Terrain Modeling Techniques

noMatt · Post by **noMatt** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:20 pm

Hey Guys i have a bunch of question on the Terrain Modeling Topic

Ive searched Gametoast and found out that theres no topic on that

1: I know I can save the Terrain as highpoly OBJ.
Well, is there a way to load the Modified one in ZeroEditor back?

2: I know that if you click "open" in ZE you can open a tga, and a bmp file but if I do it crashes (I tryed to load a greyscale heightmap)

3: Is there a way to deactivate the Terrain so I can use a Object instead?

Thanks in advance for every answer guys!

Locutus · Post by **Locutus** » Tue Sep 10, 2013 4:00 pm

1. Is there a need for that? If you can change the terrain in ZE why exporting and changing it in another program?

3. There is: Click on the "Terrain" button in the upper left in ZE and and switch in-game terrain to off.

noMatt · Post by **noMatt** » Wed Sep 11, 2013 11:49 am

Because the ZE terrain tools are bad

Much rather i would use Mudbox and For Texturing too.
Anywhen ill try to deactivate it and place a safemade one as object

Post by **Teancum** » Wed Sep 11, 2013 3:09 pm

What's bad about ZE's terrain tools? You know that ZE is the game engine, so trying to enhance beyond what ZE can do won't work, right?

noMatt · Post by **noMatt** » Wed Sep 11, 2013 4:13 pm

Well but i can try to push the limits

And Whats about the targa thing?

Post by **Teancum** » Wed Sep 11, 2013 5:35 pm

Well terrain is totally optimized by several levels of detail. If, for example, you went with a "high res" model terrain your framerate would drop from 30 to 0 faster than Boba Fett fell into the Sarlacc Pit.

THEWULFMAN · Post by **THEWULFMAN** » Wed Sep 11, 2013 8:47 pm

The rendering of it may be more optimized, but the actual poly count of the terrain is exceedingly high. I forget the actual number, but we imported the terrain to XSI and I'm pretty sure the default size has a poly count with at least 7 figures.

Also this:

The Nasal Abyss wrote:I figured I would just show you guys one of the things I have been working on lately:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Mega Terrains! I've also done the calculations; This terrain has less impact on performance than a Zero Engine created terrain of the same size by 2.4 fps on average. It also looks much, much better to boot! It's made up of many pieces, all stitched together by being given the same position in Zero Editor. I also tried it being all one huge object and that worked just as well.

I could post this workflow if the interest is there. It's pretty similar to one that some of you guys that lurk Polycount may have seen.

Wires:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Now, to the OP. Don't open TGA (image) files with ZeroEditor. There's no point in trying. Use GIMP, Photoshop, or Paint.NET to open and edit them instead.

I forget how to export the terrain as an OBJ. I'd have to ask Marth.

Marth8880 · Post by **Marth8880** » Wed Sep 11, 2013 11:02 pm

THEWULFMAN wrote:The rendering of it may be more optimized, but the actual poly count of the terrain is exceedingly high. I forget the actual number, but we imported the terrain to XSI and I'm pretty sure the default size has a poly count with at least 7 figures.

To put it plainly, XSI crashed when I imported the default terrain.

THEWULFMAN · Post by **THEWULFMAN** » Wed Sep 11, 2013 11:29 pm

I'm pretty confident the reason the poly count is so high is the texture system. I'm guesstimating here that each texture layer needs its own terrain model. These all stack together, creating a very high poly terrain.

Long story short, long as you keep the poly limit the same or lower, modeled terrain won't decrease performance. If you're careful it could even benefit.

The actual question is if you can make it look good enough to warrant it.

lucasfart · Post by **lucasfart** » Thu Sep 12, 2013 6:24 am

As far as your crashes go, I know that ZE crashes anytime I load a .tga file larger than 4mb (I've only tried it as the texture for objects - it might be different for terrain, but I doubt it. Try lowering the res of your heightmap, and see if it stops crashing!

Locutus · Post by **Locutus** » Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:29 am

lucasfart wrote:ZE crashes anytime I load a .tga file larger than 4mb

12mb;)

noMatt · Post by **noMatt** » Thu Sep 12, 2013 2:10 pm

Well thats not my problem:
I CAN export and import the terrain in xsi (so just save the terrain as you would to normally just change the extension to obj.)

But i cant get it back to the editor with my modifications and i even cants seem to get a heightmap inplace (thats what i thought the targa is made for in the LOAD section: Please try it: just click load, then change the file type you want to open to targa and then open one

)

Post by **AceMastermind** » Thu Sep 12, 2013 3:25 pm

noMatt wrote:I CAN export and import the terrain in xsi ... But i cant get it back to the editor with my modifications...

ZeroEditor can export *.obj files, but it loads *.msh files. You should have no problem loading a terrain-like object as a *.msh file. What are trying to do that procedural ZE terrain can't?

noMatt · Post by **noMatt** » Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:23 pm

Higher resolution. Thats it. And more noisy hills (I do my Terrains with CryENGINE 3 SDK but the Problem is i cant use the auto uv of ZE then... so it needs to be fully textured)

Terrain Modeling Techniques

Terrain Modeling Techniques

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