Tell me Wenda, the terrain heightmap is solely made using world machine ? the cliffs are very steeped and I was wondering how did you achieved it, maybe editing the terrain in the engine, could you share a little bit of your workflow for the heightmap?
Tell me Wenda, the terrain heightmap is solely made using world machine ? the cliffs are very steeped and I was wondering how did you achieved it, maybe editing the terrain in the engine, could you share a little bit of your workflow for the heightmap?
Thanks,
I didn't use worldmachine, I just hand painted the terrain with the SDK tools.
Use the flatten brush to make some terraces then deform those terraces with the Rise/Lower brush to get some height variations.
Once the cliffs are done, you can paint a 3d rock material and then add some rock models for extra detail.
I'm currently refining the level and adding some man made architecture progressively.
I activated parallax occlusion mapping for some terrain textures (soil, small stones layers)
Tweaked and optimized the grass vegetation. The level is currently running at around 2000 draw calls when looking at very open areas. (800 - 1200 draw calls in the following screenshots). Its running very smoothly and this gives me a good a margin for adding more elements and detail.
Planning to add some sort of ruined watchtower at the peak of that coastal cliff, the player will be able to have a good view of the overall landscape. I'll do some silhouette studies tomorrow regarding that.
first off fantastic work overall. This thread is truly a treasure chest of info and inspiration!
I have a question specifically about the 3d projection textures you used in your forbidden lands landscape (not "terrain") to reduce texture stretching. How exactly did you set those up in the landscape's material? Or could you point me in the direction of a tutorial that covers this? All I've been able to find are tutorials that cover the use of 3d projection textures for the old terrain, not the new landscape. (including your thread on the epic games forums)
Thanks, making the grass pick up the terrain colour works only if your terrain has a basic colour map which is overlayed on top of tiled detail textures (erosion flow+AO+cavity+colour).
I use that colour map on the grass blades and make them blend with the terrain automatically.
Here is how its setup in the material editor :
The terrain colour map :
Your terrain needs to be at the origin of the Grid (location 0,0,0) to project the texture properly.
You also need the terrain size (used in the material) , you can get it by using the ruler (middle mouse clic + drag) or by doing a simple calculation depending on the size of your height map : for a heightmap of 1009x1009 : 1009 - 1 x 128 = 129024. 129024 is the number that should be used in the material for such a terrain for example.
As for seamless environments, you might want to try 3d projected textures which are projected in 3d worldspace and bypasses the UVs.
You can find the following functions in the material editor :
I'll be posting a small video showing how I work when dealing with terrain in UDK (placing rocks on cliffs and making them blend properly)
first off fantastic work overall. This thread is truly a treasure chest of info and inspiration!
I have a question specifically about the 3d projection textures you used in your forbidden lands landscape (not "terrain") to reduce texture stretching. How exactly did you set those up in the landscape's material? Or could you point me in the direction of a tutorial that covers this? All I've been able to find are tutorials that cover the use of 3d projection textures for the old terrain, not the new landscape. (including your thread on the epic games forums)
Either way, thanks bunch!
Here is a simplified version of the material I use for my UDK landscape. It has the 3d projection setup and ready to use
I've been doing some background work and blocking out the castle and village area while keeping everything modular.
I also figured out a very good alternative for making modular assets in 3dcoat.
The technique includes the usage of instanced voxels to tile a sculpt which can be used to preview any changes you do on the original sculpt.
Very Nice work, Some more detail on creating the animated grass would be handy. Very new to cryengine and have also been working on a Large terrain environment for testing but more used to udk, have no idea about animated materials in cryengine 3 and it's my first attempt at building a level in the editor. Any help would be appreciated, check out my attempt; help and tips would be fantastic. Cheers
Wenda, Congratulations for your research, and thanks for tips you gave me, wen this project is over I'll ask you about wich way of creating terrain you liked the most, procedural or hand made in the Editor, thanks also for sharing yous assets like the terrain material, besides that, tell me if you dont mind, wich is your setup for the grass, considering console variables in Autoexec.cfg and Vegetation object setup, like lodistratio, spritedistratio, maxviewdistratio.
Great work as usual, choco. In the tutorial series you put together, you mentioned that in a later video you would show a way to have the tiling textures fade to your diffuse map at a certain distance. I've messed around with a few different ways of doing this in UDK, but nothing I do seems to get it work properly - more often than not my whole landscape just turns black.
Wenda (or apparently Choco here on Polycount), your work is a huge inspiration to me and in fact was the reason I joined Polycount in the first place. I hope to oneday be even half as good as you. Keep up the good work!
I started adding some detail to the ground and sompe paths to guide the player.
It seems like hand painting some shading on the terrain color map really helps adding some volume to it.
Grassy field of daisies rendered ingame using Ce2, no playable framerates on my gtx 480 but visually stunning near CGI level of quality:
Wonder how it would perform on a paired up GF 680's. Anyway, the work you've accomplished in this thread is amazing and the atmosphere and lighting and weather effecs are truly breathtaking. Can't wait for further progress in this.
amazing really inspirational, i love those experiment light setups you posted, I'm amazed at how vast this environment has gone in such little time! when i look at this i really get a feeling of seeing this environment in Final fantasy.
Hi, I am loving each step that you are taking with this. Keep going.
Can I ask you a favor? Could add the UDK material for the grass and for the terrain as well here?
I am trying to make my meshes to get the terrain color under them, but so far, I had no sucess.
Thanks, making the grass pick up the terrain colour works only if your terrain has a basic colour map which is overlayed on top of tiled detail textures (erosion flow+AO+cavity+colour).
I use that colour map on the grass blades and make them blend with the terrain automatically.
Here is how its setup in the material editor :
The terrain colour map :
Your terrain needs to be at the origin of the Grid (location 0,0,0) to project the texture properly.
You also need the terrain size (used in the material) , you can get it by using the ruler (middle mouse clic + drag) or by doing a simple calculation depending on the size of your height map : for a heightmap of 1009x1009 : 1009 - 1 x 128 = 129024. 129024 is the number that should be used in the material for such a terrain for example.
As for seamless environments, you might want to try 3d projected textures which are projected in 3d worldspace and bypasses the UVs.
You can find the following functions in the material editor :
I'll be posting a small video showing how I work when dealing with terrain in UDK (placing rocks on cliffs and making them blend properly)
I've been very busy with some projects lately and didn't have much time for this project. I decided to spend some time for making a video tutorial that should answer some of your questions and show you the workflow that I generally use for making my assets.
I've done the introduction so far for a rock modeling tutorial the other videos will naturally follow up later on today or tomorrow. I'll put a link to the video here and create a thread for it so that you guys don't miss it
Can you explain this further for us. This is way to simplified to get a clear picture of what it is you did.
I'll be covering that part in a video tutorial that I'm working on, its a bit hard to explain but think of it as tiled sculpting instead of being limited to a plane, you can tile the same object and sculpt on it while having direct feedback on the borders/seams where the mesh tile for example.
Very Nice work, Some more detail on creating the animated grass would be handy. Very new to cryengine and have also been working on a Large terrain environment for testing but more used to udk, have no idea about animated materials in cryengine 3 and it's my first attempt at building a level in the editor. Any help would be appreciated, check out my attempt; help and tips would be fantastic. Cheers
Thanks, I'll also be explaining the process of grass creation for CE3 and setting up the materials. There aren't any secrets about animated your grass blades in CE3 since its all based on tweaking some sliders in the material editor and the vegetation settings. But I'll be showing how to get appropriate results without spending too much time tweaking.
Great work as usual, choco. In the tutorial series you put together, you mentioned that in a later video you would show a way to have the tiling textures fade to your diffuse map at a certain distance. I've messed around with a few different ways of doing this in UDK, but nothing I do seems to get it work properly - more often than not my whole landscape just turns black.
How did you go about creating that fade?
Thanks I haven't figured out that part yet, but I've been working on a UDK project lately and I'll look into it again one way or the other. I'll let you know when I get it working :thumbup:
Thanks for the feedback guys
I've done the introduction so far for a rock modeling tutorial the other videos will naturally follow up later on today or tomorrow. I'll put a link to the video here and create a thread for it so that you guys don't miss it
Awesome on the tutorials. #1 way for people to learn (At least in my case) is not just to see other peoples amazing work but just seeing how they do things and compare it to my own workflow.
Really appreciate you taking the time for making these videos and I wish and hope to see many more.
Means a lot! Thanks man.
everything I saw you do in 3dcoat in the first video can be done with dynamesh inside of zbrush with no need to export huge OBJs or switch programs. Zbrush doesn't take that long to learn anyway.
Yeah, but you can't exactly get a free extended student or learner's license of Zbrush as easily as you can most Autodesk applications (at least not that I'm aware).
If anything, these tutorials have introduced me to voxel modeling, which is fascinating, and I really want to give 3dcoat a try. I know zbrush does voxel modeling now, but 3dcoat is far less expensive than a copy of Zbrush, and about a million times easier to navigate.
Yeah you can do almost the exact same thing in zbrush, but you need to keep in mind that 3dcoat is a sculpting app based on voxel sculpting. Which means that it specializes in voxels and has advanced tools for voxel sculpting.
Like I said in the video tutorial, you can skip the mudbox part and do everything in 3dcoat without having to export the obj files.
Using stamps that's aligned with the camera seems like a really nice way to get those shapes! Anyone know if that's an option in Zbrush to? Or something similar? Thx for the tut, looking forward for the next part
Thanks, here is part 2/3 which deals with Low poly mesh creation, UVs, texture map renderings.
Part 3 will have texturing and exporting to game engine.
The project is still alive, its just that I'm working on another 2 projects at the same time which really limits me in my time. There is a huge TODO list which really needs a good team of 4-5 people working on it instead of one person unfortunately.
Great set of tutorials, have to experiment some with zbrush to get the same effect.
You got some popping in your microphone, not a big deal but considering how long they are might be smart to look for a fix
Thanks for all these tutorials, Man. Seriously, they're wonderful, and I'm learning loads.
And just for future reference, you can properly display those normals in Maya by changing from "Right Handed" tangent space to "Left handed, in the Attribute editor:
Replies
Some wip shots for today :
Thanks,
I didn't use worldmachine, I just hand painted the terrain with the SDK tools.
Use the flatten brush to make some terraces then deform those terraces with the Rise/Lower brush to get some height variations.
Once the cliffs are done, you can paint a 3d rock material and then add some rock models for extra detail.
I forgot to add the video :
[ame="
Moving slowly but surely,
I'm currently refining the level and adding some man made architecture progressively.
I activated parallax occlusion mapping for some terrain textures (soil, small stones layers)
Tweaked and optimized the grass vegetation. The level is currently running at around 2000 draw calls when looking at very open areas. (800 - 1200 draw calls in the following screenshots). Its running very smoothly and this gives me a good a margin for adding more elements and detail.
Planning to add some sort of ruined watchtower at the peak of that coastal cliff, the player will be able to have a good view of the overall landscape. I'll do some silhouette studies tomorrow regarding that.
first off fantastic work overall. This thread is truly a treasure chest of info and inspiration!
I have a question specifically about the 3d projection textures you used in your forbidden lands landscape (not "terrain") to reduce texture stretching. How exactly did you set those up in the landscape's material? Or could you point me in the direction of a tutorial that covers this? All I've been able to find are tutorials that cover the use of 3d projection textures for the old terrain, not the new landscape. (including your thread on the epic games forums)
Either way, thanks bunch!
Here is a simplified version of the material I use for my UDK landscape. It has the 3d projection setup and ready to use
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53969153/Landscape_Shader.upk
I've been doing some background work and blocking out the castle and village area while keeping everything modular.
I also figured out a very good alternative for making modular assets in 3dcoat.
The technique includes the usage of instanced voxels to tile a sculpt which can be used to preview any changes you do on the original sculpt.
http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=309&t=86889&start=15
http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC3/Grass+Asset+Setup
http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC3/Detail+Bending#DetailBending-BasicSetup
Wenda, Congratulations for your research, and thanks for tips you gave me, wen this project is over I'll ask you about wich way of creating terrain you liked the most, procedural or hand made in the Editor, thanks also for sharing yous assets like the terrain material, besides that, tell me if you dont mind, wich is your setup for the grass, considering console variables in Autoexec.cfg and Vegetation object setup, like lodistratio, spritedistratio, maxviewdistratio.
Realy amazing stuff.
How did you go about creating that fade?
Grassy field of daisies rendered ingame using Ce2, no playable framerates on my gtx 480 but visually stunning near CGI level of quality:
Wonder how it would perform on a paired up GF 680's. Anyway, the work you've accomplished in this thread is amazing and the atmosphere and lighting and weather effecs are truly breathtaking. Can't wait for further progress in this.
keep up the great work (y)
Can I ask you a favor? Could add the UDK material for the grass and for the terrain as well here?
I am trying to make my meshes to get the terrain color under them, but so far, I had no sucess.
Thank you so much.
I've been very busy with some projects lately and didn't have much time for this project. I decided to spend some time for making a video tutorial that should answer some of your questions and show you the workflow that I generally use for making my assets.
I've done the introduction so far for a rock modeling tutorial the other videos will naturally follow up later on today or tomorrow. I'll put a link to the video here and create a thread for it so that you guys don't miss it
[ame="
Ya, those waves definitely break the scale, it will be changed for sure!
I'll be covering that part in a video tutorial that I'm working on, its a bit hard to explain but think of it as tiled sculpting instead of being limited to a plane, you can tile the same object and sculpt on it while having direct feedback on the borders/seams where the mesh tile for example.
Thanks, I'll also be explaining the process of grass creation for CE3 and setting up the materials. There aren't any secrets about animated your grass blades in CE3 since its all based on tweaking some sliders in the material editor and the vegetation settings. But I'll be showing how to get appropriate results without spending too much time tweaking.
Yhanks, the video tutorial is currently being made, I just made the intro today which should give you a good idea of which softs we'll be using.
Thanks
Really appreciate you taking the time for making these videos and I wish and hope to see many more.
Means a lot! Thanks man.
[ame="
The rest will be on tomorrow.
Haven't seen the rest yet.
If anything, these tutorials have introduced me to voxel modeling, which is fascinating, and I really want to give 3dcoat a try. I know zbrush does voxel modeling now, but 3dcoat is far less expensive than a copy of Zbrush, and about a million times easier to navigate.
Ideally though, zbrush would be the way to go.
Like I said in the video tutorial, you can skip the mudbox part and do everything in 3dcoat without having to export the obj files.
Awesome vids, thanks for sharing!
Part 3 will have texturing and exporting to game engine.
[ame="
Yup thats me
You got some popping in your microphone, not a big deal but considering how long they are might be smart to look for a fix
Here is part 3/4 : Texturing and exporting to CE3
[ame="
And just for future reference, you can properly display those normals in Maya by changing from "Right Handed" tangent space to "Left handed, in the Attribute editor: