LarryEllis Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Hello everyone, my first post here for many years. I was a Leadwerks user around 5 years ago but due to real life getting in the way of my digital life, i just didnt have time to continue. I have a quick question that i hope someone can answer, im sure its a simple one. When i import a heightmap into the Leadwerks Editor, the terrain is very flat and the features are almost non existent. In CryEngine there is an option to hit Normalize and the terrain will come good, is there a way to tweak my heightmap within the editor? Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 In the terrain panel, try setting the altitude to 500 or 1000. Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryEllis Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Thanks! Worked a treat! Just one more question, is there a way to increase draw distance? I'm just Importing my Terrain, its a 4096 heightmap and i want to see how well the engine handles it. I'm very impressed with the engine so far, so if it can draw the distance i want ill be more then happy to stick with it. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Drop an Environment>Atmosphere entity into the scene, edit its properties, and increase the camera range. The engine won't handle a 4096 terrain well if you increase the camera range to see the whole thing. It's better to keep the camera range lower, use distance fog, and then the engine will have no problem with that size of terrain. Terrain that is out of the camera range will have no impact on rendering speed. Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryEllis Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Ahh excellent! Thanks Josh! Being able to see almost all of the terrain is very important for my project as it takes place on an island with a primary summit towards one end. Setting the draw distance to 3000 is more then enough and considering my CPU is several generations old, the engine is handling it amazingly well! Realism is paramount for my project and although the summit is the only place where this kind of draw distance is required, its a highlight in the game and is something everyone will look forward to. I can only assume the engine uses some line-of-sight culling so that objects behind hills are not drawn? Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Ahh excellent! Thanks Josh! Being able to see almost all of the terrain is very important for my project as it takes place on an island with a primary summit towards one end. Setting the draw distance to 3000 is more then enough and considering my CPU is several generations old, the engine is handling it amazingly well! Realism is paramount for my project and although the summit is the only place where this kind of draw distance is required, its a highlight in the game and is something everyone will look forward to. I can only assume the engine uses some line-of-sight culling so that objects behind hills are not drawn? Thanks again! It uses occlusion culling on lights and animated models. You can enable it on any expensive models, as well, but if you turn it on for everything your framerate will decrease. Entity distance culling is very powerful because entities out of their visible range won't even be iterated through. You can have a million entities just out of view range, and it will make no difference. You get three different view ranges to set entities at. Small items should be "near", big ones should be "far". Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryEllis Posted January 11, 2012 Author Share Posted January 11, 2012 Thanks again Josh! I did some tests and found that with the fog turned on i actually lose about 1-1.5 fps. I did a stress test with everything maxed and absolutely flooded the island with trees, using only one LOD step (billboards). The trees are all high detail for a kilometre and shadowmaps visible for a kilometre also. I think the engine did an amazing job, considering my CPU is quite a bottle neck and im sure that if i used my own models with several LOD's, that i could get the frame rates a lot higher. I do have a concern with the shadow map details though, because as i set the lowest shadow detail to 1000, it dramatically affects the quality of closer shadows. Due to the fact my project is based entirely in one level, an island roughly 2.5x4 kilometres, i really need the shadows visible for at least a kilometre. Terrain shadows were not enabled though, so i can imagine once they are, i might be able to pull the shadow distance back a little. Is there a way to enable terrain shadowing within the editor? Or does it need to be enabled elsewhere? I'm eagerly awaiting more news on Leadwerks3D and it was great to read that you have decided to stick with Newton physics, as PhysX would have been limiting for large environments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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