How to make terrains for games

choco · Sep 2011

Well I promised that I would make a tutorial showing how I make terrains, I ended up recording over 4 hours of video tutoring at 1080p split in 3 parts.
Just wanted to share with the community and I hope it can help some people out there

Preview :

Terrain test : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Gvb01572g"]Cry engine 3 Terrain Test - YouTube[/ame]

Links :

Part 1 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0o3bqoM0Qg"]How to create a terrain for Cryengine and UDK Part 1/8 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 2 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRHSbiF6chU"]How to create a terrain for Cryengine and UDK Part 2/8 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 3 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3lVs-7JBn0"]How to create a terrain for Cryengine and UDK Part 3/8 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 4 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ99751dt08"]How to create a terrain for Cryengine and UDK Part 4/8 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 5 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_PDE7VTdIE"]How to create a terrain for Cryengine and UDK Part 5/8 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 6 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNe5X0fKNfU"]How to create a terrain for Cryengine and UDK Part 6/8 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 7 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAdth2HAoek"]How to create a terrain for Cryengine and UDK Part 7/8 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 8 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSqQ-B3U5kM"]How to create a terrain for Cryengine and UDK Part 8/8 - YouTube[/ame]

Texturing :

Part 1 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuhYSSAxq9U"]How to detail your terrains in cryengine 3 part 1/4 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 2 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYoQCPwVRmw"]How to detail your terrains in cryengine 3 part 2/4 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 3 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwZf2KdwDt0"]How to detail your terrains in cryengine 3 part 3/4 - YouTube[/ame]

Part 4 : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le3ux5ZxO30"]How to detail your terrains in cryengine 3 part 4/4 - YouTube[/ame]

How to import a terrain to UDK : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtR-4vA6wAg"]How to import a terrain to UDK - YouTube[/ame]

Final result : [ame="

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT1j8BWFcgw"]How to make a terrain for cryengine and UDK final Result preview - YouTube[/ame]

Sorry for my terrible English on the side note xD

Thierdox · Sep 2011

Thanks a lot for taking the time and uploading all this!

I have been messing around with Worldmachine for a while now, and this should really help giving my terrains that finalized feel.

willy-wilson · Sep 2011

EmAr · Sep 2011

Wow this is great! Thanks a lot for all the effort you put into it

Quasar · Sep 2011

This looks like a lot of fun. Can't wait for the rest of the videos!

Habboi · Sep 2011

I'll definitely be following this. I was wondering though, could you use these techniques to make a terrain that isn't square. A better example would be this picture: http://static.desktopnexus.com/thumbnails/67722-bigthumbnail.jpg

I assume I'd build a base mesh similar to that shape and follow the rest of your steps?

Gorman · Sep 2011

wow big thanks for this!

RictusGrin · Sep 2011

Awesome post! Thanks for this!

Steppenwolf · Sep 2011

Your terrain looks kickass but from what i gathered in the wip thread the polycount is extremely high. I have my doubts about the practical usability for anything that goes beyond a portfolio showpiece. There is a reason why the regular terrain in CE uses lod steps for the tesselation. The guideline from Crytek is 50k tris on screen for terrain.

My personal workflow is that i sculpt my base terrain in sandbox then export it to GeoControl, run some filters for erosion or whatever on it and from there it goes back to sandbox terrain. I'm sure you can do it similarely after all your steps. You can even bake your terrain texture and import it into sandbox. So the end result shouldn't look that much different but run a lot smoother.

Completely ignore everything that i wrote if you already do it like that. Part 2 and 3 arn't up yet.

Thierdox · Sep 2011

Steppenwolf wrote: »

Your terrain looks kickass but from what i gathered in the wip thread the polycount is extremely high. I have my doubts about the practical usability for anything that goes beyond a portfolio showpiece. There is a reason why the regular terrain in CE uses lod steps for the tesselation. The guideline from Crytek is 50k tris on screen for terrain.

He won't actually use the model in-game.
He's just using it to generate the texture maps and a heightmap, which he then apply to the CryEngine/UDK's terrain.

snow · Sep 2011

Awesome, what are the islands in the distance made of? They planes or models?

choco · Sep 2011

thanks

part 2/3 is up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRHSbiF6chU

part 3/3 will be on youtube later today

Mio · Sep 2011

dude you are awesome!
you terrains looks F amazing!

Lennyagony · Sep 2011

I haven't had a chance to watch these yet but a big Thank you for taking the time, much appreciated.

Cordell Felix · Sep 2011

whoa @_@ i was wondering if i would ever learn your technique. I saw ur stuff on the WAYWO thread. Thanks a million for posting a whole thread about this man!

I will for sure soak in some of this knowledge!

Razorb · Sep 2011

Very very kind of you

jarrede · Sep 2011

sweeeet

STRIKER · Sep 2011

thanks a bunch dude!

Clark Coots · Sep 2011

just watched the first two, awesome job, thanks! can't wait for the 3rd video to be uploaded

fearian · Sep 2011

This is really interesting. Alot of respect to you sir!

KyleJensen · Sep 2011

These are awesome. Thanks for uploading!

Computron · Sep 2011

Why youtube!?!?! Can You upload them to megaupload or mediafire as well, please?????

Paunescu.Daniel · Sep 2011

Computron wrote: »

Why youtube!?!?! Can You upload them to megaupload or mediafire as well, please?????

why would he?

Swizzle · Sep 2011

Paunescu.Daniel wrote: »

why would he?

So they can be easily downloaded and watched in a video player that isn't Flash-based, such as VLC or Quicktime. So they can be watched offline. So you can have them for future reference stored on your computer. For a multitude of reasons.

Paunescu.Daniel · Sep 2011

Swizzle wrote: »

So they can be easily downloaded and watched in a video player that isn't Flash-based, such as VLC or Quicktime. So they can be watched offline. So you can have them for future reference stored on your computer. For a multitude of reasons.

they can be downloaded off of youtube as well

GoSsS · Sep 2011

Thanks a lot for that, that's awesome !!

Computron · Sep 2011

itismario wrote: »

You can use jdownloader to snag them off youtube.

This is the tits man! Thanks a lot for the share with the community.

I did that from the start, but there is a quality loss. Oh well.

Matroskin · Sep 2011

Computron wrote: »

I did that from the start, but there is a quality loss. Oh well.

I use Download Helper plugin for firefox - it downloads exact quality as it is on youtube, so u won't have any quality loss there

gsokol · Sep 2011

Awesome. Thanks for the vids..I'll have to check this out!

passerby · Sep 2011

thanks for the vids i checked out most of the first one and will try to adapt the workflow for zbrush and maya since i dont got mudbox. though also since a lot of your work was done with the scrape tool and sculpting with a stamp i think even sculptris will even be a good fit for this kinda work.

i will just need to bake with XNormal or just use grabdoc in zbrush with a hight-map matcap on.

ya for getting the videos both Opera and Chrome got a extension called fastest tube which add a download buttons right to YT's UI and lets you grab any version of the video that can be played in YT at the same quality.

for opera
https://addons.opera.com/en/addons/extensions/details/fastesttube-youtube-video-downloader/1.5.4/

for chrome

http://www.chromeextensions.org/music-videos-photos/fastesttube/

Will Faucher · Sep 2011

Holy.... dude thanks a TON for this.

Clark Coots · Sep 2011

I had a go at a few hours of sculpting in Mudbox. I gotta say creating cliffs/mountains has never been easier! Wish I had World Builder too though. thanks for the tutorial!

Computron · Sep 2011

Part 3 today?

Matroskin wrote: »

I use Download Helper plugin for firefox - it downloads exact quality as it is on youtube, so u won't have any quality loss there

The quality loss comes from youtube re-encoding. Jdownloader works the same way as your plugin. Ideally I could just download the originals, but it's not a big deal.

synergy11 · Sep 2011

Nice work!

Could you not just sculpt and paint it all in mudbox? Why even use world machine?

ZacD · Sep 2011

its a tool, its hard to get accurate effects like erosion without spending lots of time messing with just sculpting.

z3phon · Sep 2011

Wow thanks for the videos!

EVIL · Sep 2011

synergy11 wrote: »

Nice work!

Could you not just sculpt and paint it all in mudbox? Why even use world machine?

world machine gives you much more realistic effects then you just sculpting it, plus you can use each bit of generated effect to push out different maps that you can use as masks for your texture work.

Some of the maps it pushed out are way to soft for the revolution we are talking about tho. I mean the detail in the AO map looked like a 512x 512 map

arrangemonk · Sep 2011

using my bacelor tool one has rudimentary access to erosion filters on heightmaps (takes long but supports up to 16k²)
link

and terracing is done this way:

Snipergen · Sep 2011

I usually don't post much on Polycount, but when I do, it's to thank awesome guys like you.

verybad · Sep 2011

Absolutely awesome, and extremely useful tutorial.

My only negative thing to say is Dammit, get the third video up. I was refreshing on Youtube and here trying to find it.

It's hard to find tutorials that are so well done that you can watch several hours and still want more at 1 AM!

Thank You!

synergy11 wrote: »

Nice work!

Could you not just sculpt and paint it all in mudbox? Why even use world machine?

I suggest you try out the demo. It's a damn fine tool. After watching this tutorial however, I may just have to buy the pro version.

choco · Sep 2011

Thanks guys, I really appreciate all the comments and they really help me get some motivation for making some tutorials that will show you how to make content for game engines in the future.

Now as for the 3rd part of the tutorial its been done 2 days ago but I'm having a hardtime trying to upload the file to youtube since for some reason its size is abit over 3gb and the upload stops whenever my internet bugs out sometimes.
I did 3 attempts so far and the upload stopped in the middle of it.
With my upload speed being 60kb/s it would take me 8-10 hours of upload time.
I will probably have to reencode the video, because the size of 3gb isn't something that I expected (I was expecting something around 600mb to 1gb just like the other parts I uploaded).

The part 3/3 features the implementation of the terrain in the game engine and its around 1 hour and 20min of tutoring.

Habboi wrote: »

I'll definitely be following this. I was wondering though, could you use these techniques to make a terrain that isn't square. A better example would be this picture: http://static.desktopnexus.com/thumbnails/67722-bigthumbnail.jpg

I assume I'd build a base mesh similar to that shape and follow the rest of your steps?

This is a good example of one of the limitations you might meet while working on a terrain system. In your case depending if you are planning to walk on that giant floating piece of terrain you will have to make a model for it and use vertex coloring to paint your texture masks for each texture you are using (grass, stone, soil etc...)

Now depending on which engine you are working on, you will have different ways of solving the problem :

Lets say you are trying to make the scene you showed me on the screenshot in Cryengine.
Cryengine has in awesome feature that you will probably not find in any AAA game engine, and its voxels.
You can use voxels to make caves, rocks, any kind of terrain formation you want inside the level editor itself.
And the best part about it is that you wont have any texture seams or texture projection issue when using voxels, since its all textured seamlessly and automatically. (Cryengine supports 3d textures/materials for minimal stretching when slope angle is too high).

Now that was one way of solving the problem.

The other way around, is to use a more conventional method.
This method is used for most engine such as UDK for example.

You will have to model by hand your terrain, sculpt it in mudbox to add some detail then make a low poly version that you will have to UVmap for minimal texture stretching.
And then you will have to bake the normal map/ambient occlusion map onto the low poly terrain.

The final output that will be used in the game engine will be a model with textures.

Limitations you might meet with this method :

- Texture seams.
- Control over your terrain in the engine (you wont be able to modify your terrain since its a model)
- Collisions.

coots7 wrote: »

I had a go at a few hours of sculpting in Mudbox. I gotta say creating cliffs/mountains has never been easier! Wish I had World Builder too though. thanks for the tutorial!

Looks awesome, keep it up, can't wait to see the final result !

arrangemonk wrote: »

using my bacelor tool one has rudimentary access to erosion filters on heightmaps (takes long but supports up to 16k²)
link

and terracing is done this way:

Thanks ! I'll check it out and see if I can add this tool to my workflow

Habboi · Sep 2011

Thanks for replying. I had a feeling that would be the way to go. Oh well, I'll probably leave that task till last and work on some props

choco · Sep 2011

Part 3/8 is up, I had to split the 3rd part in 6 parts to finally upload it on youtube

Other parts will be there shortly aswell

Part 3/8 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3lVs-7JBn0

choco · Sep 2011

Part 4/8 is up [ame]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ99751dt08[/ame]

Matroskin · Sep 2011

@ choco - great stuff once again

What do u use to record stuff? in my case I suffer from whether getting bad quality (too much compression)or too short capture duration (up to 10 mins max, cauz it seems to use only RAM before i save the captured vid, and it runs out of RAM pretty quick:P)
Could u plz tell a bit about your capturing approach

?

thanks a lot!

Makkon · Sep 2011

This... is amazing

Computron · Sep 2011

Matroskin wrote: »

@ choco - great stuff once again
What do u use to record stuff? in my case I suffer from whether getting bad quality (too much compression)or too short capture duration (up to 10 mins max, cauz it seems to use only RAM before i save the captured vid, and it runs out of RAM pretty quick:P)
Could u plz tell a bit about your capturing approach ?

thanks a lot!

Look for anything with hardware compression. If it is a game engine try gameclaw, its like fraps.

RREYGUN · Sep 2011

just curious.. would these techniques work for Unity3D as well?

passerby · Sep 2011

Matroskin wrote: »

@ choco - great stuff once again
What do u use to record stuff? in my case I suffer from whether getting bad quality (too much compression)or too short capture duration (up to 10 mins max, cauz it seems to use only RAM before i save the captured vid, and it runs out of RAM pretty quick:P)
Could u plz tell a bit about your capturing approach ?

thanks a lot!

he uses camtasia to do desktop capture and prolly also edited the video in camtasia also

megalmn2000 · Sep 2011

NIIIIICE!

Computron · Sep 2011

RREYGUN wrote: »

just curious.. would these techniques work for Unity3D as well?

Documentation:
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Components/terrain-Height.html

Technically this will work with any engine regardless of it supporting heightmap based terrain. as long as you can write a terrain blend shader, you can allways use 3ds max to displace a plane an make it a static mesh. you will lose out on the dynamic LOD aspect though.

How to make terrains for games

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