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How to make terrains for games

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  • passerby
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    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    Computron wrote: »

    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.

    maybe split it into multiple meshes so you can lod part of the terrain, wouldn't be that hard to do that and just hide the seams in foliage.

    though still wouldn't work near as well as dynamic lods for terrain in udk or ce3
  • tristamus
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    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    Incredible, and much appreciated.
  • Shaffer
    Thanks for the vids, I have been working on pretty much the same workflow for terrain to send over to HeroEngine. Will check yours out to see another perspective and hopefully learn something.
  • choco
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    choco polycounter lvl 10
    thanks glad you guys liked the tutorial, I will probably make some other tuts for modeling or maybe something about making a consistent environment which would apply to any game engine since it will feature a bit of theory and some technical stuff in cryengine and UDK

    Here is the final result of the terrain that you saw me working on in the tutorial series :

    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT1j8BWFcgw[/ame]
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    What do you call the map you extracted with the negative filter? How do you get this in ZBrush? Is there a list of extractable maps and usage cases you guys can point me too?
  • kodde
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    kodde polycounter lvl 18
    Very nice. Thanks for sharing!
  • toxic_h2o
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    toxic_h2o polycounter lvl 8
    Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to do this! you are awesome!
  • choco
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    choco polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks and you welcome :)
    Finalizing the series with texture detailing process in CE3

    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuhYSSAxq9U[/ame]

    the rest of it can be found on my youtube channel.
    Computron wrote: »
    What do you call the map you extracted with the negative filter? How do you get this in ZBrush? Is there a list of extractable maps and usage cases you guys can point me too?

    I call it an "edge hightlight map" I'm not really sure if you can setup the filter size in zbrush (not a big zbrush user xD )
    if you have access to the filter size when rendering in AO map in zbrush you can probably do the same thing that I did in mudbox.
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    Cool, I just finished modeling and texturing mine from your tutorial. Just what I needed!
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    Is it possible to mask out my terrain detail textures with masks I made in Photoshop? I don't want to have to rebuild them by hand in the editor, but i cant find where to import them. I know about the mask by slope angle feature, but why should I remake my masks manually when I already made them in Photoshop?
  • Nishki Sataro
    I was discussing possibly using World Machine to create a game in UDK with a few of my classmates, and we got to wondering, and weren't sure where exactly to ask, but since this thread is discussing environment creation using WM, we figured we could probably ask it here.

    We are wanting to create a 1024 x 1024 map in Mudbox, similar to as what Choco had made with his (except his was 512x512). And the reason for that is because we want to create 4 quadrants with that map, and give each section a 256x256 map size. Is it at all possible to us WM in a way to create these quadrants so that we can later on choose the sections to make in the height map?

    Reason being, we're wanting to create a 3 lvl game, and have it start at a village on a plain like area, to a wooded, hilly location, and end at a ruins upon a plateau.
  • Joopson
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    Joopson quad damage
    Same as mudbox, Hboy. I followed along with this using Zbrush, and as long as you know the software pretty well, it's a piece of cake.
  • Clark Coots
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    Clark Coots polycounter lvl 12
    just watched the new videos. nice job. poor CryEngine3 seems unstable with paintLayers :(

    will you be doing a UDK terrain/landscape demo soon?
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    Cryengine's terrain seems really antiquated compared to udk landscape. Glitchy as hell and it wont allow you import masks or blend materials partially? no thanks.
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    UDK Landscape

    Computron%27s%20Landscape.jpg

    no detail textures or lighting yet.
  • Kurry
    Just wanted to say thank you for creating these vids and give you a well deserved bump :)
  • odium
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    odium polycounter lvl 18
    Ok, now I'm gonna sound the the local ass clown here, but... I'm trying my hardest to get this all working with vertex painting as best as possible... VERTEX PAINT YOU SCREAM!? Yeah... Our engine has quite a complicated lighting set up and it looks stunning granted, the only draw back is that some things are not exactly possible right now, one of them being a better terrain painting system.

    So the best I've got so far, is a vertex painted terrain, with a 4096x4096 normal map that blends over the top of all the normal textures (to give it the correct detail/shape when viewed over a distance). But that doesn't really allow nice blending between diffuse maps...

    Unless we some how manage to get mega texture working, I can't see our terrain being any better sadly. But it produces decent enough results, I just wish it produced ^^^ THESE ^^^ results :(
  • r4ptur3
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    r4ptur3 polycounter lvl 10
    If I understand correctly, you do not need massive textures to get this result. The 2048 he is baking is only seen when you are at a distance. All the gorgeous detail he is getting when he is close to the terrain comes from detail maps. The detail maps fade in based off a custom mask texture which does not need to be that massive. A couple 2K maps are all you should really need for a piece of terrain that big. Then again...I could be epic failing at understanding the process :P
  • Minos
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    Minos polycounter lvl 16
    That's super awesome, thanks for the taking the time to put those up!!
  • krateos_29
    Thanks, thanks a lot for the tutorial.

    That's me implementing your workflow with UDK Landscape system! From now on displacments won't be the same :D They are not so cool as yours, but (it's something):poly142:

    landscape02.jpg

    landscape03.jpg
  • achmedthesnake
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    achmedthesnake polycounter lvl 17
    choco - (sorry to semi-necro this thread) I've actually bought worldbuilder after seeing your tuts, and had one question:

    after you've exported the amended mesh from worldbuilder back into mudbox - you then sculpt a bit more emphasizing the rock parts with a unique brush - what brush/stamp/alpha were you using?
  • jybrd
    Thank you,

    This is my first attempt at working with CryEngine and World Machine. I actually purchased World Machine halfway through your tutorial. Very well done, and you have a skill I am working to achieve. I can’t wait to continue on and make my levels as detailed as possible. Thank you again for taking the time to do this for us. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was intimidated by some of these programs.
  • lincolnhughes
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    lincolnhughes polycounter lvl 10
    I'm having issues importing my height map from world machine into udk. I tried exporting a 2048 by 2048 .raw and also an r16 file, but when I use landscape mode to import a height map, nothing happens. Supposedly it's supposed to automatically generate how many components / faces per quadrant are needed, but it doesn't once I import it. It won't allow me to hit the create landscape button. Any ideas anybody?
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    CROP your heightmap to the sizes written on the landscape UDN page.
  • divi
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    divi polycounter lvl 12
    i hope that there's lots of love coming your way.
    very awesome of you to share this.
  • lincolnhughes
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    lincolnhughes polycounter lvl 10
    thanks computron. It seems that some of the sizes on that website work and some don't.... I settled on 2017 and it finally worked. Thanks again man
  • searlee
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    searlee polycounter lvl 12
    How do you go about importing the textures and slapping them onto the landscape in UDK? I have no idea what I'm doing and none of the tutorials I can find talk about that. I've made everything else as the tutorial says. I've got the landscape into UDK I just don't have any materials on it. Thanks again for the tutorials. :)
  • lincolnhughes
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    lincolnhughes polycounter lvl 10
    check this out:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJs9bWDxuV4"]UDK Learning Importing Height and Weight Maps and Creating Custom Materials Tutorial Part 01 - YouTube[/ame]

    the awesome tutorial for this thread doesn't really go over what to do once you get to UDK but this one seemed to go over it pretty well. Enjoy :)
  • lincolnhughes
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    lincolnhughes polycounter lvl 10
    Keep in mind that in the tutorial when they go over importing all of your masks that you export from world machine, they all need to be imported into udk landscape mode in either r16 or raw data format as separate layers.
  • searlee
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    searlee polycounter lvl 12
    figured it out :D thanks guys
  • choco
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    choco polycounter lvl 10
    Added "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]
  • DennisGlowacki
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    DennisGlowacki polycounter lvl 7
  • Del
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    Del polycounter lvl 9
    ~ Incredible work, and beautiful to see you contribute towards the community. That's what it's all about man!
  • Scampbell
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    Scampbell polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks so much for this, cant wait to try this out.
  • Clark Coots
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    Clark Coots polycounter lvl 12
    thanks for the UDK tutorial, i've been waiting for this one. at the end though when you have 1 texture sample with grass, rock, and soil in RGB channels, can't you just link the channel from the texture sample directly to the layer without a component mask?
  • choco
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    choco polycounter lvl 10
    coots7 wrote: »
    thanks for the UDK tutorial, i've been waiting for this one. at the end though when you have 1 texture sample with grass, rock, and soil in RGB channels, can't you just link the channel from the texture sample directly to the layer without a component mask?


    Seems like the only way to separate color channels is by using the component mask node. I've tried by directly linking the channel to the next node, it didn't work with the latest version of UDK. (even tho it used to work in the old ones).
    coots7 wrote: »
    thanks for the UDK tutorial, i've been waiting for this one. at the end though when you have 1 texture sample with grass, rock, and soil in RGB channels, can't you just link the channel from the texture sample directly to the layer without a component mask?

    Make sure that your heightmap is in 16bit :)
  • gauss
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    gauss polycounter lvl 18
    this is a tremendous effort and like the others I can't thank you enough, it is coming at a very opportune moment in my own UDK project. This will help tremendously, thank you.
  • Veizer
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    Veizer polycounter lvl 11
    Wow great stuff man, thanks a lot!
  • Eric Chadwick
  • choco
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    choco polycounter lvl 10
  • Hexidine
    This shit is saweeet. thanks!
  • commander_keen
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    commander_keen polycounter lvl 18
    Im in your forums necroing all your threads...

    Good tutorial.
    RREYGUN wrote: »
    just curious.. would these techniques work for Unity3D as well?

    You can pretty much anything in unity, but it may take some coding. I have recently wanted to make some good terrain in Unity but i knew that the builtin Unity terrain system is pretty crap. I didnt want to create an entirely new terrain system because Unitys terrain mesh stuff is actually good, its just the shader and tools that kinda suck.

    Unfortunately Unitys terrain system is completely locked down so you cant really directly change it very much. Luckly you can actually create a terrain shader override though which allows you to create nice looking terrain.

    Heres what I came up with. This shot is pretty outdated and only has 3 detail textures, but the shader can easily support 5 detail textures, or even more if needed.

    4f33ad8f9b229.png
  • griiot
    Thanks for the tutorial !
    desert_udk_07.jpg
    desert_udk_08.jpg
    (new udk user here)
    wanted to try it with some data generated with worldmachine but i get some strange moir
  • zakhar2
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    zakhar2 polycounter lvl 6
    I dont really know a whole lot about optimization, but would it cost more or less memory/material instructions to put the diffuse detail textures into the alpha channel of the normal map?
  • Eric Chadwick
    It says right there... lighting needs to be rebuilt.
    griiot wrote: »
    desert_udk_08.jpg
    (new udk user here)
    wanted to try it with some data generated with worldmachine but i get some strange moir
  • Dragonar
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    Dragonar polycounter lvl 10
    Hi all ,

    I have a problem when I extract my Heightmap from Mudbox .

    Maybe some one can help me .

    Thanks a lot

    UcEMF.jpg
  • Vio
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    Vio polycounter lvl 6
    Straight into my favourites!
  • Skummel
    Very nice tutorials choco they're very detailed. I have run into a bit of a problem while following them though if anybody has a solution.

    BIjJa.jpg

    I was following along using Zbrush instead of Mudbox, I got this kind of stepping problem when importing the height map from zbrush to World Machine but then I just used a blur node and continued. Once I imported the modified height map back into Zbrush I got the stepping and that weird flat solid wall on 2 of the edges of my terrain.

    Anybody have a solution to this? I've tried 8-bit, 16-bit, CMYK, Greyscale, RGB, larger image sizes, so far the best results ive had is the 2048x2048 8-bit RGB which is what's in that picture.

    It imports into UDK fine but I would like to be able to take it back into Zbrush to sculpt in a few more details and bake out another AO and such
  • griiot
    Skummel wrote: »
    Very nice tutorials choco they're very detailed. I have run into a bit of a problem while following them though if anybody has a solution.

    BIjJa.jpg

    you need to change some value in zbrush before importing "preference>performance>preload file size"
    i don't know to what since i always put it to the maximum (500) and it solve the moir
  • Skummel
    Just tried that with all the different modes and such, still even with preloaded file size I get the same problem, also whenever I pick something above 8-bit I get crazy noisy terrain that is just a bunch of spikes. Is there another option I need to check? I'm thinking I'll just paint in my extra details for heightmap in photoshop and constantly test it out in UDK instead of seeing it real time in zbrush :/
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