New L3DT for Torque Update!
by Aaron Torpy · 03/01/2009 (2:08 am) · 12 comments
Hi Everyone,
A new release of L3DT Professional is now available in the GarageGames store, and on your profile page if you're already an L3DT user.
If you're a current L3DT user, the main changes between v2.7 (current) and v2.6 (previous) are:
* Support for 'undo' with editing tools and calculations, including multiple levels of undo.
* New goodies in the Sapphire 3D viewer/editor, including video capture, simplified user interface, and fixes for some annoyances (tool/window z-order, etc.)
* Support for up to 8-textures in blended Atlas terrain files. Note this requires you to have re-compiled TGEA with Matt Kronyak's 8-textures resource.
If you'd like to know more about these (and other) changes, please have a look at the full release announcement.
If you've not used L3DT Professional before, I have some explaining to do:
L3DT is a tool for generating large, 3-dimensional terrain maps and textures. It includes random terrain generators, brushes for manual editing of terrain and textures, and a unique 'design map' interface that allows you to design the general layout of your terrain and have L3DT fill in the detail for you.
L3DT also includes an interface for exporting Atlas terrain for use with TGEA (see here). This exporter supports both 'unique' and 'blended' texture Atlas files. Additionally, L3DT supports a wide range of common file formats, which means you can easily read maps from or export maps to other terrain generators, editors or rendering engines.
If you'd like to give L3DT a try, you can download the free 'Standard' edition from here, or apply for a free 90-day trial of the 'Professional' edition using the trial registration form. The following features are only available in the Professional edition:
* Support for huge maps using disk-paging, including map sizes up to 128k x 128k pixels for heightmaps, and 2M x 2M pixels for textures.
* Parallel processing support for multi-core processors, which is rather nifty when making huge maps.
* Support for high-resolution light maps, textures and alpha (opacity) maps.
* Support for batch generation of multiple maps.
The fastest way to learn how to make Atlas terrains using L3DT is to follow the Making blended and unique Atlas terrain for TGEA tutorial. The complete user-guide for L3DT is also on-line here.
A terrain panorama:
Using the 'bulldozer' brush tool:
A walking tour of some terrain:
From the Designing a Fjord tutorial:
From the Making roads in L3DT tutorial:
A recent screenshot of the 2D and 3D user interfaces:
And finally, an old Screenshot of my first blended Atlas terrain:
If you'd like to post a comment on the current release, request a new feature, report a bug, or generally chat on the subject of terrain mapping, please feel free to make use of the L3DT users' community forum. Any and all feedback is most welcome.
Best regards,
Aaron Torpy.
A new release of L3DT Professional is now available in the GarageGames store, and on your profile page if you're already an L3DT user.
What's new?
If you're a current L3DT user, the main changes between v2.7 (current) and v2.6 (previous) are:
* Support for 'undo' with editing tools and calculations, including multiple levels of undo.
* New goodies in the Sapphire 3D viewer/editor, including video capture, simplified user interface, and fixes for some annoyances (tool/window z-order, etc.)
* Support for up to 8-textures in blended Atlas terrain files. Note this requires you to have re-compiled TGEA with Matt Kronyak's 8-textures resource.
If you'd like to know more about these (and other) changes, please have a look at the full release announcement.
Wait, what is L3DT?
If you've not used L3DT Professional before, I have some explaining to do:
L3DT is a tool for generating large, 3-dimensional terrain maps and textures. It includes random terrain generators, brushes for manual editing of terrain and textures, and a unique 'design map' interface that allows you to design the general layout of your terrain and have L3DT fill in the detail for you.
L3DT also includes an interface for exporting Atlas terrain for use with TGEA (see here). This exporter supports both 'unique' and 'blended' texture Atlas files. Additionally, L3DT supports a wide range of common file formats, which means you can easily read maps from or export maps to other terrain generators, editors or rendering engines.
If you'd like to give L3DT a try, you can download the free 'Standard' edition from here, or apply for a free 90-day trial of the 'Professional' edition using the trial registration form. The following features are only available in the Professional edition:
* Support for huge maps using disk-paging, including map sizes up to 128k x 128k pixels for heightmaps, and 2M x 2M pixels for textures.
* Parallel processing support for multi-core processors, which is rather nifty when making huge maps.
* Support for high-resolution light maps, textures and alpha (opacity) maps.
* Support for batch generation of multiple maps.
Tutorials and help
The fastest way to learn how to make Atlas terrains using L3DT is to follow the Making blended and unique Atlas terrain for TGEA tutorial. The complete user-guide for L3DT is also on-line here.
Screenshots and videos
A terrain panorama:
Using the 'bulldozer' brush tool:
A walking tour of some terrain:
From the Designing a Fjord tutorial:
From the Making roads in L3DT tutorial:
A recent screenshot of the 2D and 3D user interfaces:
And finally, an old Screenshot of my first blended Atlas terrain:
Feedback, bug reports, thoughts?
If you'd like to post a comment on the current release, request a new feature, report a bug, or generally chat on the subject of terrain mapping, please feel free to make use of the L3DT users' community forum. Any and all feedback is most welcome.
Best regards,
Aaron Torpy.
#2
03/01/2009 (9:09 am)
Wow, looking good, Aaron! L3DT has come a long way. 
#3
Does tgea still... or will it continue to support atlas terrain? Aren't they talking about new terrain types like megaterrains which will be better? Isn't there a problem with atlas terrain in terms of making tunnels, basements, caves, dungeons etc?
And in terms of the size I like the idea of huge paging terrains but I have read that practically speaking there are definite limits on what can be done before you slow things to a crawl... or have there been improvements with tgea in this area?
Thanks
03/01/2009 (10:33 am)
I am still evaluating things trying to figure out if tgea is the right engine for what I would like to do, and so don't have access to the private forums and information that would probably answer these questions...Does tgea still... or will it continue to support atlas terrain? Aren't they talking about new terrain types like megaterrains which will be better? Isn't there a problem with atlas terrain in terms of making tunnels, basements, caves, dungeons etc?
And in terms of the size I like the idea of huge paging terrains but I have read that practically speaking there are definite limits on what can be done before you slow things to a crawl... or have there been improvements with tgea in this area?
Thanks
#4
For Example taking the larger terrain in L3DT and having it export the height map tiles and the Data blocks for them. Right now you would have to do it manually at least that is the only I have been able to figure out. Another thing "and I think this would be on GG's end" Is it would be cool if the masks for the different textures could be used as well at the normal maps and light maps onto the mega terrains.
03/02/2009 (7:03 am)
hmm yeah I had gotten the impression that going forward that the Mega Terrain was going to be the primary terrain. I hope that I'm wrong on this as a I would really like to use L3DT since I already purchased it. Actually would be nice to come up with a work flow for L3DT to export mega terrain sets. For Example taking the larger terrain in L3DT and having it export the height map tiles and the Data blocks for them. Right now you would have to do it manually at least that is the only I have been able to figure out. Another thing "and I think this would be on GG's end" Is it would be cool if the masks for the different textures could be used as well at the normal maps and light maps onto the mega terrains.
#5
So for me it was only a waste of money after all since I throw it into a folder and let stay there for like forever. -.-
Generated stuff I couldn't view, I gave the paths to the textures and they would never show up. Checked into the forums asking questions and got no answers.
It is quite some time till then though so I hope the support is better in the meantime and more people achieved knowledge upon it so they can help each other.
I hope people with TGEA has got more from it for their money.
The video looks cool and the menue of the saphire looks kinda ok too.
Congrats on the update though.
03/03/2009 (2:22 am)
Bought it due to a guy that were in my project before talking me into it on "how good" it is, saying it works for TGE as good as for TGEA only to find out that all that it did for me was crashing my pc everytime and have no real export function for TGE at all (I know that some things can be exported but they don't help either). So for me it was only a waste of money after all since I throw it into a folder and let stay there for like forever. -.-
Generated stuff I couldn't view, I gave the paths to the textures and they would never show up. Checked into the forums asking questions and got no answers.
It is quite some time till then though so I hope the support is better in the meantime and more people achieved knowledge upon it so they can help each other.
I hope people with TGEA has got more from it for their money.
The video looks cool and the menue of the saphire looks kinda ok too.
Congrats on the update though.
#6
I vaguely recall hearing that Atlas technically does support caves and other arbitrary geometry, but there's currently no way to generate an atlas terrain file with caves. As far as I know the Altas import functions don't have a way to load cave data (in whatever format that may be), nor a way to mark holes in the terrain surface into which caves may be added later. That's one part of the problem; the other side is that the popular heightmap-based terrain generators (e.g. Grome, World-Machine, PnP, L3DT, etc.) tend not to have cave generators, since that task is better suited to a 3D mesh editor program (e.g. Blender, etc.). So, you can't import caves into Atlas, and even if you could, there may not be any easy way to actually generate them. Moving to another terrain renderer (mega-terrain or otherwise) doesn't necessarily make things easier either; you still have to find a way to generate the caves and then load them into whatever terrain engine you use.
In general terms, no, having larger terrain doesn't make things 'slow to a crawl', since frustum clipping, LOD and disk-paging can guarantee an upper limit on the amount of terrain that will be required in memory for rendering at any one time, regardless of terrain size. It's a case of out of sight, out of mind. The frame rate in L3DT, for example, doesn't change whether you have a 2k x 2k pixel heightmap or a 16k x 16k pixel heightmap. In the specific case of Atlas, however, there can be a problem with generating the terrain large files, as it struggles with high-poly terrain (4096x4096 heightfield pixels seems to be a practical limit).
Me too ;) My impression is that there's no fundamental reason L3DT couldn't export to MegaTerrain, since it seems to use a PNG of the heightmap and then up to 8 ground texture images for texture splatting (I'm basing that statement on a quick read of the terrain editor docs). I'm not quite sure how MegaTerrain gets/generates its opacity maps, but if these can be loaded from, say, some RGBA images (or can be made so), then we're good to go; an export plugin for L3DT would be a trivial. However, I'm just not sure on that point of the opacity maps. Can anyone cast a light on my ignorance on this subject?
@Antonio: I'm sorry to hear you had problems with L3DT (crashing, ie gads!). This is the first I've heard of it, but I'd like to get this fixed up for you if it's not too late. Where did you post for help? (hint: the place to get help with L3DT is the on the L3DT forums).
Cheerio,
Aaron.
03/03/2009 (3:33 am)
Hi Guys,Quote:
Isn't there a problem with atlas terrain in terms of making tunnels, basements, caves, dungeons etc?
I vaguely recall hearing that Atlas technically does support caves and other arbitrary geometry, but there's currently no way to generate an atlas terrain file with caves. As far as I know the Altas import functions don't have a way to load cave data (in whatever format that may be), nor a way to mark holes in the terrain surface into which caves may be added later. That's one part of the problem; the other side is that the popular heightmap-based terrain generators (e.g. Grome, World-Machine, PnP, L3DT, etc.) tend not to have cave generators, since that task is better suited to a 3D mesh editor program (e.g. Blender, etc.). So, you can't import caves into Atlas, and even if you could, there may not be any easy way to actually generate them. Moving to another terrain renderer (mega-terrain or otherwise) doesn't necessarily make things easier either; you still have to find a way to generate the caves and then load them into whatever terrain engine you use.
Quote:
And in terms of the size I like the idea of huge paging terrains but I have read that practically speaking there are definite limits on what can be done before you slow things to a crawl... or have there been improvements with tgea in this area?
In general terms, no, having larger terrain doesn't make things 'slow to a crawl', since frustum clipping, LOD and disk-paging can guarantee an upper limit on the amount of terrain that will be required in memory for rendering at any one time, regardless of terrain size. It's a case of out of sight, out of mind. The frame rate in L3DT, for example, doesn't change whether you have a 2k x 2k pixel heightmap or a 16k x 16k pixel heightmap. In the specific case of Atlas, however, there can be a problem with generating the terrain large files, as it struggles with high-poly terrain (4096x4096 heightfield pixels seems to be a practical limit).
Quote:
Actually would be nice to come up with a work flow for L3DT to export mega terrain sets.
Me too ;) My impression is that there's no fundamental reason L3DT couldn't export to MegaTerrain, since it seems to use a PNG of the heightmap and then up to 8 ground texture images for texture splatting (I'm basing that statement on a quick read of the terrain editor docs). I'm not quite sure how MegaTerrain gets/generates its opacity maps, but if these can be loaded from, say, some RGBA images (or can be made so), then we're good to go; an export plugin for L3DT would be a trivial. However, I'm just not sure on that point of the opacity maps. Can anyone cast a light on my ignorance on this subject?
@Antonio: I'm sorry to hear you had problems with L3DT (crashing, ie gads!). This is the first I've heard of it, but I'd like to get this fixed up for you if it's not too late. Where did you post for help? (hint: the place to get help with L3DT is the on the L3DT forums).
Cheerio,
Aaron.
#7
Thanks for a great product. I've been happy with it for a while now. Only question I have about using it is when my license expires on 27-Nov-2009.. will the software stay working or will it halt all working functions at that time? Is this solely for updates or what: I don't think you was clear on it as to if the program still remains working after that time. Will it convert down to a standard version or how does this work? Thanks for the info.
Will
03/03/2009 (6:34 am)
Aaron:Thanks for a great product. I've been happy with it for a while now. Only question I have about using it is when my license expires on 27-Nov-2009.. will the software stay working or will it halt all working functions at that time? Is this solely for updates or what: I don't think you was clear on it as to if the program still remains working after that time. Will it convert down to a standard version or how does this work? Thanks for the info.
Will
#8
The licenses don't expire, so you can continue to use L3DT Professional for as long as it pleases you. The 18-month limit is the time for which you may receive updates/upgrades free of charge. I apologise if this was not previously explained with sufficient clarity.
Best regards,
Aaron.
03/03/2009 (12:43 pm)
Hi Will,The licenses don't expire, so you can continue to use L3DT Professional for as long as it pleases you. The 18-month limit is the time for which you may receive updates/upgrades free of charge. I apologise if this was not previously explained with sufficient clarity.
Best regards,
Aaron.
#9
yeah I have not heard of a way to do this but I do think that it should be added to TGEA. the height map does work however
03/03/2009 (3:04 pm)
Quote:
Me too ;) My impression is that there's no fundamental reason L3DT couldn't export to MegaTerrain, since it seems to use a PNG of the heightmap and then up to 8 ground texture images for texture splatting (I'm basing that statement on a quick read of the terrain editor docs). I'm not quite sure how MegaTerrain gets/generates its opacity maps, but if these can be loaded from, say, some RGBA images (or can be made so), then we're good to go; an export plugin for L3DT would be a trivial. However, I'm just not sure on that point of the opacity maps. Can anyone cast a light on my ignorance on this subject?
yeah I have not heard of a way to do this but I do think that it should be added to TGEA. the height map does work however
#10
I reinput the Product Key from my account page and it won't take it.
I checked the about dialog box in 2.6 and it says Upgrades until: 07-Oct-2009.
Any ideas?
Edit: fixed it myself
03/03/2009 (3:50 pm)
@Aaron - I tried to upgrade to L3DT 2.7 but after I installed it it says the Product Key is incorrect. I reinput the Product Key from my account page and it won't take it.
I checked the about dialog box in 2.6 and it says Upgrades until: 07-Oct-2009.
Any ideas?
Edit: fixed it myself
#11
The quick lush features of L3dt coupled with the manual control of mega terrain would be a killer combination... Yes Please!
03/04/2009 (5:58 am)
Mega terrain export from l3dt would be great!The quick lush features of L3dt coupled with the manual control of mega terrain would be a killer combination... Yes Please!
#12
I apologise for this problem. Can you please send me the debugging logfile? (to aaron@bundysoft.com) You can get to it from the Windows start menu, under:
All programs\Bundysoft\L3DT Professional 2.7\L3DT logs
In that directory, you will find a file called 'debug.dat'. With the logfile I will be able to work out what is going wrong.
Best regards,
Aaron.
03/05/2009 (2:32 am)
Hi Bill,I apologise for this problem. Can you please send me the debugging logfile? (to aaron@bundysoft.com) You can get to it from the Windows start menu, under:
All programs\Bundysoft\L3DT Professional 2.7\L3DT logs
In that directory, you will find a file called 'debug.dat'. With the logfile I will be able to work out what is going wrong.
Best regards,
Aaron.
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