Texturing : Realistic Terrain

[eddy-3ddy]

hmm, we had the same problem. I worked on the kinda "game engine" to show some not yet build buildings, streets etc.

We had a method, that is easily to explain.

Step one
take a mesh, put there a base material (base color (grass=green, road=grey, sand=brown)

Step two
make smaller mesh things (can be a squire) and set it a bit above the base mesh. (ie z=0.001)

Step three
then make some different materials (on the side a fade transparency), rotate the little meshes, and you will not see any tilling

[Oktavian]

Or you could take a look at this site:
http://www.ricoholmes.com/OtherStuff/Tutorials/Landscape/LandScapeTutorial_Part1.htm

[Oikman]

I'm new to the whole 3d modelling and all that..... what i use is a material that i create in photoshop..... i use clouds with 2 different colours and noise.... looks good all you have to do is in the diffuse map part up the tiles from 1.0 to about 5-10 depending on the amount of poly's you got....

[BrandonD]

I made some sample files for the MAX CDs over the years that show a simple technique of using the Top/Bottom material to blend materials based on the angles of the ground surface. Checkout the snowscape or antarctica scenes on the CD...but keep in mind I made them about four or five years ago.

[Thewiruz]

Thanks alot for the help guys!!I will try it as soon i have some spare time over!Thanks again!!

[TOMMY 3D FREAK]

Hi there,

Personaly, I think this can be solved by using procedurals. I know that some people might disagree, but with the right kind of tool
and expertise, procedurals can work just fine. The key is to try and get rid of the uniformity that usually appears when using procedurals.
Advantage of using procedurals ofcours are resolution independence and seamlessness.

The best way to deal with generating terrain, in my opinion is, Making a plane, and apply a displace modifier. Then,
for the displacement create a noisemap (fractal, iterations 10), with 2 or 4 submaps (of your liking). Then use this same map as a base for the diffuse component of your terrain. Sorry that it's a bit short, but that's it in a nutshell.

B.T.W. I have made a terrain with the above described method, I can send you the displacement map, as well as the diffuse map if any of you are interested.

Please let me know!!!!


Best of luck to you


Thomas Kroes

thomkroes@hotmail.com

[Riddlaz]

Well to get a more random pattern using bitmaps what I do sometimes I use a simple procedural map such as smoke or even a noise and use two different maps for each slot, now you can tile the maps inside those slots without seeing that tiling effect because of how the parent procedural blends them together but you can always take it further and mix several procedurals using bitmaps. Since realistic is in the title what’s most important is the connections between the maps (spec/diffusion/bump etc..) you have to take them into consideration if you really want to make it look believable. It’s nothing new but another things that might be a good idea would be to model some details to show in the foreground especially is the camera view is close to the ground, you could always scatter things like pebbles or model a few cracks and lumps :). Well, g luck man.

Laters,
Riddlaz C.

[TOMMY 3D FREAK]

In additon to my previous reply, I want to add that the oren nayar blinn shader is (in most circumstances ) the best shader, because it adds to the beleavability.

Note: this mainly concerns surfaces like rock, sand, dried mud and clay.

P.S. You should probably turn down the roughness, because you will probably get strange artifacts. This is because the default roughness value is way to high.


Hope this helps!!!!!

[jussing]

I'd take the tilable procedural texture into Photoshop (either by importing the original texture image, or by baking them from the 3D app), then tile it to the appropriate size in Photoshop, and paint out the repeating patterns using the clone brush.

Export it, and apply to your mesh, and voila. You have the quality of the original tilable texture, but without the obvious repetition.

It's dang easy, and the result is good.

A downside is of course, that it's less appropriate for games and other real-time use, since you'll end up with massive texture files, instead of the smaller, tilable ones... but then again, repeating patterns are rather "accepted" in real-time, isn't it?

Cheers,
- Jonas

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.