8 textures for Atlas working

#1 So how soon do you think we can see this awesome system as a resource?

#2 Looks great!

#3 Pretty sweet, lots of potential there.

#4 Looks very good actually.

#5 Looks freaking great, good job on the work. Is there any type of minor/major performance hit using the 2 RGBA maps on the terrain?

#6 I haven't seen much but i guess I never actually clocked the F.P.S....but it definitely runs faster that having all the terrain normal mapped or something. The thing is that when you set visibility distance in the mission editor it culls everything out side of that....I have a mission that has 40 atlas files in them running with no noticeable hitching...I should have more concrete data soon....How about i work on getting it cleaned up, and then Post everything here first so everyone can help me find any problems...and so I can post some instruction as it would be a pretty extensive resource with questions and all, I'm sure there will be some bumps to get over when everyone begins to deal with 2 opacity maps...you see you must be very careful laying out maps...Ive tried importing like 7-8 different alpha maps from L3DT but there is too much overlap from the different layers so the textures mix where you don't want them to, and for some reason you have to flip the light-map, as well as both opacity maps 90 degrees Clockwise when you finish them..odd oh and did i mention you use an external light-map too:) But I want to ask you all one question before i continue...is this enough texture per Atlas chunk? I also might alter the Atlas2TOC (I think that is where I do it) so the Atlas files work without a light-maps, and texture layer since it will be done externally...like i said i could use some input on which way to go, you have all given me the ideas that put this together:) So let them fire away and i will try to integrate them, into what is a monster shader:)

#7 How does it run faster than having the terrain normal mapped? A 4-texture blend + normal map would be 6 texture samples per pixel (4 color, 1 opacity, 1 normal), and then an additional dot product. An 8 texture blend is 10 texture samples per pixel (8 color, 2 opacity).

#8 @Pat...Honestly I'm not too sure, but I notice a lot of extra things I would have done different in the resource, and Ves even comments on it in his code about moving all the individual calculations to the to each of the separate normal maps into a function instead of a duplicate for each and then using it in the blend or something, and with what he set up you have to use shader model 3 apparently, but I was wrong with what i said about mine being only shader model 3.0 as I just ran it all as is on 2.0 all the way, and I get better frames from setting it at 2.0 than I do at 3.0...sorry for the late reply and i know that frame changes may not be happening for the reasons I think, i am perfectly willing to listen to what you have to say on the matter, as you work in the field I am striving for in my current college education, and clearly know more on the matter:)

#9 Heres a demo merged with the FPS demo so you can have an ork to run around with:)

www.mediafire.com/?6jwxxtmuniz

#10 OK this is REALLY nice!!! Please resource this.

#11 Great work!

Please make a resource of asap :)

#12 Grr, lost my post...

The short version was:
-This is cool
-Be careful though. That many texture samples per pixel, for a large portion of the scene, is very GPU intensive.

#13 This is cool but has a quite visible bug right now.
When I walk along the path I see how the path in the backgrounds (I assume of another Atlas terrain) flattens to the same level as the path of my own "block" is. In ROAM terrains and the like this error would normally be called T-Crack ...

And I would say it is fast enough for "realtime usage": 180 FPS upwards in windowed 1024x768 with max settings. and the 180 FPS were reached in the valley when I happily shoot some projectiles along the valley so quite some lights had to be callculated. otherwise it was 240FPS upward. (2x3Ghz C2D E6600, 8800GTS SC, 2GB RAM)

#14 Quite nice work there. Like Marc I got the bug also but its only in one spot right where you start off at when you look into the valley. I was getting 333fps(cap'd) and I kicked everything on in options and dropped down to 280 when inside the valley.

Running C2D 1.8ghz needs to be set back 2.8ghz(love this chip), 8800 GTS 640MB, 4GB Ram

#15 I just realized something (I must have lost my edge over vacation). Atlas uses a clip map, so the number of pixels that the terrain draws is based on the clipmap updates. This makes more sense now. So actually doing those texture samples isn't going to hit performance nearly as much as what I was thinking. Sorry about that.

#16 Sorry I didn't get back sooner..sharing my computer during vacation, I will get to work on this tonight and I'm going to try to add the specular ala world of warcraft style but i want to put a check box on off kinda thing...I see it in one of the other shader based things.

OK here is the source...BUT just to let you all know Im not going to turn this in as a resource yet, as Im not finished but I can let those of you that don't want or need the other things I may or may not put in there. And also I had Ves's resource for the Bump-mapped Atlas2 Terrain merged with mine, and I took a couple of lessons from his work, and some of it is still there and I might use it for the specular stuff which i like:) I hope he doesn't mind. I'm sure hell see this post so I f you have any objection ill gladly take this down. All that said Use this At you own risk as it reacquires a merger of source and a build...later I post some basic Instructions for making opacity maps and such...have fun and thank you all so far this isn't just my work I have only made minor changes and all from what i learned here, this just need to be in one spot;)

www.mediafire.com/?41jzqhy1nz5

#17 Thanks Bobby Leighton

#18 Im trying to write up a tutorial on how to use and add stuff to this if that is anyone's wish as well as other stuff i think the terrain need, what is the preferred format for them...PDF..HTML...Just need to know what direction to take:)
As far as Im concerned terrain is #1 priority in my development seeing how my senior project is a scaled down MMORPG..just want it to look good...Please feel free to add stuff here that we can add to Atlas2, if other want them i will add them to the list and get them one by one:)

#19 Hey Bobby Leighton,

First of all i would like to congratulate you on some fine looking art!

As far as the tutorial format goes, i would just try to get it down on to a permanent medium.

HTML is good as you can put pic's in it and you can create a PDF from it later so people can download it for personal off-line reference.

Also Wink is a great program for tutorial creation, which can be found Here

Hope that helps :)

#20 Thanks Ill give it a try:)