Difference between revisions of "Legacy:Terrain"

Revision as of 18:55, 19 June 2005

The basic concept of Terrain in the Unreal Engine (UT2003 and beyond) is based around creating a large grid of polygons based on a heightmap and centered around a TerrainInfo Actor. Once that is in place, the terrain tool bundle, which is actually a collection of tools, can be used to perfect or even create from scratch a block of terrain for the map. The possibilities for this are endless. It can be used for rolling terrain, the floors and ceilings of caves, and probably many more things that creative UT2003 mappers are sure to come up with in the future. Prior to UT2003, mappers were limited to using BSP brushes to create terrain-like irregularities: see Making Terrain (UT) for more on this.

Terrains can be scaled as big or as small as you want (and you can also have as many as you want). A terrain could be a small area of a map within architecture, such as a sandy courtyard, or the basic world space, such as with a large outdoor level.

Tutorials

• Terrain Mode – reference page for the terrain mode interface
• Creating A Terrain - In-depth illustrated tutorial
• Terrain Texture Layer – adding and editing texture layers
• Terrain Decoration Layer – adding and editing deco layers (in progress!)

Quick UT2003/UT2004 Terrain

1. Subtract A Space: Subtract a 8192 by 8192 by 8192 cube.
2. Add an Actor >> Info >> ZoneInfo. Set ZoneInfo properties ZoneInfo -> bTerrainZone = True
3. Add an Actor >> Info >> TerrainInfo
4. PSP: Create 128x128 image. Paint heightmap. Reduce to grayscale. Save out as .bmp
5. Import into texture browser (untick generate mipmaps - they aren't required)
6. Set TerrainInfo -> TerrainMap to 8bit image
7. PSP: Create 128 x128 pure white texture and save out as is to .bmp
8. Import into texture browser (uncheck generate mipmaps seems to have a problem for me ???)
   Set TerrainInfo -> Layers -> 0 -> AlphaMap to this texture.
   Layers -> 0 -> Texture to whatever
   UScale and VScale to anything greater than 1

(you can probably build at this point & see the terrain. needs confirming. Certainly works with just Zone lighting)

1. You need to add an Actor >> Light >> Sunlight into the level and turn the directional arrow so that it faces the terrain. (use lighting only mode Alt+0 and in actor rotate mode with Ctrl+ LMB for height and Ctrl+RMB for left to right). Note the position is unimportant, as the light rays emitted are simulated and parallel.
2. Create a Skybox (It's the same procedure as it was in UT), and select fake backdrop in the properties sheet of the sides of your large subtracted level cube. If you don't create a Skybox, SunLight won't work, although your terrain will still be there - it will be stopped by any non-fake backdrop surfaces.
3. Build All. The terain should show up now. Set TerrainInfo -> TerrainScale accordingly (you'll probably need something like 16*16 X*Y for an 8192 cube).

The terrain editing is realtime in the editor, you define various layers (as you would in photoshop) and you paint over the terrain with various opacity brushes. The brushes are scalable, you can add noise, pressure, etc. If you really wanted you could bring in those alpha or height maps yourself, but I don't see that you would ever really NEED to do that. After that, you can select a layer and change the texture associated with it, scale that layer's texture, rotate it, etc... Two textures with alpha blending on top of each other, with different scaling and rotation generally don't tile badly.

Source: Polycount Message Board

Related Topics

• G16ed – 3rd party application for terrain heightmap editing
• UT2003 Mapping
• New Features In UT200X
• Making Terrain
• Making Terrain (UT)

External Links

• http://udn.epicgames.com/pub/Content/TerrainTutorial/
• http://www.epicgames.com/UnrealEngine/Build633Tutorial.html
• http://angelmapper.com/tutorials/terrain1.htm

Cleanup & Refactoring

Tarquin: I've actually had a play with the terrain tool, and started to get a feel for it. Based on that, and what we have here, I suggest we need to divide up information into:

• creating a terrain – done!
• editing terrain height – working with all the tools
• working with layers
• working with decoration layers

any thoughts?

Lilguy:

I think it'd be better off if we had creating and editing in one spot, and working with texture and deco layers in another spot. None of those topics are really that huge by themselves, and I believe the udn site had everything on one page for terrain...Perhaps we could copy and paste a lot of that document?

EntropicLqd: It's a shame the tutorials that shipped with the SE version of 2K4 can't be distributed. The terrain ones are really quite good. However, there is a lot of information there so I'm with Tarquin ... the pages should be separated out.

Tarquin: To some extent, that's already done. This section can be removed & also the "Clenup" tag. Lilguy, I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT COPY MATERIAL FROM OTHER SITES TO THE WIKI UNLESS YOU OWN IT, OR HAVE THE AUTHOR'S EXPLICIT PERMISSION

Lilguy: Tarquin, the only reason I mentioned this was from this quote (actually from your personal page discussion):

"TechnoJF: Tarquin, I sent an e-mail to Tim Sweeney asking him for permission to port content written by Epic over to this site. He wrote back saying to go ahead, and to copy and reformat as much as we like. I'm going to do a few such pages in just a bit. I just figured that this was something I should inform you of.

Tarquin: That's great!"

I guess I'm wrong in assuming this means we could use the terrain document...

As far as organization, when I do a search for "terrain." I get at least these:

While I know some of these are seperate steps, they're all closely related steps that everyone must follow every time he/she creates a terrain. It just seems to me like it'd make more sense to follow them in order in 2 or 3 documents, rather than have a seperate document for every little aspect of the subject.

Tarquin: Ah. I'd completely forgotten about that!!!! oops! Still, I would prefer if we wrote material ourselves, as Tim doesn't give us permission to rewrite, only reformat. The list at the top of this page is the pages on terrian that are considered the "main" ones:

• Terrain - general overview & contents
• Terrain mode – tool reference
  • Vertex Editing Terrain Tool – subtopic of Terrain mode
• Creating a Terrain – tutorial part 1
• Terrain Texture layer – tutorial part 2
• Terrain Decoration layer – tutorial part 3
• Terrain Editor – redirect to Terrain mode
• TerrainInfo – actor class reference
• Using the terrain tool – fold in & delete
• Manipulating Terrain – fold in & delete

Is that clearer?

Lilguy: Looks great! Anything else I can add to these pages that you can think of?

Tarquin: There's a lot of discussion that needs to be either summarized or deleted. The Painting Terrain Tool reference page needs writing at some point. Terrain Decoration layer needs polishing. I've had problems with this aspect of terrain myself :(