
Replies
Obviously (i guess), there is no easy way to properly blend textures in max, like SandBox2 editor, like this:
So, probably your best bet would be to hide the seams with props and / or decals.
Try it out or look it up in the help.
(Image stolen from http://www.dmmultimedia.com/3dtips_09c.htm)
use a composite material - setup the different materials and then it gets a little tricky, you paint opacity masks for the different mats - i used a 3d painter prototype script which let me paint the masks directly onto the geometry (i used a .fx shader to get realtime feedback of the mixed terrain material). works pretty cool, you might have to come up with a clever workflow to handle the different masks though...
http://www.kevinoxland.com/Images/Layers_Unlimited.pdf
Edit:
Oh man, that's perfect. THANK YOU.
A potential employer would rather see you do it with dev-spec limitations rather than pie in the sky renders. But in the end, it still shows you know the steps, so it's better than nothing.