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Work in Progress / Heightmap terrain generator

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MikeS
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Posted: 13th Feb 2006 02:29 Edited at: 13th Feb 2006 02:29
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I present to you my newest work in progress terrain generator. After about 10 hours of work and 3+ years of knowledge of working with matrices, I think I've finally gotten what I want.

The terrain you see above was generated from a heightmap, basic color map, and a shadowmap. It's actually the same terrain that comes with the advanced terrain.

The generation of the maps is decent in terms of speed(About 10 seconds for a 32000 polygon terrain). I plan to cut this into approximately half the time within the next 3 weeks.

One of the other exciting features about this program, is that it exports to .x, and will retain the normals(for lighting) and the texture applied.

(Terrain viewed in Truespace 6.6)


Currently the quality of the heightmap is based on the user.

Basic work pipeline consists of you creating a heightmap, colormap, and shadow map with other tools. I'm currently researching alogrithms for generating shadowmaps, and I won't release this tool until the program automatically generates them for the user(If they choose of course).

I've also done extensive research on blending textures today, and have that all setup, so users will have the option to merge the colormap and shadowmap together as one image rather than 2.

More progress shall be done by the end of next weekend.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly Yellow)

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Mattman
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Posted: 13th Feb 2006 02:51
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Mike! Haven't talked to you in forever. Things appear to be going better for you then me This looks amazing, I hope to use this myself when you are done!

Why make sense when you could make brownies?
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MikeS
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Posted: 13th Feb 2006 04:30
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Thanks Mattman.

Send me an e-mail sometime, I don't have much time to get on msn these days.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly Yellow)
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Gil Galvanti
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Posted: 13th Feb 2006 05:33
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looks like an awesome application, good job .

Pirates of Port Royale:
http://www.popr.gwgaming.net (Temporarily Disabled, We Apologize for the Inconvenience)
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TDP Enterprises
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Posted: 13th Feb 2006 12:33
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purty...

very nice

Box World.....WIP coming soon....
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Silvester
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Posted: 13th Feb 2006 22:29
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WOW,
i dont know what to say.....

got one question:
"Can it be used for FPS Creator?"

if yes:
even more WOW!

[href]www.freewebs.com/edromeproductions[/href]
look there for all my model packs latest updtes and other stuff!
(its not old yet)
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MikeS
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Posted: 14th Feb 2006 04:08
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Thanks Gil and TDP.

The program exports .x files(and .dbo as of today ), so users of FPSC will be able to use this program.

I've also included a picture showing the terrain in gamespace. Gamespace seems to render the texture a little better.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly Yellow)

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dark coder
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Posted: 14th Feb 2006 05:18
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very impressive but the only flaw i can see if the terrains seem rather low resolution, any plans to be able to add blending textures in there or something?

also how about lod? as rendering big terrains like that usually are pretty gpu consuming, i would love to see the type of lod where the verts get stretched the further away from the camera they are and the heights are changed in realtime, not sure howto explain it will tho, basically the bits closer to the camera have terrain tiles at say 10x10 units and they further they are from the camera the wider these tiles get and they change in realtime.

or would changing the uv/vert positions in realtime not be worh it?

Halowed are the ori.
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 14th Feb 2006 21:14
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It looks a lot like the demo that comes with the Advanced Terrain plugin. Exactly like it from what I seem to remember...


At least farting ferrets are better than stinky stoats.
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Silvester
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Posted: 14th Feb 2006 21:23
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When will this be released?

[href]www.freewebs.com/edromeproductions[/href]
look there for all my model packs latest updtes and other stuff!
(its not old yet)
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 15th Feb 2006 00:31 Edited at: 15th Feb 2006 00:32
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Not the same, just very similar...



At least farting ferrets are better than stinky stoats.

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Deadwords
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Posted: 15th Feb 2006 01:24 Edited at: 15th Feb 2006 01:24
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Quote: "Not the same, just very similar..."

Quote: "The terrain you see above was generated from a heightmap, basic color map, and a shadowmap. It's actually the same terrain that comes with the advanced terrain."


Nobody can ear you scream ... you're on a forum!
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x1b
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Posted: 15th Feb 2006 02:04
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MikeS,that is insanely wicked. Seriousley hope you finish this project. id love to see the end result.

- Do it, Do it Right, Do it right now..
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MikeS
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Posted: 15th Feb 2006 02:10 Edited at: 15th Feb 2006 02:11
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Quote: "very impressive but the only flaw i can see if the terrains seem rather low resolution, any plans to be able to add blending textures in there or something?"

Texture resolution is 512x512. Modern pcs should be able to handle a 1024x1024 texture with no problem.
Currently I'm experimenting with blend mapping and detail mapping. The results have been decent for the detail mapping. Just as with the shadow mapping, there will be an option to blend the detail map with the shadow and color map to have everything as one texture.

Quote: "also how about lod? as rendering big terrains like that usually are pretty gpu consuming,"

The ability to split up terrains will be a feature. It won't necessarily be LOD, but it'll work by splitting the heightmap into however many(in powers of 2) terrains you'd like to make from the first one. The LOD system of the terrain from that point will be up to your coding abilities. Keep in mind it's still always faster to have 1 large terrain in view rather than 16 smaller ones.

Quote: "i would love to see the type of lod where the verts get stretched the further away from the camera they are and the heights are changed in realtime, not sure howto explain it will tho, basically the bits closer to the camera have terrain tiles at say 10x10 units and they further they are from the camera the wider these tiles get and they change in realtime."

This will be completely possible with the new addition of the vertex command set recently released. Since the terrains will be exported into .x and .dbo, they'll be readily available to have their data tweaked. Even destructable terrains will not be out of the question.

Quote: "or would changing the uv/vert positions in realtime not be worh it?"

Really depends on how many you'd have to change. Most likely in say a say standard adventure game, it'd be a lot more to process rather than just leave the terrain alone.

-----------------
Quote: "When will this be released?"

Expected release date could be as early as the end of March.

-----------------
And yes, the terrain should be similar to advanced terrain as it uses the same textures.

Thanks Skalex
Thanks x1b.

A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly Yellow)
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MikeS
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Posted: 19th Feb 2006 05:02
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Some big updates today, as I took the whole day off to work on this program.

I've implemented the blend function, so you can now blend together the main texture, detail map, and shadowmap in any combination of percentages to get your desired texture. Still needs a little bit of tweaking to get to the point of where it's identical to having all 3 seperate textures applied, but it gets the job done.

The next are two things I haven't quite finished, but have decided to implement. I've been experimenting with fractals and a variation of the perlin noise alogrithm of my own, to generate random heightmaps and skyspheres. Currently the skyspheres are very basic in quality, but they are perfectly seamless.

My perlin noise type alogrithm is coming along, but it still needs some tweaking. To date it's own of the most complicated things I've ever worked with, but it will be worth the results. Users will be able to generate all the needed media to create outdoor levels within this single program.

I even took some time to look into Monsters free grass plugin. While I can't promise grass will be implemented, Monsters plugin can still work quite nicely with the maps. Either way, I've got some ideas of my own on how to implement grass, plant life, and other static objects into this program.

So that's just a quick little update, and now I'm off to work a little more.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly Yellow)
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Chris Franklin
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Posted: 24th Feb 2006 22:08
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Cool looks amazing can't wait to use it Good luck with it

Theme park simulator wip
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=71731&b=8
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