Complete Map Making Tutorial: Done - Page 2

Complete Map Making Tutorial: Done

Tutorials & Resources For Mappers

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Forboding Angel
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Post by Forboding Angel »

ya it's fine. Honestly I've covered most of what I meant to except terrain layouts, and I can't get to them until I have some hours to do it :(
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Forboding Angel
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Post by Forboding Angel »

Atorpy wrote:Hi Forboding Angel,

I was wondering if you had tried the new climate editor in the latest beta-release of L3DT? It should take away some of the pain in editing climates.

Also, while I'm here, I thought the map-making community might be interested in a 'painted desert'-esque climate coming in the next release:

Image Image

Cheers,
Aaron.

AARON! cool! I did try out the beta, but it confabulated me a little bit lol. I want to give it another go this weekend when I have some time to mess around with it. I do however already know 2.4 is gonna rock my socks :-)
Atorpy
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Post by Atorpy »

Hi Forboding Angel,
Forboding Angel wrote: I did try out the beta, but it confabulated me a little bit lol.
That's understandable. The first beta was a little buggy (as all good betas should be!), and the second beta is better, but still has some problems. Most of these have been ironed out for the next release, which should be ready in the next week or two.

Cheers,
Aaron.
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Forboding Angel
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Post by Forboding Angel »

wow, that soon? Kick ass!
mufdvr222
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Post by mufdvr222 »

Sweet :-)
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Pxtl
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Oh

Post by Pxtl »

A quick word of advice to all mappers:

NO FOG.

That is all. If you think "but I like fog" you might want to consider actually playing Spring more instead of just mapping.
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Forboding Angel
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Post by Forboding Angel »

actually fog is good, only thing is it should never be a number smaller than .5

I hate it when I'm in ota view and the fog obscures my view when I'm zoomed out.

If you have no fog set, things in the distance look pretty nasty.
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LOrDo
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Post by LOrDo »

Some image links are broken in the tutorial FA, perhaps you can fix them? I just got bryce and made some real kickass hightmaps, so im intrested in learning how to map.
Aurora
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Joined: 22 Oct 2006, 01:16

Post by Aurora »

I tried to import a 8192x8192 design map, but:

CMapWrap::InitMap error
- invalid map size

CL3DTio_FIApp::LoadMapFile error
- cannot initialise map

CExtDLL::LoadMapFile error
- call to DLL function 'LoadMapFile' failed

CMapGroup::LoadMapFile2 error
- error loading file

CMapGroup::LoadMapFile error
- Call to LoadMapFile2 failed

CWizardPane_ImportDM::LoadMapFile error:
- map is zero-sized

Error loading file

CMapWrap::InitMap error
- invalid map size

CL3DTio_FIApp::LoadMapFile error
- cannot initialise map

CExtDLL::LoadMapFile error
- call to DLL function 'LoadMapFile' failed

CMapGroup::LoadMapFile2 error
- error loading file

CMapGroup::LoadMapFile error
- Call to LoadMapFile2 failed

CWizardPane_ImportDM::LoadMapFile error:
- map is zero-sized

Error loading file
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hunterw
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Post by hunterw »

the design map is 1/8 the size of your texture map
the metal map is 1/8 + 1 pixel the size of your texture map
the heightmap is 1/8 + 1 pixel the size of your texture map
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Forboding Angel
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Post by Forboding Angel »

hunterw wrote:the design map is 1/8 the size of your texture map
the metal map is 1/8 + 1 pixel the size of your texture map
the heightmap is 1/8 + 1 pixel the size of your texture map
Wrong on all counts. Which is why the (l3dt rendered)textures in all your maps look blurry (however, the detail texture in spring saves it from looking too bad).

JJ45, I assume you are working with 2.4 in which case look up my posts about bumpmapping in the help forum. There is a lot of info there that I can't really copy over here. This tut was written for 2.3d. 2.4 changes the rules quite a bit and make the entire process much easier.

However, most of the things discussed in this tutorial hold very true to 2.4. It's simply that in 2.4 you can get away with a lot more than you could in 2.3d

Use normal maps kids, so baby jesus can stop crying.
Aurora
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Post by Aurora »

I can't get custom features to work. The instructions are a bit unclear in every tutorial when it comes to custom features. I have no idea what the directory structure is supposed to be like; where is Mothers Mapconv, where are the map files themselves, where are the features? I want this explained very clearly.
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ralphie
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Post by ralphie »

It's not all that difficult to figure out if you open up a few maps you know have features and pinch their directory structure.
Aurora
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Post by Aurora »

Okay I'm compiling now, and for over 2 hours it has been doing this:

http://img71.imageshack.us/my.php?image=compilerg5.gif

Feature Type 1 all the time. Did I do something wrong?

Edit: about 4 hours of compiling and... FANTASTICO!!!!1q

http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... terwn4.gif
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hunterw
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Post by hunterw »

Forboding Angel wrote:
hunterw wrote:the design map is 1/8 the size of your texture map
the metal map is 1/8 + 1 pixel the size of your texture map
the heightmap is 1/8 + 1 pixel the size of your texture map
Wrong on all counts. Which is why the (l3dt rendered)textures in all your maps look blurry (however, the detail texture in spring saves it from looking too bad).
Forboding Angel wrote:Texture map: Is the actual size of your map. Therefore 16 x 16 will be equal to 8192 x 8192

Heightfield Size: To get your heightfield size do this simple equation. Texture / 8 + 1 = heightfield dimentions. Therefore, if your map size is a 16 x 16 your heightfield will be 1025 x 1025.

Metal map Size: To get your Metal map size do this simple equation. Texture / 8 + 1 = Metal map dimentions. Therefore, if your map size is a 16 x 16 your Metal map will be 1025 x 1025.

Feature map Size: To get your Feature map size do this simple equation. Texture / 8 = Feature map dimentions. Therefore, if your map size is a 16 x 16 your Feature map will be 1024 x 1024.
forb do you feel that consistency is important?
bamb
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Post by bamb »

he might have meant that you have to upscale the heightmap before importing it to L3DT, otherwise it looks bad when you render.
dunno. he's so dense.
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Forboding Angel
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Post by Forboding Angel »

Your replay is correct bamb. I've only explained why in this thread about 50 billion times, but that's ok, appearently because I know why it needs to be done this way I'm the one that's dense, as opposed to the person reading it.

Hunterw, this tutorial was written for 2.3d

If you import your heightmap as a design map in any of the versions at 1/8th scale, l3dt will apply all filters to it and it will come out looking NOTHING like what you put in. Therefore, you have to import your design map at full resolution which for a 16x16 is 8192x8192.

In 2.4x it is done a little differently. The way that textures are applied is completely different than the 2.3 series. In 2.4 for maximum detail, import at full res your design map, then render heightfield. After render, rescale the heightfield to 1/8th the texture map size, render att map at 4, normals at 4, light at 8, and texture at 8 (comes out looking much nicers, as Arron's texture layering system in 2.5 is absolutely pwn in a box). The reason (and I explained it more than once in the tutorial) is that l3dt draws in 32bit. If you plug in an 8 bit or even a 16 bit heightfield, every terrace will be drawn on the final texture. That is bad, in most cases, very bad.

Finally... Hunterw, stop questioning me. I know more about spring mapping than you could hope to know in a dozen lifetimes/ Why? Because I have over 54 maps in the course of a year and a half, and have tried damn near everything. That said, many of the other mappers here are extremely talented as well, and I have learned much from them. Noize, mufdvr, and weaver are wonderful brains to pick, because many of them have tried to do things that even I have never thought of. Their maps are some of the best in spring as well.

As far as l3dt goes, I have broken damn near every limit there is to break in it. I'm not going to go into detail because most of it would be useless to anyone but me, however, suffice it to say, if you screw around with 2.3 series heightfields and attributes map, there is an entire other world to be discovered. No one has ever noticed, but if you pay attention, twilight canyons was rendered using a very funky (and hard to pull off) method in l3dt 2.3d, utilizing more steps on the same field than I would wish on anyone.

With some exceptions, several of my latest maps have been merely to look good (Iron Gauntlet for example). Iron Gauntlet looks OMGWTFAMAZING, but it really doesn't play all that well. That was the first map I did using 2.5 dev versions, and honestly I could care less how it plays, that one was all about the eyecandy.
Rakentaja
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Joined: 06 May 2007, 15:39

Post by Rakentaja »

sup

I went through with your tutorial, but the heightmap that L3DT (version 2.5) created for me was WAY too smooth and basically absolutely nothing like the newheightfuckingsmalltutexampl.jpg. I used the canyons heightmap that you provided with the tutorial just to be sure not to miss anything. However, the heightmap L3DT put out after generating a design map is, frankly, too smooth. I whipped it open in Photoshop afterwards but my efforts towards improving it are proving to be futile. I tried fiddling around with the settings in L3DT but no dice.

What gives?

(Aaron, if you're reading this, tell me if you have changed the heightmap generation process, so that the heightmap result might be more like mine, between versions 2.3 and 2.5 tia)


edit holy shit I think I got it
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Forboding Angel
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Post by Forboding Angel »

Ack, didn't see this.

Well, if you want to create your heightmaps completely outside of l3dt without any l3dt drawing, you need to import them at full texture size resolution (meaning, if it's a 16x16 map import the heightmap at a size of 8192x8192, then once it's imported, scale it down to 1024x1024), then scale them down within l3dt.

Another thing you can do if it's smoothing too much (which is what I normally do) is raise the heights in l3dt to something ridiculous, like min 0 max 1000-3000, alternately, you can fiddle with the horizontal scale.
Justin Case
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Re: Complete Map Making Tutorial: Done

Post by Justin Case »

Thx a lot man, I will now start making my very first map! (after 4 years of playing :mrgreen: )
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