Terrain Tool Pro

Ok..I wouldn’t use the terrain builder for something like this, you could do a much better job just using single faces, divided as required…Just use the Create Face plugin for most of it.
Beaches are mostly flat just sloping down to the sea slightly so you could use one face for the beach, another for the sea and another for the land behind the beach.
Small undulations,riples in the sand etc can be created either with a texture or bump map or both.
If you wanted this land area to be more undulating just divide the face till you have enough divisions then move and rotate these divided faces as required.
The trees and plants are easy, again just crossed faces for the trees with a tranparent .png tree image applied to each face. For larger trees use 3,4 or 5 crossed planes. smaller plants and grasses you can get away with a single face usually although you do need quite a lot. Small shrubs 2 maybe 3 faces at most.
Take a look here at the first three screenshots, the one bye Fredborg is outstanding.
[img:1rdssnf8]http://blitzbasic.com/gallery/gallery.php?gallery=hr[/img:1rdssnf8]
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Click each image to see it full size.
The only thing you need to watch out for if it’s a FPS style game is how you are going to restrict the players movement to an area of the beach, if you don’t he could walk of the edge of the beach or out to sea. <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

Bazza

I have just upgraded to Pro, mainly for the Terrain feature, I have a few questions.

1- Where is it on the interface?
2- I will only create the heightmaps, you cannot paint (texture) your terrain?
3- You have to design your own greyscale maps in order to design your own terrain? and/or you can random generate it in the Terrain maker?
4 – Anyone willing to make a mini-tut on the terrain maker?

Thank you!

The terrain tool is the last of the Object Building Tools…see attached pic.

Drag it onto the scene…when the terrain bulding window opens Try the fractal generator….you can mess with the sliders or load your own heightmap if you wish.

Look in the help files under using the terrain tool…it’s quite well documented.

You need to generate your own heightmaps if you want to use the Heightmap generated terrains…easy to do.

You can texture the terrain as you wish.

This one was generated with the heightmap at the bottom right of the image….but you got to be careful with this…the face count is just below 8,000.

Depends what you want the terrain for as to how you build it…if you need a large random terrain with a medium face count try using the fractal option then scale the terrain up along xyz or just x and z axis.

Bazza

Hi Bazza thanks for the help, unless Im missing a section this is all that seems to be in the manual. Is there another section?

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The Terrain Tool is used to create landscapes. Terrain can be based on a picture that is used as a height map, or it can be based on fractal or random calculations.

For all types of terrain, you can enter the desired Width, Depth and Height of the terrain.

For height maps, is used to select the texture on which to base the terrain. Each pixel in the texture corresponds to a point. If you select the texture will not only be used as the basis for the terrain, but will also be applied to the terrain as a texture. The height is based on the brightness of the color.

With Fractal terrain you can select the bumpiness and roughness of the terrain.

For both Fractal and Random terrain, clicking will rebuild the terrain using a new random number.

Click to save.

Click to reset.

Click to display the object in wireframe mode.

When you have completed your object simply close the Object Builder and your scene will be updated with the new object.

No thats about it…what else do you need to know…what do you need the terrain for.

Bazza

I am using small terrains for separate scenes in a upcoming game Im developing.

For example the first scene will be a beach, with the water line, a pier, sand, and a bit of land behind that with some trees and plants.