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sundevil_1997 (79 posts)
Feb-03-02, 11:53 PM (EST) "Help with terrain deforming and texturing, please..." LAST EDITED ON Feb-04-02 AT 00:10 AM (EST)LAST EDITED ON Feb-04-02 AT 00:00 AM (EST)I wanted to start my ground texturing last night....but a search of the only 4 posts left revealed very little. I sure hope they can restore that stuff...that was a GREAT thread on ground texturing, but I didn't have a chance to read it.sooo....My problem now is that, after I put 9 textures in my select window...then what am I going to do?? Remove a texture from the select, and it goes away from everywhere you left it. I read SOMEWHERE that you could press the "Q" key to advance to the next set of texture selects....but pressing Q does nothing that I can see. Also...is there a better way than re-doing each black texture block by hand to achieve a "shore"? As you can see, this was the result of altering two grass textures. I like the look, but two drawbacks. One is that the grass from my altered texture doesn't look the same as the other grass textures...the conversion leaves it slightly pixellated. And Two...it takes TIME to do this. I'm not against that...but is there a better way? Also, for sniper and all...if all those posts about making smaller .ace files went away...be prepared to answer it anew. thanks.Oops, forgot the deforming terrain question...problem is that when I move the terrain tool around...the terrain changes. At times a piece of concrete will be exposed...then I move the tool over to correct it...and it's no longer exposed! I can raise the land up all i want, move the tool away, and it's unchanged. This happens in wireframe mode too. Unfortunatley, that means when I actually drive the route, I see stuff that wasn't there in RE. Any suggestions to minimize or stop this? Thanks*edit AGAIN*
Ok, scratch that "Q" question...I didn't have more than 9 textures in teh select window at the time, that's why it didnt' do anything. Now I understand. Still could use help on if I'm DOING this right! Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Help with terrain deforming and... sniper297 Feb-04-02 1 RE: Help with terrain deforming and... sundevil_1997 Feb-04-02 2

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sniper297 (1498 posts)
Feb-04-02, 01:14 AM (EST) 1. "RE: Help with terrain deforming and texturing, please..." LAST EDITED ON Feb-04-02 AT 01:20 AM (EST)The deforming terrain is an unholy pain. Poetic, ain't I? Actually, I don't know if you can make it go away completely, but a couple things help. Start the game, go to options, advanced display, and slide the terrain error threshold all the way right to zero. I usually turn my visibility slider down to 1500 or even 1250 for better framerates, and slide the terrain error scale left about a quarter of the way when I'm playing, but max them both out for the route editor. Hitting the "J" key after editing terrain forces the lighting angles to recalculate, but like I said I don't think you can get rid of it entirely.The trick with the Q key for more than 9 textures is to click on the texture select window itself, on the bar at the top, then hit Q. That will make #2 change to #1, #1 will no longer be accessible, the formerly unnaccessible #10 is now #9. Each time you hit Q it bumps them one more, hitting SHIFT Q bumps them back.
Terrain textures are not that hard, but the edges can be a problem. Best way is if they have a single solid color all the way around the edge, I didn't do that so there are some visible lines close up occasionally, but they're almost unnoticable. Which image editor do you use? I use PSP7 with TGAtool2, copy all the files I'm going to edit into one folder, and export them to another folder, and then after I'm done editing I copy and paste the altered images into the terrtex. that way, since TGAtool defaults to loading from the last directory you loaded from, and defaults to exporting from the last directory you saved to, it's fairly quick. Load, send main image to editor, edit the image, click on colors, count colors used, if less than 32,000 click on colors, decrease color depth, 32k. Otherwise use 64k, but terrain textures usually don't have that many colors. the "decrease color depth" is always the last thing you want to do before saving, since some kinds of editing will reset it to 16 million, and reloading the ace after exporting resets it too. Anyway, after saving, go back to TGAtool2, reload after edit, export as ace no alpha, and load the next one. To avoid the edge problems it's best to do a bunch of similar ones together, with the same type of effects. I forget what I used for a template for the po4scrub series, but I think it was US2scrub2. Along with US2pinkrock, and all the half and quarter scrub rock textures along with it. Those weren't made with the color reduction BTW, they are uncompressed 128x128 textures. I used the color replacer brush to change the color of the scrub, pasted in a small section of sand.ace into the one you have in your #1 slot in the picture, and then used the cloning brush to make the sandy areas. I deliberately made it off-center on an angle that way, since if you right click on the tile after placing the texture, you can rotate it around. Clicking on one tile, holding down the shift key and clicking on another, selects a rectangle of multiple tiles. Then hit the 1 key, all the selected tiles change to po4sndsc.ace. Then I right click, and select "randomize", and all the tiles flip around in a random pattern. I can rotate individual ones after that for different shoreline or hilltop effects. that's the big trick, you almost have to make a full set to avoid edge effects, but if you wanted to use defaults with the custom ones, PSP has remove pixellation and gaussian blur effects to minimize the differences. Probably the best way to do a shoreline thing would be to make 3 or 4 tiles with the sand on an angle from corner to corner, so that you could rotate them various ways, and alter the shoreline to match the texture.
I made a new set of textures for PO&N5, altho I gave them the same name as the ones from PO&N4 since I didn't want to spend the time replacing all of them. Probably took me an hour or so once I figured out what I wanted. I had the same pixelation problem with the larger size files, and found a neat new trick, texture effects.
You can apply various grainy or grass type textures to the image. This set is 256x256 instead of the 128x128 on the PO&N4, so even after the color reduction I got 140k files, so there's gonna be a whole meg of uncompressible terrtex ace files fattening up the zip. I think the effect is worth it tho;
What's gonna take you the most time on this is the learning curve with how to get the most out of the graphics program, but look at how KUJU made the different sets of terrtex half and quarter textures fit together to give you an idea of how to make complete sets. And don't get discouraged, I fiddled around ruining a zillion sets before I came up with the po4 set, and I'm learning how to improve on those every time I play with it. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sundevil_1997 (79 posts)
Feb-04-02, 02:05 AM (EST) 2. "RE: Help with terrain deforming and texturing, please..." Thanks for the great advice! Hopefully I'll have time to re-read it a couple times before the forum disappears again....Ya, I've got to find a more efficient way. It took far FAR too long just to create this very small scene. It DOES go fast, once you set up a system...but there's just too much track to do. I'll have to do better with standard textures, like you suggest. Thanks! By the way, thanks for the sand texture...it adorns my shores. Ya, that PSP double photo-paint brush tool is perfect for this! I may finally have to give in and actually buy this thing! Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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