Spring RTS Engine

Why should one use it?
Where on the map should it be placed?
How to reliably create distribution for it?
How to get proper detail ratio?

I have tried to improve my map with splat details lately since I have seen them in action before mainly being used by behe on maps such as melt I started to question: how to exactly make something like that? After numerous tries I managed to make the diffuse more interesting with splatting but yet I have not achieved the level that for example Melt represents (though that might be just because I suck at map making).

The key is to let the detail textures do the work for you. I use World machine exclusively for making the distribution maps, and the free version is sufficient for this.
One can use photoshop's magic wand tool with contiguous set to off and selecting subsets of your minified base map texture to perform this.

Beherith wrote:The key is to let the detail textures do the work for you. I use World machine exclusively for making the distribution maps, and the free version is sufficient for this.
One can use photoshop's magic wand tool with contiguous set to off and selecting subsets of your minified base map texture to perform this.

L3dt free version can make dist maps super easy for you, and it's a lot easier to use than wm, imo.

I have made tons of ssmf maps and until recently, my argument against them was performance loss... Turns out simply fine tuning my splat map scaling fixed the performance issues, so now I'm back on the ssmf is the end all be all train.

Orfelius, download this map and look at it ingame.

http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps/mirage

The texture has 0 detail on it, only colors. All of the detail is done with ssmf. Using this as an example, you can see how incredibly powerful ssmf is.

As far as I know, splat texture scaling has zero effect on performance. Forb, are there any value ranges you found to be problematic?

TexScales = { 0.006, 0.006, 0.006, 0.0005 },

These values cause a lot of framerate loss for me.

My new values are:
These seem to work nicely.

I changed them around to the ones you posted and a lot of things between 0.0001 and 0.1 and observed no performance change.

There are also some additional tricks

Scale one Texture small and use them on slopes (rock cliffs) as Detailbringer combined with a large scale splatmap that breaks up the moire

On small maps, one can use one giant splatmap to add additional details, that is basically needs to be scaled down.. that way, big details can be painted in by hand (clifs etc)
[quote= somedev]
>This is performance wise very very bad :)
[/quote]

As forb allready stated, detailed texturemaps clash with splat, as the details allmost always contradict each other.. you can draw a rock into the texture, and when the splatmap above is sand-dunes, you will have something that looks strange..

There is a tabula version that has a grass splat on the rocky cliffs..

If you scale Textures, use powers of two 0.5 0.25 0.125 0,0625 0,03125 0,015625 0,0078125 0,00390625 0,001953125

Beherith wrote:I changed them around to the ones you posted and a lot of things between 0.0001 and 0.1 and observed no performance change.

Look for FPS drop, not a perceptible performance change. I had trouble getting it through to anarchid and orfelius that just because I was getting framerate drop didn't mean that I had crappy performance, but if I'm getting 215 fps and it drops to 170, that's a large percentage drop.

Considering that I have a 660 gtx, that's probably a lot better than what most players around here have. As a result, you can imagine that that percentage is going to be magnified in a big way on a lower end system.

I have a GTX970, and there was <2% change in fps per test, with GPU loads being identical throughout. Even my soon-to-be-released Detail Normal Texture Splatting (DNTS) only results in a 10% drop.

Beherith wrote:soon-to-be-released Detail Normal Texture Splatting (DNTS)

We are going to look back upon this as the end of the dark ages of mapping

As long as SMF is the basis, it's always going to be the dark ages.

Orfelius wrote:Why should one use it?

It increases the potential textural resolution.

Orfelius wrote:Where on the map should it be placed?

wherever you feel textural noise can enhance your detail level.

Orfelius wrote:How to reliably create distribution for it?

as reliable as you are? Seems a poorly worded question.

Orfelius wrote:How to get proper detail ratio?

That depends but you can chose scaling, intensity etc.

smoth wrote:

Orfelius wrote:How to reliably create distribution for it?

as reliable as you are? Seems a poorly worded question.

Orfelius was provoking smoth. I saw it. This monster

not provoking just needs clarification

Its pretty easy to create a decent distribution by using the render clouds feature of photoshop, then high pass filtering it to your desired frequency, then pushing the levels to the max.