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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Ultimate Terrain/Landscapes

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Van B
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Posted: 24th Apr 2007 15:35
I'm not sure that a new thread would be any more relevant than this one - I still like the idea of making a newsletter feature though.

I'd sticky this thread, but it would probably just get unstickied again by some non-terrain-worrying-mod. That's why I think it would be best to put the effort into a concise guide for the newsletter, then we won't have to dig for this thread anymore .

Maybe something best done when GG's happy with the new shader though, so it's more like an alternative solution to advanced terrain, like a good demo or demos showing different terrain techniques, but each one good for it's purpose. Personally I'm still using the mask version of the shader, I think it's still very relevant because I imagine a lot of people would like to do things like project shadows onto their terrain or get more control over it - so I'm sticking with the mask version and a little color mask renderer thing to make up for the lack of lighting. I love the idea of being able to paint the terrain with texture, using the pick screen suite of commands it's very doable.


Good guy, Good guy, Wan...
Freddix
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Posted: 24th Apr 2007 16:10
CPU: Intel Core Duo 1.86Ghz
GFX: Geforce7600GT
RAM: 2Go

Loading time : 1828
FPS : 320

Excellent work.

Gandalf said: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us"
Odyssey-Creators - X-Quad Editor - 3DMapEditor
TinTin
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Posted: 24th Apr 2007 18:35
We could always banish those non-believers to the MS-Basic forum...
Maybe we could have a vote to make it a stickie!!![] here is my vote...
Why use pickscreen when we could develop virtual paintball ?
eight of us all neted together and lobbing technicolour splat at each other sounds like fun.

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
Roxas
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Posted: 24th Apr 2007 19:25
The demo doesnt work for me cuz its using hihger shaders than sm 1.4...



Phaelax
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Posted: 24th Apr 2007 21:04
2.048 seconds
68-72 FPS

specs:
P4 2.8e
1gb ram
FX5900 128mb


Green Gandalf
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Posted: 24th Apr 2007 21:56 Edited at: 24th Apr 2007 23:39
Quote: "The demo doesnt work for me cuz its using hihger shaders than sm 1.4..."


I'll look into that tonight for you. I use PS2.0 as a matter of routine. It's quite possible the shader can be modified to work with PS1.4 - I just haven't tried yet.

Edit: Well, that was fun. I just can't seem to fit the shader into PS1.4. I'm almost there - but the final instruction seems to be choking the Effect Compiler. I keep getting error X4500 which says my effect is too complex for PS1.4. If I knew precisely WHY it was too complex I might be able to work around it. I don't think it's a simple instruction count issue - although it could be. I suspect it's some obscure restriction concerning texture versus colour registers.

Watch this space.

Of course I could give you a cheap version which throws out a feature or two.
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 25th Apr 2007 00:19
@The Full Metal Coder Roxas

OK, here's a cheap version of the shader specially for you:



Although it isn't perfect it should give you some idea of how the PS2 version works - just replace the old shader code with this one.
Roxas
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Posted: 25th Apr 2007 09:07 Edited at: 25th Apr 2007 09:29
Thank you! Ill test it now..

[Edit ok it works great but starts lagging when looking at hills/mountains :/



TinTin
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Posted: 25th Apr 2007 18:04
Ok guys, here is the latest update of my continuous terrain using PerlinNoise to generate the heightmap.

There are still some issues that I can't figure out.
-ve positions gives weird output from perlinNoise.
move east/west gives weird output from perlinNoise
move at non right angle gives weird output from perlinNoise

I've tested the perlinNoise function over a massive bitmap with no weirdness to be seen, so I'm sure the function is Ok. That leaves the way I'm filling the bitmap, I've tried several variations until my head hurts and can't think no more.

find attached that shows whats happening sourcecode ->
The 100x100 heightmap gets displayed top/left, although the matrix only uses the middle 50x50 for it's heights.

[cursor keys] to move
[space] toggles texture
[ctrl] toggles fog

Any ideas or suggestions welcomed.

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.

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TinTin
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Posted: 25th Apr 2007 18:06 Edited at: 25th Apr 2007 18:07
Here is the Noise.dll just stick it in your compiler\plugins-user directory before you try to compile the above code.

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.

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david w
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Posted: 27th Apr 2007 04:04 Edited at: 27th Apr 2007 04:27
Well I just have to say I have been having the worlds biggest brain fart. As you know I have been having troubles with my normals, on my terrian object, well as it turns out. My object is fine and the problem was me being a dumb-ass. Anyways, I was trying to set them like this:




well to my amazement I didn't catch this error this whole time. It should have been.



So as you see, it works now. Anways I would like to thank everyone who has helped me so far. Now that this isnt stalling me anymore, I can continue on with this project. A fully functional terrain demo coming soon.

Thank you.
TinTin
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Posted: 27th Apr 2007 04:14
@David W
I'd say things were floating along nicely for you now then..

maybe you could have a look at my effort, I've managed to eliminate the z-axis banding but the x-axis is still there, even when I apply the same solution. (bummer )

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
david w
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Posted: 27th Apr 2007 04:26
@tin tin, lol yes they are, I will look at yours tomorrow, I will download it now though, that way its ready when I get home from the mines. I will see what I can do.
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 27th Apr 2007 14:55
Quote: "well to my amazement I didn't catch this error this whole time. It should have been"


That particular error catches me out all the time. I'm glad you got it sorted.
revenant chaos
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Posted: 28th Apr 2007 13:42
for some reason I can't download any of the files. every time i try the file says its done before its actually completed, and with dial-up this is wicked annoying. can anybody please mirror the latest files? that would be much appreciated.
TinTin
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Posted: 7th May 2007 23:17
guess this thread has ran out of steam then, or was the plannimg permission denied?

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 7th May 2007 23:40
Don't worry - more is to come ...
qwe
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Posted: 8th May 2007 00:04 Edited at: 8th May 2007 00:05
2.376 sec. 1ghz core duo, 1gb ram, 256mb gfx

edit... oops, this was in response to the last post on pg 1
Van B
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Posted: 8th May 2007 01:04
Yeah, just stewing up some ideas for a nice code snippet, like trying to get a nice organic engine together that doesn't need too much work to adapt to users needs. Kinda busy with something right now, I'd like to spend more time messing with the terrain stuff, damn I need a good long coding holiday, when you take a week off work and just code the whole time - bliss!.


Good guy, Good guy, Wan...
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 8th May 2007 02:10
Ditto.
TinTin
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Posted: 8th May 2007 15:33
S#it ! I forgot I had to work also... I should have guessed when the fridge ran low on beer. hehe

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
The ARRAYinator
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Posted: 9th May 2007 21:42
Don't worry I got some stuff to post soon here and im sure other people do to im just trying to get it working the way I want not to say its not working just I have a certain level of expectations for everything I do. BTW any word on having a new thread or having this one stickied. Seriously this thread has been a valuable resource that id like to learn from and contribute to.



Freddix
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Posted: 12th May 2007 21:23
loading time: 1820 (1.82s)
frame rate average 300~320fps
goos work :p

Gandalf said: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us"
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 12th May 2007 22:11
Update

Currently working on a terrain demo with the following features:

1. Options for surface landscapes or caves.
2. Optional heightmap construction by blurring an initial coarse black/grey/white image.
3. Built from a grid of limbs.
4. Normals calculated directly from the landscape XYZ coords (no averaging or DLLs required).
5. Removal of unnecessary polygons (useful for cave systems or landscape hidden by other features).
6. Removal of unnecessary vertices by using a modification of IanM's vertex welding code.
7. UV adjustment to reduce undesirable texture "stretching" over steep slopes.
8. Perhaps a shader or two, too.

Progress so far:

1 and 2. Done except for putting together into a single demo.
3. Not done yet - although required data are already set up.
4, 5 and 6. Done.
7. Some ideas - but suggestions welcome.
8. I'm sure I can get one or two in there somewhere.

Comments

IanM's welding code works really well - the FPS has been nearly doubled on some test objects. A downside is that the welding step takes a LONG time on high poly objects (I think this is because the matching step uses an algorithm where execution time is a quadratic function of the number of vertices - I thought the code had hung till I realised what was happening). Fortunately, the welding only needs to be done once. I shall now be using this welding code as a matter of routine when I create moderately complicated objects.
Chewy
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Posted: 13th May 2007 11:08
Okay I know I have just started posting in this thread, first of all, great progress so far to all.

Looking at GG's .fx file and running his latest release posted in this thread with the road blending etc, I can't work out how you have mapped out where the detail textures are to be put or have you done it by height values?

Anyway, I have a png file which contains RGBA data of where I want each detail texture to be placed on my heightmap, can anyone point me in the right direction to take the RGBA channel's data and implelemnt it into GG's blender?

Chewy
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 13th May 2007 13:44 Edited at: 13th May 2007 13:55
Quote: "Looking at GG's .fx file and running his latest release posted in this thread with the road blending etc, I can't work out how you have mapped out where the detail textures are to be put or have you done it by height values?"


That shader uses the height and slope to decide which texture to use, so high steep slopes might be rock, low steep slopes might be gravel, high flat slopes might be grass, low flat slopes might be sand. The computer then blends these for intermediate values. The choice of textures is entirely up to you of course.

Quote: "Anyway, I have a png file which contains RGBA data of where I want each detail texture to be placed on my heightmap, can anyone point me in the right direction to take the RGBA channel's data and implelemnt it into GG's blender?"


Did you look at my earlier one which does exactly that for three textures? The changes needed for four textures are trivial - I assumed evryone could see what needed to be done.

Anyway, since it's my birthday tomorrow and I'm in a good mood (and the rain is keeping me indoors), here's a new version of the earlier demo with four textures. The "rgba.dds" image is not a good example because the alpha channel is really designed for a different shader (one with roads) but if you already have suitable images just use those.

For this shader you get best results if the colour channel components add up to one (or 255 in DBP rgb units) - so to get a 50:50 mix of grass and gravel in the demo you would need to specify red at 50% of its max value, similarly for green, but zero for blue and alpha.

Edit

Oops! Today is 13 May not 13 April of course (how could I get that wrong? ). The shader will still work of course. Feel free to correct it.

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Chewy
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Posted: 13th May 2007 21:22
ah sorry mate, i really didnt take a detailed look at previous stuff, i thought that updated ones would be well yeah refined versions etc.

thanks for the updated version. I kind of do understand how to program, just not very well. heh.

uhm, the fx file works getting the RGBA data from my png file.

Though those 4 textures which data is stored as RGBA values in the PNG is for detail, its not the colour map. Any chance of explaining how I can slap my colour map on with the detail map mate?

I don't want to make this sound like a request and have you do it all (I am more of a 3D artist) so please don't take me the wrong way lol.

oh and this may be pushing it, I also have a light map. How could I apply that?

Many thanks in advance

Chewy
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The ARRAYinator
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Posted: 13th May 2007 21:36
You might like my shader as it does pretty close to what you want. It allows for four detail textures rgba map a colormap that can be blended as intense as you want with the detail textures and of course a lightmap to top it off. Its not completely ready yet but I will release it with a little tech demo im making to show off some of gamescape 3d's abilities. If you need something more immediate I could probaly modify GG's shader to do these things but ill have to look. Let me know.

Chewy
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Posted: 13th May 2007 22:11
It isn't urgent mate, it is just something I would like to learn from and understand better, though programming is no longer my preferred career path.

Chewy
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TinTin
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Posted: 14th May 2007 17:49 Edited at: 14th May 2007 17:51
@GG.. <Belated Hapy Birthday >

I'm realy busy with work at the moment so I dont have much time to spend on DB code.

On your list of things for the engine item 7.. stretching textures over near vertical surfaces. I'd suggest calculating the poly size XYZ by subtracting the min XYZ from max XYZ (X&Z will most likley fit a standard grid) the Y value will be relative to the height difference, this could be used as a multiplier for the UV for the polygon to eliminate the stretching. I Think....

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 14th May 2007 18:45
@TinTin

Thanks. (It's not belated at all - it's still "today" here. )

Quote: "I'd suggest calculating the poly size XYZ by subtracting the min XYZ from max XYZ (X&Z will most likley fit a standard grid) the Y value will be relative to the height difference, this could be used as a multiplier for the UV for the polygon to eliminate the stretching. "


Not sure that will work - but I agree you need to take into account the full XYZ value. It would be interesting to know what algorithms the commercial 3D texturing packages use - I've seen some papers on UV mapping or rendering on the Internet but they seem unnecessarily complicated for what needs to be done (he says, having failed to come up with anything simple and failsafe himself ).
TinTin
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Posted: 15th May 2007 11:59
@GG Here was me thinking GMT was UK wide, LMAO
I'll have a look at some antique books on coding that I've got stashed under a chair, I'm sure thers some examples on UV texturing.

As I'll be out of office the rest of the week (business trip to Dublin (woohoo!)) I'll not have a chance to look until the weekend.

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
david w
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Posted: 20th May 2007 07:25
@gg I am having a slight problem with my terrain. Well its not really a problem, but here is what I was thinking. This is about the roads from bitmap shader. Well right now I have 100 terrain chunks and each one is texture with a corrosponding image. No problem it works fine. The problem is that I have to load 100 image files for 100 terrian tiles. That uses up needless video memory. Anways, to make a long story shorter. What I would like to do is, color the vertex's according to the bitmap that corrosponds to the terrain tile. delete the bitmap/image. Have the shader generate the road from the vertex that has the correct color information. What do you think?
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 20th May 2007 13:59
@david w

100 image files sounds excessive. I would think it is sufficient to have, say, about 8 images in total: two RGB maps for the whole terrain (these would allow you to access 6 detail images - or 8 if you can easily access the alpha channel in your imaging software). You can either reserve one of the channels for roads or have another black and white image for roads. (I'm thinking of the simple blending idea here - not the altitude/slope idea I used in another shader).

I'm not sure how relying on vertex colouring would look - I suspect you won't get the pixel detail that you need.

The shaders I've written so far for this are just demos really - they can be re-written (up to a point of course) to include some additional features.
TinTin
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Posted: 22nd May 2007 17:44
@David W
You could also load one large image with a grid of 10x10 smaller tiled images that you could use to texture the chunks...

@GG
Still busy (saving the world from immanent destruction (not!)) my work schedule is hectic at the moment and so far, I've not been able to find the U/V solution. I promise I'll get round to it whenever I can. (circa 2020ad.)

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 22nd May 2007 22:20
@TinTin

Quote: "and so far, I've not been able to find the U/V solution. I promise I'll get round to it whenever I can. (circa 2020ad.)"


Looking forward to it.

In the meantime I'm working on my own version - hence the natural logarithm function I've posted elsewhere.
Chewy
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Posted: 27th May 2007 23:26
Sorry to be a bother GG.

The RGBA terrain shader you made me, I can understand some of what is going on but not all of it.

How can I edit it so i can put a colour map onto it and a lightmap seeing as it textures on top of the terrain it cancels out the lightmap and colour from the advance terrain commands.

Is there anything I can read to understand the effects file better mate? Because if I can I would love to implement like 2 RGBA files for 8 detail textures, which on top I can layer a colour map and a light map.

Sorry to ask so much of you, sure you are a busy guy lol as we all are

Chewy
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Indecom
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Posted: 28th May 2007 00:34
These all look very interesting, but my gfx card doesnt support the shaders, does anyone know where i can find 1.3 versions of these shaders, or similar shaders for shader model 1.3 or lower?
The ARRAYinator
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Posted: 28th May 2007 04:58 Edited at: 28th May 2007 05:03
@ Chewy I just modified GG's shader to add support for a lightmap and a color map. I don't know if it works because im not on my main comp. right now. The Cmapsat value controls how much the color map bleeds through andjust supply a lightmap.bmp for the lightmap. If it doesent work let me know its probaly a silly mistake in the five minutes it took me to make it,lol. Just to let you know adding detail textures should be as simple as adding extra texture lookups etc. Here it is:



Chewy
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Posted: 28th May 2007 15:32
hey cheers for trying mate, I tried to implement it into GG's RGBA version he put together for me, but the map just doesnt appear in DBPro when I execute it.

I really don't understand how he does it lol.

Chewy
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The ARRAYinator
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Posted: 28th May 2007 16:57
I figured that would happen,lol Ill take a look at it today and make sure it works.

TinTin
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Posted: 21st Jun 2007 18:19 Edited at: 21st Jun 2007 18:21
Gee, you go away on business for a couple of weeks and the excelent Ultimate Terrain forum gets dumped into the dark depths of the DBP board, I can only guess that the main contributors have got bored or side tracked onto other things.

Anyway me, myself & Igor have took a little sidestep from the terrain to getting my skydome working, I've got a neat little group of functions that convert time into an angle (this is used to control the position/angle of the Sun (main light)) this angle is also used to calculate the sky colour, sun size, ambient light etc.

I'm also trying to figure out how to bump map a plain on both sides, with the topside being bumped twice the height of the bottom. I intend using this to generate realistic looking cloud formations that have luminance and shadows. I may have to use two plains back to back.

Long Live the Ultimate Terrain thread

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
david w
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Posted: 21st Jun 2007 23:24
@tin tin I've not been on alot lately, its summer and all, and I keep getting side tracked. But I do have a mostly complete version that I've been planning on posting here. I have things to do today so I dont know if I will find the time tonight. But there is always the weekend. I'd like to help on the cloud deal if your interested.
TinTin
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2007 16:26 Edited at: 22nd Jun 2007 16:34
@David w, It seems that summer time takes up a lot of peoples spare time, (I guess fixing leaky roofs etc... hehe).

I'm realy at the begining of my skydome development
Curently I've got a function that takes several parameters...

I'm not sure if I should maintain a locked X/Z position (easy) or adjust these so that each mesh section is equal size (think texturing this would be easiest but hard to calculate)

I guess I could concentrait using a flat plain to get the bumpmapping bit working, the luminance could easily be done by raymarching through the bumpmap in the direction of the sunlight.

Feel free to comment or suggest ideas, and as usual, Any assistance is most welcome, especialy from someone as skilled as yourself.

p.s. Im going to be taking a long overdue vacation down in GG's teritory in a week or so (Hope weather improves) so ther`s another sidetrack. hehe

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 22nd Jun 2007 18:51
Quote: "so ther`s another sidetrack"


Indeed it is.

Quote: "(Hope weather improves)"


So do I!
Bishop
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Posted: 23rd Jun 2007 01:10
Looks quite cool ^^ Haven't used terrains much meself, but may start too if this turns out well =) Keep up the good work!

-Bishop


Tux is my guildmaster.
TinTin
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Posted: 9th Jul 2007 18:40
Dang! Bugger! Feck!

Managed to get my procedural terrain working somehow!
I was running around for absolutely ages with no repetition in the landscape, only needed to figure out how to do vertical cliffs, then as one would expect my system crashed, don't know why, but since I hadn't backed up the program I'm gonnah have to try and remember all the tweaks I made.

Anyway I'm now back from my holiday, the weather wasn't to bad we only had light showers for a couple of days, the rest of the time it was monsoon conditions. hehe thank god they make good Cider down there.

My skydome is still being created, I keep getting different ideas (must stop listening to the voices in my head)

Expect a basic preview sometime soon....

Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
TinTin
18
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Joined: 16th May 2006
Location: BORG Drone Ship - Being Assimilated near Roda Beta (28)
Posted: 12th Jul 2007 17:16 Edited at: 12th Jul 2007 17:22
Ok, Ok...
I've decided to go back to basics, Bellow is my base engine that I'll be using for my terrain project.

Currently...
Application automaticaly sets its resoulution and aspect from the desktop to the closest supported by the hardware.

Camera movement using standard cursor keys,[W][A][S][D] and the mouse.

Application just displays a flat matrix 64x64. Which, as the camera moves, auto centers every set distance Size/Segment. This will allow movement in X&Z direction limited only by the extents of a float value while keeping the matrix size low.

To do list...
Limit the camera X rotation.
Generate the procedural terrain heightmap in realtime.
Set normals for the matrix each update.
Add Texturing dependant on height/slope. (probably GG's shader)
Improve/optomize the matrix.
Add animated cloud and oceans (probably using shaders).
Implement support for cliffs and overhangs.
Add support for surface materials, sand,gravel,rock,grass,snow etc.

At present I have completly lost all my code, so I have to rewrite it from scratch.

My Procedural.dll isn't as good as I'd like it to be, so I'm going to rewrite it also (found some better code samples). I'm also toying with the idea of using a prerendered height map as the basis then using RMF() to iterrate the values between each pixel. this should give me a terrain in the shape I want that has infinite detail.



Cyberspace was becoming overcrowded and slummy so I decided to move. These nice chaps gave me a lift.
david w
19
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Joined: 18th Dec 2005
Location: U.S.A. Michigan
Posted: 16th Jul 2007 22:54
@tintin if you switch from using a matrix to a mesh and instead of using get/paste image/setting current bitmaps, you would get he huge speed increase on making the texture. But thats not to bad so far. Also using a martix you cant really use the terrain shader. So even if you switched from a martix to a mesh you could make it support the shader and also not. Anways just a suggestion. I pretty much got what I was working on done. I got a random heightmap function partially working, that I want to include when its done. Anywas, I really would like to see some cliffs and such on your next update.

Keep up the good work.
Ian T
22
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Joined: 12th Sep 2002
Location: Around
Posted: 17th Jul 2007 03:30
David W, I don't suppose you have in your project a routine to stitch edges of a number of separate meshes together to make them match up properly? That would be extremely useful to me. I've had several stabs at it, using various methods such as attempting to seam all polygons with the furthest/lowest X/Z value to their equivalent on the next mesh, and mathematically determining the vertexes that needed to be sewed (a miserable failure, possibly because Bryce doesn't put all its vertices in line properly at higher mesh values), and nothing has worked 100% as yet.

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