BSP terrain tutorials

[ilkman]

Anyone know were I can get some tutorials on the BSP terrain editor for UT version 436?

[ChrisToth.hu]

A simple vertex edit tut would do the job because you don't need anything for the BSP based terrain builder but some imagination, planning and vertex editing skills.

But some reference:

Just set how long and wide the terrain should be. The height is tricky because you will want to subtract the brush from the world (that's better than adding) so the height means the distance between the base of your terrain and the top of the subtraction. Set the depth and width segments...that means how many rows of vertices will be added to the base horizontally and vertically.

If you have the builder ready you can start raising and moving vertices for the terrain. Remember that you are creating the "negative" for the terrain. Always save at certain intervals or turn on the autosave because if you cross certain vertices the editor will crash.

The multi-vertex edit function is very useful here. Turn on vertex edit made CTRL+ALT drag a rectangle around the needed group of vertices and CTRL drag to move them.

After everything is finished (subtracted, textured, aligned) you should do a merge polys to get rid of the huge number of polys present on some coplanar surfaces.

You should be careful to not let people to see too much of the terrain at once because that'll cause high polycounts. Don't even dream about huge nice landscape views...that will be possible in the new terrain engine of the new Unreal engines. (Like in Unreal 2)