Terrain Texturing --> methods?
by BJNelson · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 09/29/2005 (5:02 am) · 2 replies
Please bear with me on this, just getting started with the Atlas terrain engine and enjoying it. It seems creating the terrains is easy enough but producing detailed textures may not be unless access to some great tools is possible.
Does anyone have any work flows for working with massive textures?
I've created a small terrain (same size as the small terrain that comes with TSE) and slapped a 8192x8192 size texture on it which gives a high enough level of detail for what I'm trying to achieve. What I'm trying to achieve is the same level of detail or variety as seen in this (see below):
That image is from World of Warcraft. Notice how there's different shades of grass? Pale Yellow parts for the peaks of the small mounds, and darker green for the lower areas between the mounds. There's about 4-5 different textures being blended together there.
For learning purposes I would like to try and replicate this image. The only way i can see to achieve that is by using about a 8192x8192 size texture and have it split up into smaller mosaic tiles so that it's manageable when it comes to painting on it. I don't have a super computer after all!
The next step is being able to paint on the tiles using tilesets (much like TGE worked). Does anyone know of any programs that can do this? Along with this comes the need to be able to see the height differences. As you can see from the picture above, certain textures appear in certain places based on the height and slope etc of the terrain. I need to be able to put the lighter grass in areas that are raised and the darker grass on areas that are lower. I'm not sure how to achieve that yet.
The last step would be merging the tilesets together. Not such a big deal, until you start working with textures twice the size of 8192x8192.
Sorry for the long-winded post. Just trying to make it as clear as possible. Does anyone have any thoughts about it and/or any solutions/methods to contribute?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Does anyone have any work flows for working with massive textures?
I've created a small terrain (same size as the small terrain that comes with TSE) and slapped a 8192x8192 size texture on it which gives a high enough level of detail for what I'm trying to achieve. What I'm trying to achieve is the same level of detail or variety as seen in this (see below):
That image is from World of Warcraft. Notice how there's different shades of grass? Pale Yellow parts for the peaks of the small mounds, and darker green for the lower areas between the mounds. There's about 4-5 different textures being blended together there.
For learning purposes I would like to try and replicate this image. The only way i can see to achieve that is by using about a 8192x8192 size texture and have it split up into smaller mosaic tiles so that it's manageable when it comes to painting on it. I don't have a super computer after all!
The next step is being able to paint on the tiles using tilesets (much like TGE worked). Does anyone know of any programs that can do this? Along with this comes the need to be able to see the height differences. As you can see from the picture above, certain textures appear in certain places based on the height and slope etc of the terrain. I need to be able to put the lighter grass in areas that are raised and the darker grass on areas that are lower. I'm not sure how to achieve that yet.
The last step would be merging the tilesets together. Not such a big deal, until you start working with textures twice the size of 8192x8192.
Sorry for the long-winded post. Just trying to make it as clear as possible. Does anyone have any thoughts about it and/or any solutions/methods to contribute?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
About the author
Associate Kyle Carter
Meanwhile, yeah, you might have to do some heavy duty photoshopping.