Best, and simplest Terrain creator
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Best, and simplest Terrain creator
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| I use height bitmap terrains in my FieldsOfMars wargame but the software I use isn't easy or accurate enough. Fine tuning terrain features is impossible. What I'm looking for is a very accurate / and very simple to use terrain builder. I also need a simple terrain texturing (painting) option. Prefereably all WYSIWYG Is there such an animal? Which is best? |
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| Creating a terrain: Personally I use a bit of perlin noise first. Then paint shop pro, stick the perlin noise down as your first layer then adjust it as you need to making all the dips and peaks on a new layer, this way your base coat is still in good nick. To create a texture for it, buy terrain shader! (see my sig!) Again, I usually use this as a base coat so I can add additional detail if needed. Make a noise pattern. Slap the whole lot together. And end up with a nice terrain. |
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| Noise pattern? I need total control over the terrain. |
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| Look for MrTircks, in the user creations forum. He has a terrain builder program for free. http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=33437 |
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| I'm looking more for a outdoor ground editor, where I can raise a hill to a desired height ,at an exact location, maybe with a cliff face in one side. Also create a river with steep banks in some areas but gently slooping banks in other areas. Then colour it to all to look natural. |
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| Check out http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller/ Pretty damn good terrain creation tools in there -- stable and may have the precision you need. You can export the heightmaps among other things. A bit expesive relative to other tools but appears worth it. |
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| you can check this out too.. not released yet, but should be in a few days. soon as i get some small uv problems figured. Its a mesh terrain editor. Some screen shots and info on the site. http://www.makeitgames.com/ goto products goto maptile3d |
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| Actually, that Leveller program looks very good .. but $100 bucks! :( Terragen looks good but I don't think it creates height maps? |
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| Terragen creates heightmaps, but if all you want is a heightmap to edit then just write a perlin noise function to give to a starting point and thus save yourself money. Which is exactly what I said at the top of the post. A noise pattern would be a grey scale texture that you repeat over the terrain to give it detail rather than just having one big texture streched over the whole thing. You can see an example of this in this, the terrain is coloured using a single procedual texture and then the noise pattern gives it detail.  |
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| yep, Rob has given a good, and verrrry cost effective means of creating nice looking random terrains... but, what if you need to model a particular landscape Rob... any way to do that with the technique you described? --Mike |
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| Yes, as I mentioned on my first post! Lay down the perlin noise as your first layer on a paint package then for example if you want to have pits in it draw black on the layer above and then blend than to the lower layer at whatever transparancy you car to make it lower or higher. Laying down the perlin noise first just gives the terrain a natural look, if you want a lesser effect then decrease it's contrast until it's more or less the same colour, this will just give you a slight bit of movement across the terrain as no terrain is 100% smooth or flat. If you want some total flat area pick the correct colour and add that as an opaque layer. 0,0,0 (black) will be where you have positioned your terrain on the y axis 255,255,255 (white) will be where you have positioned your terrain on the y axis + y scale of your terrain. To find out what height any particular shade of grey will be at will be... ( ( col / 255 ) * yscale ) + y where col is the colour of the grey scale (0-255), yscale is the yscale of your terrain and y is the y position of your terrain. Personally I find doing all this stuff on a paint package pretty easy, but maybe that's just me. |
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| You can also use photoshop or paint shop pro, or any good drawing program, to make nice terrains. You just won't get real-time updates. I experimaented using a few filters and then gausian blur in photoshop, and I got a fairly nice random terrain. |
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| yesssss... yes, of course... wayyy cooool Rob... Thanks --Mike |
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| Gee wiz, charley, I wish I was smart as u! :) What the hell is a perlin? Yes, I see, it's so simple, I should be able to accurately recreate the Baecula and Metaurus battle fields with just the flick of a finger! .. (flick!), their DONE! Wow! Silly me! :) |
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| Pelin noise... I think Sswifts done an example in the code archives. Basically it makes nice looking terrains that are good starting points for anything you modify, and because it's random it gives the terrain a less sterile look. |
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| What I'm looking for is a very accurate / and very simple to use terrain builder. I also need a simple terrain texturing (painting) option. Prefereably all WYSIWYG Is there such an animal? I just finished working on exactly what you want : http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=34009 |
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| Skitchy, I'll download and check it out now. Leveller is good but at 100 bucks!? Geoscape is excellent but having problems finding quality textures in their demo version. Rob, I'm no texturer and only have Photostudio 2000, which I like alot, but probably doesn't have the features of newer packages. My priorites in getting these battle maps done is; (1) simplicity (my brain hurts), (2) control - ability to do fine detail and (3) cost (being a spec oil trader, I'm happy at the current moment :) |
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XMLSpy, the texturing is rubbish on that, although I hate pimping my own stuff (especially as I don't get a single penny for a sale of it) Terrain shader from idigicon textures much better as it takes into account, slope and various heights and then alpha blends from one into another making very smooth and subtle textures, this blend range is totally definable, not ones like texgen that has harsh edges from the change from one texture to another.  More Screenshots on my site. |
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| T2's texture's look quite smooth on my system. and they are definable. (Altho it aparently only created and outputs a single map now?) Tergen which came before , was pretty harsh , but atleast did multi smaller textures. I would say Terrain shader still looks better. but if ya have to go with free...heh Zmatrix |
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| All those texturing packages look good although, for ME, I still would need a PRECISE inbuilt terrain manipulation ability. Actually just tried to create a heightmap in Photostudio 2000 and I can produce a simple battle field - constant height hills and river etc .. nothing spectacular and I can image it would difficult to edit, trying to remember the colours used :( With terrains, whats the benefits / disadvantages with using a height map compared to a mesh terrain? |
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| My program Total Terrain allows precise manipulation and is totally free. You can also paint a colourmap directly onto the terrain. Find it by clicking my sig. There are 2 versions (1 and 2!) 2 is a complete rewrite, so you might try both to see which interface you prefer - personally I think 2 is better. |
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| The problem with Total Terrain in what's otherwise a great program, is that the maps I've made seem to have lines from the tiles used to generate the heightmap. |
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| Yes, but that's just in the editor. I couldn't display all 2 million triangles of a 1024 terrain at once. If I work on TT again, I'll try to tidy up the LOD system in it though. |
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