Huge Terrain Creator (HTC) for TSE

#1 Very cool!

#2 Wow, thank you ben. :) I think CHU generation is more simple like this. ;)

#3 Got some screenshots of terrains youve created Vincent?

#4 Phil, have you checked my announcement?
I'm preparing screens for HTC with the 37 types of terrains... It will come soon.

#5 Pretty neat.

#6 @Phil : I prefer a fly over of coming Beta 2 of HTC of this hexmap

you can download the video (divx 6.0) HERE.
(11MB, 2 minute length video, captured with fraps with max speed camera (Editor->camera->Very Fast).

#7 What size is that terrain in the demo? 8k x 8k?

#8 Unfortunately, it's only 4k x4k... 8k x 8k crashes TSE systematically in play time.

#9 Some of the terrain types don't seem to mix well in scale.. like the dark brown looks like a large scale terrain, while the light brown looks like a small scale terrain. Those deep ravines of the light brown areas remind me of something I'd be able to step across, whereas the dark brown areas look like something on a mountain range scale. Then again, that could just be the colors... the light brown areas look like the clay soil found in my backyard, but the dark brown areas look more like rock and snow. Is that something that can be adjusted (both scale and texture?)

Looks good, though. With a wide variety of terrain types to choose from, one should be able to create a nicely scaled detailed terrain without much effort.

#10 In fact, the deep ravines are really large (we are very high in the flight)

Both scale and texture can be adjusted. MoreOver general shape (scale, amplitude, altitude, slope, etc...) and texture (colors, slope and altitude dependencies, frequency of colors, etc...) of each terrain type can be adjusted.

In this video it's just a fly over, which don't really render height of terrains. (Swamp are at 0m altitude, ravines (light brown and grey areas) are from -20 to 200 m), orange areas are form 300 to 850 m like mountains (dark brown area).

Edit : added altitude ranges

#11 Every time I see more information about HTC it just makes me want it more.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Very cool Vincent.

#12 Ok I did some playing around. I was looking for some decent fishing spots. This tool actually works great. I did have an error when I tried to make a 16x16 map. I forgot to write down the error msg, but it said something about to many polies. I have been trying to make it happen again. when it does, I will let you know. Anyway, here are my fishing holes I found. These are 8x8, btw.


:)

#13 This tool is great. My only gripe right now is that the hight scale is all wrong, or at least it is for small terrains and the lightmapping is a tad wonky. Other than that, this is great. Mountain ridges and ravines are generated nicely. I could only make a 4x4(small) terrain because generation just plain took too long. I will definetly make a larger terrain on my AMD 64 PC when I get it all setup, but here's what I have for now:

Looking up at the mountain peak:

Overlooking mountain range:

And looking through the mountain pass:

#14 How long does a 16x16 take, roughly? Hopefully not as long as Terragen.

#15 Thanks Vincent for making this tool. I'm really going to enjoy working with this tool. Here's my screenshots of the terrain I made.

#16 Here's 5 shots of the terrain I made. It has mountains on one side of a large gorge with sandy and swampy areas on the other side.

The first shot is from the top of the mountains looking down on a small island in the gorge.


The second is the reverse shot from the little island.


Roughly the same shot with the orc in there for a size reference.


The whole map from above one corner.


The whole map from the opposite corner.


@Vincent: Thanks for making this tool. It's awesome!

@everyone else: If you haven't fiddled around with it yet, go fiddle.

I love this thing!

#17 This was my second terrain generated, a 16x16 after doing a quick 8x8 to get the hang of it. I still didn't have a good grasp of the terrain types, so my lake appears to be some sort of man-made reservoir. I focused my screen shots on this are since the remainder of the map wound up being a mish-mash of terrain types that I didn't even manage to make 'ruggedly appealing.' ;)

Some swamplands that didn't quite get connected to the reservoir.

And finally coming back around to the reservoir again, with the swamplands visible in the distance.

I'm not real sure how I feel about this terrain type, there's a couple of things I can't help but think about every time I've used it so far. First, it's pretty hard to navigate as a player, so depending on the game, you'd need lots of extra geometry or editing for getting around. Then again, I have no idea how it will be editable in the final version of HTC, so it might not be a big deal at all. What really sticks out to me though, especially when flying through the valleys in camera mode, is that the whole effect is spoiled by the texture streaking on the sides. The bane of procedural terrain, I suppose.

What I wound up doing after this, was making a small map and applying 4 squares of each terrain type in the middle to get a feel for what they are and what the textures look like. If I could make a suggestion for the interface icons, it would be nice to have some indication of how steep a tile is, and which way it goes. What came to mind was a triangle, either pointing up or down, with more for the steepness. So, mountains might have 4 triangles pointing up and the ravines 3 or 4 pointing down. Anyway, that's a a fiddly comment for a very nice tool!

Thanks very much for taking this on, I've spent more time in TSE working with this than anything else!

- Don

#18 I went with the concept of "what is the least amount of work I can do and still get some decent landscapes?" I was quite taken with the results. Here are my three shots:

First shot is some rocky hills climbing up to a high grassy plain:

The next is a wide river with some nice reflections of the hills in the background:

Finally, there are the grassy hills with interesting shadows:

By the way, great job on this!

Robert

#19 Lots of exciting screenshots here. How high can y'all push the texture resolution? :)

#20 I really didn't know what to expect but once I played with it, it blew me away!

How easy is it to create gorgeous evironments!

Those automatic, beautiful shadows are what really made my jaw drop.

Excellent work Vincent! You should be very proud of this