help for my first map (twolakes)

[SwiftSpear]

Difference being, SwiftSpear,
a) I was involved in this discussion, you weren't
b)The subject was *droppped* at the request of FA

Please dude, just let it drop.

See?

Can the moderator and I stop hijacking this thread and risking to cause a degeneration into a flame war now?

k thx.

We're talking about the guys map being too light/dark, this isn't a massive derailment from the topic. This forum is a public place and it's not up to FA or you to decide when a conversation on a particular topic has ended or not or who gets to participate in a coversation or not. Additionally, it is the opinion of forum adminstration (zaphod) that straying from topic is not a major issue on these forums and not something we will be concerning ourselfs highly with when moderating.

I posted after the main argument was over, fine, I was just skimming through looking for flames and I saw someone spitting about something so I decided to throw in my 2 cents. After the fact I realised I was too late, but the fact remains, I wouldn't edit someone elses post if they had posted what I did so I'm not removing my own. The argument is still on topic and flame free for the time being and therefore it is still entirely acceptable. That being said all I intended to do was state my opinion that the lighting was infact dim. Being that the nature of the topic is almost entirely opinionitive I really don't want to argue about it any more then FA did, so I'm good to end it here as well.

[mother]

Damn, and I wanted the last word so badly.

[Forboding Angel]

ok cyber, let me jsut reiterate everything to check.

You are having troubles with your terrain not looking realistic etc.

I need a close up screenie of your shoreline without reflective water on so I can actually see the texture underneath or you can just tell me if the tex under the water is the same as the land.

If you are rendering this in l3dt (which that is the temperate texture of l3dt so I assume so) then I need to know what size your heightmap is in relation to your texture map when you imported it into l3dt, so that I will know what ratio it was rendered at. A jpg of your heightmap would really help me as well.

Try using the gimp's scaling option on cubic setting to resize your heightmap to the same size as your texture map, then import into l3dt. The scal setting is very important. I would suggest a max height of 400 and a min height of 100 with the horizontal scale on 4. That should do the trick. The horizontal scale is what decides how picky l3dt is as far as adding rock walls or sloped texture etc.

Let me know if this helped.

[Cyberwal]

Yeah, l3dt. And I did resize the heightmap with gimp (to the same size as the texture..) because I read somewhere that PS doesn't do it as well for this purpose (and it doesn't! the texture looks horrible because of all the square artifacts on the heightmap PS introduced). The texture under water is this:



As for the scaling, I used the same height settings I later used for mapcov (-i -x 268 -n -182)

On a sidenote, it took me stupidly long to figure out how to get the waterlevel to be exactly as I want it

I'll pm you the heightmap if you want to check it

Edit: And a bit of OT-discussion doesn't hurt either, so no need to worry. This is not the first forum I've joined

[Cyberwal]

Two new screenshots, this time with "arid" terrain and a horizontal scale of 4. Much brighter, but the mountains get those strange artifacts looking like heightlines and the shores look funny too hm. I'll toy around with it a bit more.

[Forboding Angel]

ok, l3dt's climates are quite different than the ones I've written for it, so try this... Render it with a height of say, 1500 and horizontal scale of ehh, say 8 and see how it turns out (when you compile, do it at normal height).

My personal climates that I have written for l3dt are a bit easier to use.

oh, I forgot to mention, when you render, it's not necessary to do the light map, actually I would suggest you don't.

[Cyberwal]

why not?

[Forboding Angel]

arrg, goddamnit. Fricking forum nuked my post.

Basically the light map affect's the actual texture. I prefer to control the tex with the detailtex/smd, but it's not a big deal either way.

[Cyberwal]

wait.. detailtex?
All I have is heightmap, texturemap, featuremap and metalmap, which result in a .smf and .smt file after using mapconv. Then I pack it in a folder called maps with the .smd file and pack it with 7zip..

Or is a detailtex manual touching up of the regular texture map?

[Forboding Angel]

detailtex is an optional line in the ssmd that allows you to use a greyscale image texture for when you zoom in close. It also has the ability to lighten/darken the entire map texture.

the tag is

detailtex=yourdetailimage.bmp(I think you can use jpg too);

[Cyberwal]

Nice, gotta play around with that
Also, my l3dt renders look really cool when I use the small heightmap(641x), but rendered with the 5120x heightmap the texture looks all bland and repetive because the tiles are easily visible. Is there a way around that?

I know that tiling = smaller map size, but still I'd like to know how to get it to render it differently

I'll post some screenshots to illustrate what I mean as soon as this render is finished

[Forboding Angel]

if you can wait till this evening I can upload one of my custom climates for you. Barring that try this one:

Code: Select all

L3DT Climate File
#VersionNo:	1.0
#ClimateName:	"my climate name"
#ClimateRGB:	50, 255, 255

#ClimateGradCoeff:	1
#ClimateCurvCoeff:	1
#ClimateWaterCoeff:	1
#ClimateSalinCoeff:	1

#TypeID:	1
#TypeName:	"snow"
#TexName:	"snow\snow.jpg"
#HiTexName:	"snow\snow.jpg"
#HiTexBlend:	0.4
#ColourRGB:	255, 255, 255
#BaseProb:	1.0
#GradCoeff:	-.2

#TypeID:	2
#TypeName:	"cliffs"
#TexName:	"rock\myrock texture.jpg"
#HiTexName:	"rock\myrock texture.jpg"
#HiTexBlend:	0.3
#ColourRGB:	80, 80, 80
#BaseProb:	0.45
#GradCoeff:	1

#TypeID:	3
#TypeName:	"sand"
#TexName:	"sand\mysand texture.jpg"
#HiTexName:	"sand\mysand texture.jpg"
#HiTexBlend:	0.4
#ColourRGB:	230, 230, 120
#BaseProb:	0.45
#WaterCoeff:	0.3
#SalinCoeff:	2

#TypeID:	4
#TypeName:	"grass"
#TexName:	"grass\mygrass texturejpg"
#HiTexName:	"grass\mygrass texture.jpg"
#HiTexBlend:	0.4
#ColourRGB:	175, 200, 90
#BaseProb:	0.97
#GradCoeff: -0.15
#WaterCoeff:	0.25
#MaxAlt1: 120
#MaxAlt2: 200

open notepad, copy paste all the above code into it and save it as whatever.cli

you will need to find your own grass and rock textures for it was well as grass textures. Also, you need to name the climate at the top of the file. Use the register new climate function in l3dt to import your climate.

This is the first step to making a new climate in l3dt. make sure the grass texture tile isn't that visable, otherwise you will have the same problem.

If you want to wait, my next section in my tutorial will cover this in depth. Making new climates is quite a complex procedure and can take a long time but if you have played pathways or evergreenhaven or canyons, those are examples of climates I have made myself.

Trust me. Render it in 1 to 1 ratio, otherwise it will look bland and blurry.

[Cyberwal]

Sure I can wait, and many thanks for that example, maybe I can use my own grass texture after all

Do you know what causes this, btw:



It's especially visible at the shoreline, which looks just horrible

[Forboding Angel]

either the height or the horizontal scale

[SwiftSpear]

The lighting looks much much better BTW, I can't tell you how many dim maps there are under a blindingly bright blue sky. Even though there is some wierd texturing problems the map is starting to acctually look pretty good.

[Cyberwal]

thanks, but now I got a problem: spring won't load my map with the new version, it stops at "opening map"..

Edit #1: Ok I just noticed the "maps nit working topic".. should I change something with the map / compiling process or wait until v b2?

[SwiftSpear]

We know some maps aren't working but we don't know why yet... As soon as someone figures that out it will be easier to decide weather something needs to be changed on the mappers side or on the engine side...

[Forboding Angel]

cyber don't compile with spaces in the map name

[Cyberwal]

the map is called "twolakes", so it has an 8+3 name and no spaces..

[Cyberwal]

HAHA YES!!

I figured out what made my map not work! I still had a "Terraintype0" in the smd file, although I didn't have a terrain map defined. Removing that made it work just like before :D

Edit: Hm damn, now F2 doesn't work like it should, but it works on maps with typemaps.. how do I make a typemap? <.<



The comm has no problem walking on the red, btw. On anglo saxon starfish (which uses typemaps) it works..