Terrain Creation and Texture Painting Tutorial (Page 1 of 2)

beautiful !

I finally got a good solid hold on this terrain creation tutorial, see terrains are hard because there one of the largest item you will have in your game, and if there polycount is to high you have no room on your graphics card for anything else. Also the resolution of there textures is critical, if you don't have a high enough resolution your terrain will look blurry and washed out.

And even after you solve the Polycount and Texture Resolution you will more than likely find that your terrain is to small.

What you are seeing here is part of my terrain grids, are made up of 16 plain's subdivided 6 times with a total of 118,235 triangles.
there are 4 planes per grid with a total of 4 grids.
the section that is missing is the one I am working on now. This is just the "Above Ground" terrains, we have another 16 for the
"Below Ground" subterranean terrain.

The following 2 screenshots are of different views for Grid1, and is made up of a total of 19,931 triangles. We can see the seams because I need to stitch these 4 terrains together and then re-cut them so when put together they look seamless.

If you look hard you can see our Horse and Character at this distance they show a scale reference of the terrains.

I am going to make a few different versions of this, a "Dessert, Tropical(Path is a River), ...."

Here is a Horse and Character to use as a scale reference, Grid1 looks small but its really not. The AO maps currently on make the terrain look alot smaller than it is. With proper textures this place will look and feel huge.

Here is a "small" cave I am randomly placing these on the map.

Here is a "short tunnel" that leads you into the next screenshot.

Notice the cavern in the ground this takes you to the "Subterranean Level" that's 4Grids large so its huge.

This can be anything, a volcano, a giant bug hill with monster ants or spiders.

This terrain took about an hour to create by hand, so not to long, the polycount is just right, it tiles and the texture maps are 4096x4096 so we should get a really nice high res surface details.

I have been collecting 2D cutouts for years, and I try only to acquire free high quality cutouts, I just uploaded 56 of them the other day and am in the process of adding them to the wiki. We can place lots of vegetation all over our scene.

As a reference to there quality this is on of the smaller ones its 1053x1531

Last edited by zester (2013-10-18 08:34:31)

Looks pretty great, it's exactly that kind of terrain i was trying to make before i give up

Thank you and happy you like it.
At one point I was going to give-up on them to, but I am seriously hard-headed, so it's just not in my nature to quit. I am glad that I didn't.

Thank you also
I make you want to start a full project 0.0 lol good then that means I am fulfilling my self designated purpose here on the Maratis forums.

Each Grid is made up of 4 Planes with a Total of 16 Planes overall. What I showed was only one grid. Each plane is equal to the "Blender Grid Plane" <- the grid in blender we normally model on case you didn't know. I didn't have to do any Blender Scale to Maratis scale conversions because of how large my textures are, around 4x larger than a 21inch Wide Screen LCD Monitor. As long as there is no blurring or pixelation it shouldn't matter. But I might have to pre-scale everything after for other reasons idk not worried about it right now.  The focus for the moment is on Polycount and Texture Resolution.

And we have some new 2D Cutouts for our Desert Terrain.

Last edited by zester (2013-10-19 00:32:59)

Zester, how do you get those textures into maratis? I wish Maratis had an import for Image to plane (that retains alpha information.) it would be useful for menus and this type of thing (grass etc)

TD, to export an alpha texture you just have to make sure the alpha value under transparency is set to 1.

this might be confusing because inside blender, that transparency option IS the texture alpha value.
but for maratis, that setting is the material opacity value, not the texture alpha value (so if you export with a 0 alpha value, your object will be totally transparent)

Thanks guys, It's been awhile since I did this my self. I would have ended up telling him howto do it incorrectly and causing frustration.

Interesting, thanks Vegas. You are right zester, this would be frustrating. Gotta whoop Blender into shape. haha.

I don't use blender, actually I avoid it whenever possible ( because sculptris is SO much better for this, and SO much easier!!! ), but having said this, I was successful, finally, in getting textured terrains into Maratis. I was pleased to have success, though honeslty its way too much of a headache for words. It should be a streamlined process, not a invite to calamity I hope somehow over time, this is fixed I may throw up a tutorial of my own, who knows It seems to be a popular thing lately, and now that I have a MIC and a good recording tool both audio and visual...

Oh btw, just in case; I want to state emphatically , for the record, that while some posts may contain references to disgusting, bloody, gruesome,  violent things, that I in no way condone them on any level ( I am not here to support or accept them whatsoever ), wish we could all create non violent based games, and that my signature makes that clear. I am here to partake in the use of a promising MIT based engine , that unlike many other engines, has a decent overall editor with promise.

So thanks Anael for that, though I hope someday you fix the plugin stuff so we aren't a split community ?

Last edited by VeganDev (2013-10-20 18:29:33)

Welcome back VeganDev.

Sculpting terrain in Blender like, Roberto Roch teaches with his "Create a Rocky Video Game Terrain in Blender" defiantly isn't a method I would recommend, it takes to long and requires to much artistic capability. Sculptris might be better suited, I don't know "not a program I use". I use a different method entirely, its fast, easy to do. The above terrain took about an hour, but that was to figure out a good workflow. I(Anyone) can do the same terrain in about 20min or less once you have the workflow down. And then if you want to multires in Blender or "Sculptris" you can.

Violent content can also be used to build empathy or used as a deterrent. You can show me one or two articles arguing your point, I can show hundreds of millions of examples  proving mine. I once made a video game for a anti-smoking campaign, as effective as it was it was deemed to be far to explicit for there targeted age range, and never viewed outside of the test group.

I can still see it ... "Want to play again? "NO" Want a cigarette? "Tears" ... "Is that really how you die from smoking!!!"  Ummm yahhh kid thats really what its like.

Note: I doubt any of those kids ever did start smoking after I traumatized them.

I can't wait for the Oculus Rift, I have a whole line up of Anti-Gang, Drug, Bullying, No Means NO!!!!, .... simulations.

Last edited by zester (2013-10-21 03:38:53)

I wanted to do a terrain speed modeling exercise, before bed.

Subject: Vegas's Tower of Defense Game
Time: 60 Seconds

Ready Set Go ...

Done

The raised parts(colums) are actually bone, and the idea was "Castle Ruins", with Large Bone's protruding from some of the stone features.

The part by the bridge is suppose to be a spinal column with a nail going threw it, and integrate a rusty gate as a short cut that would open up after the hordes had reached a certain point and activated a switch.

Clearly 60sec is not enough time to do all of that.

Last edited by zester (2013-10-21 09:09:30)