Free Terrain Height Map

#1 how would i implement this...

#2 Added a video for implementing look at in HD, it has about 30 minutes left on uploading for come back in an hour or so I'm headed to work GL. Let me know if you have any issues.

Edit:
Its up now.

#3 thx

#4 You have no detail, macro, normal textures at all? The terrain program should give you layer maps I think, so you can add layers of textures.
Also I would turn down the brightness/contrast/saturation of the base texture, it looks pretty harsh this way.

#5 Nope I've been looking around the forums and resources on how to use these maps. I'm just playing around to see how they work right now. If you can point me in a good direction I would appreciate it.

The only thing I understand is that a targa file can be exported and brought into t3d that will give me the layers based on terrain height. As for it actually working I have yet to get that to actually give me layers.

My work flow is from vue 11 to Wm to t3d the texture maps I am getting from vie and the highest I can get is 4096 but with this huge type of terrain it gets stretched. Can't really find much help anywhere on a work flow

#6 This is just the base texture, you do not even need it at all in Torque. The base map that covers the whole terrain is kind of a workaround. The layer maps are the important thing, they look like black/white textures.
But you can still use your base texture for the whole terrain, you just need to add layer maps with macro textures, this will cover the blurred basetexture.
PS: Your download site is not very good, since you need to register there for download.

#7 I'm trying to find a guide on how to make these maps. The closest thing i see to this is are 16 bit targa files. As for making a macro file I have not found anything for this yet. As stated this is just my first try at trying to lean the terrain and material editor. I found something on UDKs web site that goes over macro textures and details I'm assuming this knowledge is not platform specific.

#8 Why don't you look at my example terrains? I put the heightmaps and layermaps and textures into the package including a Torque3D implementation, so everyone knows what it should look like.
I guess Vue is not compatible with Torque3D, you will have to find a workaround and for example make the other textures yourself.

#9 I'm mainly using Vue for the manual Brushing I might have to use WM for the texturing layers.

Which example the desert? And are you talking about the 3.5 release?

#10 opengameart.org/content/example-terrains
It was part of the community art project for new example terrains, but there was not much participation and the original steering committee did not keep on the old plan.
My terrain is half hand painted, but it should give you an idea how to handle it and if you don't have layer maps, you could try the torque autopaint function, it will automatically texture your whole map, depending on elevation and slope.

#11 it may just be because I am in a grumpy mood after a long day at work, or it may just be the usual harshness in your statements Duion that has rankled me.

Stating something like "This is just the base texture, you do not even need it at all in Torque" is just plain weak, personally i believe you will never ever be able to achieve the natural looks at distance and detail painting your own manual basemap when compared to even the quickest procedurally generated map made for that specific heightmap. Yes with a bit of patience and learning, there is a skill in itself finding out what colour tones work for what ecosystems, also understanding your chosen tool is a major part in this.

Opacity maps are a bit of an ass to use within torque as they are not intuitive at all, and it is dependant on the output file being in the right format for torque to read.

Opacity maps are briefly mentioned in the docs

Detail and macro maps also contain colour information, which can multiply the colour with the basetex used on the terrain, the kind of acidic green grass you have is much too strong on the base texture but easily fixable with some colour shifts in say photoshop or gimp. generally go with the colour that you want to see on the terrain at distance. everything will keep their balance better then. the terrain colour wont be affected by the detail/macro maps at that distance. and locally around the player it wont be too over exposed on the colours. Its really just practice and experience that helps out the most, make maps, try different colour schemes, look at different techniques etc.

#12 Thanks, Andy that cleared some things up. I'm going to keep looking for more information in those docs and examples. I see what you are saying but I'm a visual learner and once i finally understand it all I'll try to post some better textures. With a video of me applying them to help others. There really should be more video tutorials out there for some of the ins and out of the engine. I think it would help the community so much more than having text everywhere. Different media for different learners. One reason why its hard for me to grasp.

#13 Heya Kevin,

Personally I dont use opacity maps myself, i hand paint the terrain detail and macro's on, but I generate my own base textures during terrain creation through geocontrol.

I do things my own way lol, ive always been a self teacher, and generally learn better by failing at something miserably until i find out how to do it my way...

I dont know if you have seen any of the terrains I released, the stuff that I was making for the eck pack a few years back I started releasing bit by bit for free through www.torqueterrains.com, each mission has its own basetex in a similar style to yours, but includes detail and macro layers (aslong as you have the texture packs installed)
Each of those maps I paint the detail and macro layers manually, prettymuch through a simple trial and error until I get the effect I am looking for with the mix of terrain coverage and colouring.

This resource lets you use a 4096x4096 base texture on your terrain instead of it capping at the default 2048(I am not sure if it was put into the git repo or not tbh, dont have the latest releases)

Theres some old posts in these threads aswell with some more info on detail textures and general texturing of terrains.
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/134829
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/132065
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/120247

#14

O_O SWEET MOTHER OF KNOWLEDGE! I THINK I UNDERSTAND MORE NOW!

FYI:

I see you have a tutorial section in the even that I actually become a master of this I would like to make a video tutorial for all the other "WTF is this terrain shit talking about" people out there to help clear up confusion for new users. Because in DEED manually painting is a PAIN and if it can be done in a better and more efficient way i say hell yeah to that!

#15 http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22371

Theres also that which is another one i still cant believe hasnt been put into the main repo now that the crash on it got fixed with an added safety in there of not overwriting the whole lot

That is invaluable to me. literally using just terrain gradient and height rules that is how i texture my terrains, splattering the layers within the rule guidelines to break up repetition on the details for a more flowing yet still kinda unified look

another thing to consider is finding the right scaling. the first thing i noticed on your video is that its very dense. a mountain range like that coveres sheer miles in width, yet within the game, i presume that is probably a 2km wide map, possibly 4km ? and the angle of the mountains is exaggerated, too steep. you cant really go with a totally realistically scaled terrain in my opinion for games. if you went outside, removed every man made object for 4 km in every direction. try and picture just how flat that probably is (unless you live in the fjords or something lol) i go with a micro terrain mentality, i generate my maps to effectively be around 64k x 64k km, then scale them down to around 8-16k width depending on the feature size of the heightmap, again its something that you just pick up through practice. make a heightmap for example that has alot of features on it, if possible of varying height. import the map, basic texture it with the basetex, then save mission, delete the terrain block, import the heightmap again with a different meter to pixel ratio or height ratio, and texture it again, generate each instance of the heightmap with a different name (the .ter data will remain there, you can always go back and redirect the terrain block to use an older .ter that suited the scaling better for game use)

#16 The basetexture generated from the terrain generator may look a little nicer, but it restricts you in size and restricts you in not being able to edit your map in Torque, since the basetexture will no longer fit.
If you use generic basetextures you may get away with 256x256 basetextures, since you can scale it down and if you want your basetexture a custom one I would suggest editing it, when you are done and copy over your_terrain_basetex.dds with it, this way you do not need to add it again in your materials.

#17 "but it restricts you in size"
In What way ? that map is there for your distance detail and the general colour tone underneath your detail and macro maps. stretching it isnt too detrimental.

"restricts you in not being able to edit your map in Torque"
Again, in what way ? If you use some sense and aim for a natural looking edit instead of completely flattened out areas for towns and whatnot, you wont have to make much in the way of repairs, if anything, to the diffuse map. I would generally presume that if its being edited in a manner that makes drastic enough changes that you may well want to look at the tools available to you in the base heightmap generation in the first place, most programs now have vector tools for putting roads and rivers into the heightmap for you, and if you are flattening out areas or have to make a major change at a later date, what is to stop you re-exporting the 'final' heightmap from within torque, importing back into your terrain tool of choice and regenerating the texture ?


"If you use generic basetextures you may get away with 256x256 basetextures, since you can scale it down and if you want your basetexture a custom one I would suggest editing it, when you are done and copy over your_terrain_basetex.dds with it, this way you do not need to add it again in your materials."

ok, now im just confused...
I wouldnt honestly mind knowing what you believe the workflow is with the basetex dds
Even when manually painting it, you are not trying to put any real detail into it, and whats the 256x256 generic base textures ? i work off 2048's, 1024's on scenes that have alot of textures building up, and at a push 512's at lowest resolution only if absolutely need be.

When you paint any material onto the physical terrain it actually takes your diffuse from the currently selected layer in the terrain painter, depending on what your heightmap resulution is (meters per pixel on terrain creation) it paints your diffuse map onto the affected tiles of the terrain. each tile is a node point created by the "height" of the colour in the heightmap, spaced out by whatever your meters per pixel is.

When you paint your diffuse down onto the terrain, it automatically saves that change onto your basetex.dds file, it has nothing to do with what your generated one from the terrain software is, its just the fact that you set your material layer to be the same size of your terrain that makes the basetex.dds by default match up with the procedurally generated one ...

99% of my basetex.dds post-work is done within photoshop maybe the odd bit within torque to feather in some rock objects, roads, riverbeds or something... the main work is all done within the tool itself... thats what it is there for, and believe me, talk to any carpenter for example, they will kick you in the gonads for using a hammer to put in a screw... why not use a driver thats intended and perfectly functional for the job ? ...

take this idea as an example
make a 1024x1024 terrain set to 1 pixel per meter ratio so you get a 1024 basetex, and a square km map within the engine.
make a terrain layer with a single black pixel diffuse. Set this diffuse texture in the material layer to a size of 1024 and replace the 'no material' layer with it.
you now have a totally black terrain, you also have a totally black 1024x1024 basetex.dds file to match (This file is where it gets the texture from when it draws the terrain in game, at any point after making that basetex file, you can delete the the diffuse materials the terrain was made with from your directories, just dont go back into the terrain editor as it will detect the broken links... ie on a final release game you do not need to retain your tiled diffuse textures, just the basetex.dds file
now make a new layer, give it a 1 pixel white diffuse layer, set the size within the layer to whatever you want, any arbitrary number it doesent matter.
set your brush size to say 20 within the terrain painter
fly up, zoom out, whatever, get your brush and write "I am a tool, use me the way I am intended" onto your terrain
save the mission, exit torque.
go to your /levels folder, you will find the basetex.dds file for your mission there, a black file, with the sentence written on it, just as if you wrote it on a black square in ms paint...

you shouldnt ever have to manually edit or overwrite your basetex.dds file, every time you make a change to the terrain texturing within the editors it overwrites it for you.

I swear to god, however you managed to swing that position on the art seat for the steering comitee i will never understand, i just fucking hope you didnt have the seat with the steering wheel in front of you... although that may explain why weve veered so far away from the roadmap theres just a fuckin trail of destruction left behind us

tired, pissed off, had enough.

Andy.

#18 I think I'm going to try a mix of both of your ideas. Yes I do believe that the major part of terrain detail can be achieved in the source application for terrain texturing and that when you get into the engine you can use a smaller brush to give spot texturing with smaller brushes. The more you two talk about it the more I'm understanding it. Also I think the fact that a missing texture will wipe the data from the main dds texture is a bug that I will try to fix in a later date. I think the flow should see the missing texture and ask if this is a finalized terrain mAp and lock those levels in place with out clearing the data already backed into the final.

Also I understand that you two don't see eye to eye but please keep it civil you both are helping in your different ways and I am gaining more knowledge through the debate. I'm going to read through all this data tomorrow and see if I can implement this on my own. Thanks for the brain food.

#19 Editing the basetex.dds is a cool way to enhance your terrain later, to get a more natural look, this way you don't have to export it from torque, load it into your terrain program, change it there, generate a new basetexture, export it and import it back again in Torque.
I made a test some time ago with it, what you can achieve with not fancy tools, just freeware and open source software and some hand painted design.
xn--bergame-m2a.blogspot.de/2013/08/terrains-reloaded.html
Maybe not as good as world machine or something like that, but comes pretty close.

I don't get why Andy gets so angry, I just tell you that his way is not very practical, it depends if you like to export, import, export, import from different tools, I prefer working inside the Torque editor and not switching, I would also not use fixed basetextures, since it restricts you from changing the terrain in the editor and from using your terrain material again in some other terrain also you have big individual textures loaded into the engine, that nowhere else are being used.

#20 In regards to the barely documented opacity map(s) terrain layers feature, I believe it was L3DT that had the path of least of resistance for creating and then using them when importing new terrains into T3D.