Q: Texturing Landscape

[jadedchron]

I've never played WC3, but maybe if you posted some pictures of it we can be of help?

PS. thx for puttin' Q: in teh subject :p

[Maven]

It doesn't have to be WarCraft, It is all these games. From FF X, to Halo, Age of Empires or any kind of Real Time Stradegy game.

I just can't figure out how they do it.

[gaggle]

I know Tribes uses a method of blending textures together in several layers. There'd be dirt-maps, blending into snow-maps, back to dirt for a bit, etc. Controlled via.. well hell if I know. This is in part because it's completly unreasonable to upload a texture that will fit across like a square-kilometer or more of walkable ground.

I'm not offering any specific solutions to your landscape question here, just thinking out loud... the Tribes way sounds like something for a Composite material or somesuch.

[Reality3D]

http://www.delphi3d.net/articles/printarticle.php?article=terraintex.htm

Maybe something like this and texture blending info saved in the vertices of the mesh(check the warcraft III editor).

[Reality3D]

or maybe they use a tile based approach(divide the landscape into tiles that are mapped individually with a lot of predefined textures).

[Maven]

But how would I make something like with max?

Maybe I am asking my question wrong, but I want better landscapes in my models and I don't know how to go about doing it. I need some kind of direction.

here is a WIP, and you can see just how bad the landscape is.

http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/chrisjl/Images/EXAMPLE.jpg

Thanks for the replys so far.

[jadedchron]

well if you had one huge res texture you could use that.. but from the looks of it you'll have to use a bunch of the same texture on the landscape rather than using one for the entire landscape.

erp. like reality said.. basically tiling

[JonM]

try using your height map as a dirt map maybe?

[gaggle]

http://www.kerlinsoftworks.com/software/eleblend.htm ?

[PokeChop]

Hi leonec. Usually how I handle this type of project is to create a huge texture that will cover the entire landscape. I have tried different techniques in the past, but always seem to go back to this big single map process for ease of use. Here is what I do generally.

1. Gather as many raw ground, dirt, grass and rock photos as I can

2. Composite these photos in Photoshop with different masks usually created with selections made from the cloud plugin inside Photoshop to get a good mix of dirt, grass and rocky areas

3. After I have something that looks like a general ground cover texture I save that out to another texture

4. Then render an orthographic top wireframe view (straight down - no camera - no perspective) of your ground model by itself and save out that render (you will need to assign a wireframe material to your ground model of course to do this - black wireframe with white backgroung works well)

5. Then bring your wireframe render into Photoshop and apply the composited ground texture underneath the wireframe to line it up and paint (clone) areas like ditch dirt and rocky areas to the ground texture where you need the detail - I also sometimes add highlights right on the texture to bump up areas that look like clouds overhead blocking the sun and darken areas like ditches

6. Then apply the ground material in Max with a single planar UV Map modifier applied in the top viewport (make sure to hit "fit" in the UV modifier so the UV fits perfectly to the model that way if you need more detail in certain areas you can have Photoshop open with the ground texture - render a top view in Max with the texture applied - go back into Photoshop and paint in your details - resave the file and hit reload in Max's material editor and you see your detail updates the next time you render an overhead in Max

Remember to use a hi res file for your final but I usually still run this through Photoshop's "save for web" process just to cut down the file size - remember to never destroy your original Photoshop comps, keep them aside somewhere, they are good starting points for future ground texture projects

This may not be the right way, just one of a hundred ways. Hope this helps in some way.

[Maven]

Wow, Thanks alot PokeChop I think I get what you mean.

here is the lastest, applying the method you wrote out.

http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/chrisjl/Images/EXAMPLE2.jpg

Its getting better, I think anyway. Thanks again! :thumbsup:

Any thanks to everyone else. :thumbsup:

[Joel Hooks]

Poke - Man that looks great. Woould you mind emailing me a better res so I can see it a bit clearer?

joel@impactforensic.com

[PokeChop]

Yes lowdown. Will do. I am at home now so I need to pull this image off of my Firewire drive but I will send you a bigger res of it Saturday morning, no problema.

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