[rfx]

Hi,

I'm currently trying to put pieces together what options I do have to create terrain in UrT. Not just a flat brushes but hills and such.

I found quite some information but it's unclear on what the current best practice is (if there's a definitive answer possible at all).

From my understanding there are two ways to create terrain:

• using brush (brush soup)
  
• creating a big patch and tuning it
  
• (anything else?)

For the terrain using regular brushes I found various tools available. Provided as port of radiant (GtkGenSurf) or external ones (EasyGen).

Not sure about the patch-way if there are tools to create them. It seems using brushes is the preferred way. The GtkRadiant book [1] doesn't mention terrains at and it's the same in Urban Terror Mappers wiki [2].

Here's the result of my application support findings (no particular order):

• FATE - Freehand Adaptive Terrain Editor
  http://www.vis.uni-s...fate/index.html
  
• Tutorial using GtkGenSurf
  http://www.pythononl...orial23.htm#gtk
  
• EasyGen
  http://www.webalice....les_easygen.htm
  
• Terragen
  http://www.wemakemaps.com/terragen.htm
  
• SimonOC - Creating Terrains
  http://www.simonoc.c.../terrain1_1.htm
  
• From the Level Design Links sticky:
  http://forums.urbant...65
  I found the sticky containing surprisingly few info about the topic.

I get the impression I can search even longer and probably find more information, but I'm unable to filter out what are the recommended ways; or which are easier for beginners and which are the advanced methods.

Would be nice to get some feedback if this gathered information is accurate or if there alternative ways.

thanks

[1] http://en.wikibooks....wiki/GtkRadiant
[2] http://gotdelirium.c...title=Main_Page

[Rentreg]

i use a terrain tool such as liquid light and the obj importer/q3map exporter in milkshape

[NulL]

Quote

using brush (brush soup)
creating a big patch and tuning it
(anything else?)

Don't use patches for terrain, the other option as rentreg said is to model the terrain.

Sock's article is the best to read and learn from. Personally I can't stand those heightmap based terrain generators, they are very limited in what you can do with them because you are stuck with the same size triangles across the whole terrain.

When I've made terrain I built it brush by brush, this allows me to add detail where it's needed and have larger brushes where the terrain is flat. Have a look at this example from mandolin:
http://homepages.man...mando_beach.zip

More recently I've been modeling the terrain in 3ds, which is very nice as I can paint the texture blends directly onto the mesh without having to use q3map_dotproduct2 or alphamod brushes, its also much easier to build interesting shapes that take a lot less time to build compared to brushes and you have full control over the texture uv coordinates so you can easily add curved/winding paths. Imagine trying to make this with a heightmap terrain generator:

[bw|IceMan]

I all.
I am intrested in creating terrains.
I would like to try GtkGenSurf but I can not find it... where can I download it? is there any manual to use it?

thank you very much.

[NulL]

In a word, don't.

Make terrain by hand, brush by brush; don't use those terrain generating tools. Unless of course you want rubbish looking & useless terrain.

I know it takes longer, but if you want to be a respectable mapper you have to have to stop looking for cheap shortcuts.

[Rambetter]

NulL, on 22 June 2010 - 08:00 AM, said:

More recently I've been modeling the terrain in 3ds, which is very nice as I can paint the texture blends directly onto the mesh without having to use q3map_dotproduct2 or alphamod brushes, its also much easier to build interesting shapes that take a lot less time to build compared to brushes and you have full control over the texture uv coordinates so you can easily add curved/winding paths. Imagine trying to make this with a heightmap terrain generator:

Hey I'm a little confused here. These tools you mention, like 3ds, they still generate a .map file which you have to then compile with q3map2, right? So, what is 3ds generating in the .map file? There aren't too many choices. As far as I know, there are patches, brushes, and entities. That's it. It's generating just brushes, right? (As opposed to patch mesh or something else?)

When you say "paint the texture blends directly onto the mesh without having to use q3map_dotproduct or alphamod brushes", since the 3ds tool is just generatig a .map file, it must be doing something within the bounds of what Radiant would potentially be able to generate, right? So what is 3ds creating in the .map file that is different?

Also, when you say "full control over the texture uv coordinates" you mean like not just rotating, scaling, or translating a texture, but also moving the endpoint coordinates (4 corners) to make like a shear or something? Again, if the .map file format is able to support this, is there really no way to do this with Radiant?

[Richardyourgod]

Null why is it bad if you use patches? I use some patches for my entrance

[NulL]

RB: Indeed you are confused. :) I go from 3dsmax to an ASE model, not to a .map.

Rich: In general there is nothing wrong with patches, I use them a lot, but they make terrible terrain; they are just too round and smooth to make natural looking terrain; there's also issues with LODs and seams where you place patch pieces next to each other. Patches are great for pipes and arches but just not for terrain.

[ValkoVer]

And You will end up with hundreds of unecessary triangles.

[Kolossus]

So you create a model... Uhm... And before exporting the model, do you export to map just to check the size and shapes match your buildings layout on your map or you START from terrain so you can build up in Radiant?