Mapping tehnique

[webber]

I get bored pretty quick so i try lots of thing, right now i'm with mapping.
I've almost mastered the basics and i wanted to take it a level further.
A friend of mine said something about a tehnique wich involves making a top-down ref picture of the map apply it to a plane (flat surface not flying machine) and then shaping it to fit the ref.
Are there any good tutorials for making terrain like this?

 

[donnierisk]

That technique might take a few people a while to figure out and have you mastered vertex manipulation yet? If so, here's the tutorial that is as good as it gets, thx to Codl Steel:

http://esf-world.com/tutorials/Cold_Steels_displacement_mapping_tutorial.html

and if you have some other stuff about mapping that is unclear to you, here's a few other tutorials, that tutorial is also here:

http://esf-world.com/index.php?c=mappingtut

Happy mapping!

 

[Grega]

http://www.esf-world.com/tutorials/Cold_Steels_displacement_mapping_tutorial.html

Thatone is exacly what you wanted.

BTW you should check the other tuts on esf-world. Very informative.


Beaten by a millisecond by the Donnierisk

 

[webber]

I tried to make terrain and this is it:
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/733/e2ex6.jpg
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/5917/e1zj2.jpg
I know the texture doesn't match, becouse i drew it for 128x128 sized blocks and then i changed my mind and when't for 256x256 ones.
Crits are very welcome so that i learn from my mistakes.

 

[donnierisk]

doesn't look bad, but I see too many curves in the cliff texture, try giving it more corners and making it easier to allign terrain to it, oh add a layer between those two, a dirt one, then it will look smoother. Oh and press alt + p, if you find any problems then you did it wrong, I think those other tutorials cover how to do the terrain without errors.

 

[Cold Steel]

Yes ! Me ftw.

Looks like you've got the from drawing board to hammer technique down.

Here's the deal. Only use small brushes where they are needed. If there's a flat area or an area that's alligned the same, just use huge brushes to cut down the poly count ;o

Secondly, I can see you've been using a grid in the psp, yet you're not using it in hammer. Your grass is on the cliffs where does not belong, and the cliffs are being pulled down to the flat areas. All these things are possible though. But not in the way you did.

And by now, you probably know you should not draw for one brush size specifically. Keep in mind you can use small brushes when it comes to angles and corners. Use the large brushes for the areas that are flat or the same kind of allignment.

One last tip. When you're done, select all brushes. Then go to the texture tool. Now start deselecting all the faces you can see with ctrl+left click. When you have deselected the entire surface or faces that you can see from outside. Set the texture to "null" and to the scale of 100. Lot's of people tell me setting the texture scale of null brushes to higher values won't do anything, but to me they have reduced the r_speeds for each one of my maps at large rates.

Good luck with the map, and keep practicing.

 

[webber]

The thing with the grass is like this: first i made it for 128X128 blocks, but i changed my mind when i started working in hammer and made it into a 256X256 one.
Oh and Thanks!!!!!