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As the title suggests, Im interested in a good (programatically effective) way of texturing large terrains. Its a matter Ive thought a good deal about and is something Im sure many people have had to deal with, so Im curious how others go about it. Suppose for the sake of portraying what I mean, you have a large grass field. Naturally you don't want to use very high resolution texture for the whole plane but rather repeat a smaller grass texture. This way you aren't using a 20000x20000 bitmap to maintain clarity. This works if all you needed was grass. But when you go to add detail to the field tilling becomes an issue. Suppose you wanted a dirt path running down the center of the field, you couldn't just repeat one texture over and over again. At this point I should mention that I know how to do this in 3ds max using multiple texture layers so my real question is how does one do something similar to this in the world of darkGDK or Darkbasic (since the technique would be the same regardless of which language). To the best of my knowledge DB doesn't support multiple texture layers. I hope this is the right place to ask. I figured asking those keen on modeling would be more knowledgeable on the matter than those in the programming forums. Well thanks in advance for anything, and even the smallest insight would be greatly appreciated. Oh and, I am doing the actual modeling in 3ds max and then Importing to a DarkGDK app.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but I do know that DarkBASIC has the AdvancedTerrain plugin that comes with the program (most people do not know this). Try using a search for "Advanced Terrain".

Ya, with Advanced terrain, you can have a main texture that will spread across your entire terrain, giving parts like dirt roads and rocks color. Then, you have a detail map (usually grayscale) that is overlayed and repeated over the terrain texture to give it a crisper look so the main texture doesn't look blurry.

Thanks for the replies guys. I am using DarkGDK so while its not necessary Advanced Terrain I did check out the Terrain functions contained within the GDK and you were completely right AndrewT. I didn't know about the detail map it used in addition to its diffuse so that will work perfectly. Thanks again.

Hmm.. oh well, I don't mind

Haha Commander, you will notice that I did say "guys" when I said thanks. I was referring to his comment about the detail map when I mentioned him specifically. So I hope we aren't in a fight now because I just don't think I could bear it.

Hah, yeah it was a joke