Wilderness Environment

[Pascherik]

Some screens of the prototype from a moody, maybe fabulous environment. Wanna have a lot of space and many vegetation-objects.

 

 

Frames are great so i could concentrate now on more types of trees, further details in foreground like rotten stumps, branches and other gnarly matter.

 

Wanna reach an including atmosphere - life breathing audio-visual environment.

 

Next step will be a more deeply instruction to LUA (i´m generally new to coding) - to develop scripted, environment depending AIs for example animal classes. Simple a wolf class, deerlike´s, an eaglelike and a few fishs in some tarns.

 

all the best

[Benton]

Your terrain texture is WAY too stretched

[Michael Betke]

Yes work on the terrain texture more if the player is supposed to walk on it.

[Pixel Perfect]

It's difficult to get good terrain texture cover for vast outdoor scenes in LE2 due to the limit of 5 terrain textures. Being able to apply a base texture has helped considerably but it is challenging to come up with texture cover that both looks good at ground level but also convincing over distant views.

 

Sometimes a single stretched texture like this can be more convincing over a distance but does look awful if the player has to walk on it.

[Roland]

Lets hope for more texture layers in LE3 as the limit of 5 is a bit to low.

[shadmar]

Some nice shots there Pascherik.

 

@roland & pixel, how many layers would be enough ?

 

 

One technique I've used before is to use several of the same texture at different tilesize, this way it looks good upclose and from far above. Still five textures, but applied several times at different resolutions, like 3 for sand, example, one streched (1 tile), one at 16 tiles and one at 256 tiles.

[Pixel Perfect]

@roland & pixel, how many layers would be enough ?

 

 

One technique I've used before is to use several of the same texture at different tilesize, this way it looks good upclose and from far above. Still five textures, but applied several times at different resolutions, like 3 for sand, example, one streched (1 tile), one at 16 tiles and one at 256 tiles.

I'm really not sure how many it would take to get much more effective looking terrain as my experience has been limited pretty much to the existing 5 terrain texture layers. All I know is that I struggle to get sufficient variance using this number and any increase or alternate mechanism that allows for more would be a huge advantage. I'm aware however of some of the physical limitations imposed by graphics card hardware which contribute to these issues so accept its not simply a limit imposed by the engine designer.

 

I did come across an MMO engine a while back that appeared to offer 256 terrain texture layers, not sure how they were managing that or what possible compromises there might have been.

 

This link has some interesting information and looks at various different techniques: TerrainAdvancedTextures

[Josh]

The detail texture layers can be blended with the base texture. Also, there is an option in the DDS converter that fades mipmaps so terrain textures will look less repetitive in the distance.

[Michael Betke]

As I worked a lot with Cryengine I think 9-15 layers is the best. SOme levels I took a look had 22 or so. But I think its due the bad use of textures. 9 will be enought if you have decal support coming with it.

[shadmar]

Try this one, it adds every texture 3 times, one as before, one as 1/16 and one as 1/64 and blends.

Replace the one in shaders.pak terrain.frag (backup first)

terrainfrag.zip

[Marleys Ghost]

I did come across an MMO engine a while back that appeared to offer 256 terrain texture layers, not sure how they were managing that or what possible compromises there might have been.

 

This link has some interesting information and looks at various different techniques: TerrainAdvancedTextures

 

If I remember correctly T3D allows ~250 layers for a terrain block by using an 8 bit index for layer storage, I dont know if that includes the detail and bump texturing (I don't think it does), and I don't know if I'd have the need for that many or the patience to paint a terrain with that many lol.

[Pixel Perfect]

I agree 250+ is extreme and no one is seriously suggesting we need that many but 5 is too little even when they can be blended with a base texture. Faded mip maps do reduce the tiling issue (although good texture design will limit this considerably) but they also produce this uniform blandness with distance that looks anything but natural even when blended with a base layer.

 

I'd probably go with Michaels experience and suggestion of 9 -15 layers being about optimal. I'd be a lot happier with 15 especially if supported by a good decal system but accept that's never going to happen in LE2.

 

@shadmar Many thanks for posting the shader, that sounds like an interesting technique and I'll certainly experiment with it. Is this more effective with simpler textures (like sand for example) as opposed to ones with higher detail?

[Pascherik]

..some detail added to trees.

[puki]

Kind of reminds me of Skyrim

[Pascherik]

Variation of environment

[Pixel Perfect]

Looking very natural indeed. Nice work yet again Pascherik.

[shadmar]

Yeah looks great

[gamecreator]

You still need to use a larger texture for the ground but looking great otherwise.

[Roland]

Magical

[Paul Thomas]

Very nice scenes indeed. Good job.

[AggrorJorn]

I like both of those images. The first one is very adventurous while the second one could be from a horror game.

[Pascherik]

As it seems wilderness environment is going in a more certain playable direction. I used now parallax mapping, which is a good compromise to fake displacements.

 

Also i increased texture resolutions in foreground now