TerraEdit help!!

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Gringle

New Member
Apr 11, 2000
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Hey guys. I'd consider myself a highly average to experienced mapper, but trying to do outdoor terrain with only UnrealEd tools just doesn't cut it anymore. The floor lofter is worse than a joke. Imagine my delight when I heard about this wonderful little tool called TerraEdit. All I can gather about it is that you need to make something like a 256x256 pixel bitmap (?) with each pixel color designating a specific height. That might not even be right. Anyways, I have really no idea how to go about this. My paint program that I use is Adobe Photoshop 5 (though I also have Adobe Illustrator). Is this the wrong program to be using? If a certain program is needed, let me know and I hope I can grab the shareware...
Anyways, I tried reading Bastard'O's tutorial on it but it kinda went over my head despite how much I grasped his ladder tutorial /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif Could anyone put some basic instructions and answers to my (many, I'm sorry) questions in layman's terms here? Thanks for listening to me gripe anyways /infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

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---Gringle, webmaster of The Redeemer
 

Gunslinger

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Mar 24, 2000
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I just use enter to raise and shift to lower vertice points in Terraedit myself. Maybe just me but I find it easier and much faster to just "build" the Landscape by hand. Now before I get replys about this comment let me say that it is faster for "me" I have no patience to do image manipulation and all that. Again its just "my persona" opinion.
 

Gringle

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Apr 11, 2000
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Ohhhh, scratch that. So THAT'S what the arrow keys do!! /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif I'm a little...slow
rolleyes.gif
. Thanks for the help, I feel much more prepared.

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---Gringle, webmaster of The Redeemer
 

Gringle

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Apr 11, 2000
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Okay, now I've got another question. I was so thrilled that I went out and made a really nice terrain, but when I imported it, it was tiny! So I changed the "grid scale" to something more feasible, but it made it virtually impossible to actually edit the terrain...any way around this or am I stuck? Sorry to bother you guys with this, but you seem quite a bit more knowledgeable than I.. /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif

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---Gringle, webmaster of The Redeemer
 

Gringle

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Apr 11, 2000
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Heh heh, okay, so I struggled for an hour or so and figured out how to scale the brush inside UnrealEd. But now I have a problem that I'm not gonna figure out in the next two seconds /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif (sorry bout that). When I try to add the terrain, I get a TON of BSP cuts!! I mean, a little hole here and there doesn't bother me, but this is BSP city!! I've never SEEN this many this big!! Is my terrain just too complex? Do you guys experince this? It's really pissing me off seeing as how I basically devoted the whole day to figuring this out! /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif Thanks for the help so far, just one more push and you'll get rid of me for good /infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

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---Gringle, webmaster of The Redeemer
 

Gunslinger

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Mar 24, 2000
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Suggestion: When I make an outdoor map I set the grid scale in TerraEdit to coresponed with the desired map dimensions.

example: Grid scale= 512
Grid size= 16 x 16
This would yeild a 8192 x 8192 map (hiegth depends on how high you make your terrain I count the "clicks" of the highest point and adjust map settings accordingly)
Inside of Ued I would build a cube 8192 x 8192 x ( say..4096 )and import the brush.This way you avoid scaling the brush and they many errors scaling causes.
This isnt to say there's not a way to get around the scaling issue, just not a good one that I know of.
As far as using this large of a brush in terraedit I would suggest zooming out and up to make as much of the brush visible as possible when starting and moving around and panning when things get hairy /infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

Hope this helps.
 

Gringle

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Hehe I see I'm not in this boat alone /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif Actually, that helped me quite a lot. I'll bet most of the BSP was caused by scaling errors. Just reading your reply turned a nice little light on in my head and those rusty gears started turning again. Oh, and thanks for the large brush in TerraEdit tip. I'm gonna need that one for sure /infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif Thanks again man.

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---Gringle, webmaster of The Redeemer
 

Andirez

push the limits
Jan 23, 2000
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lol, TerOmen {just follow this...}
I just posted the link to Bastard'o 's website so Gringle could have more information, not to get people away from your tutorials (I also like them btw., especially that cool looking tree)

I should read these posts more carefully, if I had done that I would have realised Gringle already has read the tutorials Bastard'o has made and had some problems with them... so I apoligise for my ignorance

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Name : Andirez
Status : INFiltrated the messageboard

[This message has been edited by Andirez (edited 04-12-2000).]
 

bastard_o

Lead Designer
Grindle, Could you tell me what was confusing in my little tuts, I would like to know because the tuts were aimed at all level designers be they beginners or whatever.

I would like to help !

What type of terrain did you have in mind, a terrain for eye candy or terrain to play on ?

High polycount or medium ?
For what spec machine ?
Single player or server ?
Many bots 8 > ?

Have you see the terrain brushes I make, ie Terrain, HillBase or BridgeTooFar ?

The background image on my site is the Terrain brush for the Terrain level...

Bastard'O
 

bastard_o

Lead Designer
Gringle, I believe you must have only glanced at my tuts, you seem to have missed some vital information...

A 256x256 bitmap as a height would produce a terrain of 65536 min to 131072 max polycount terrain, I dare you to make that playable.

Start small a 32x32 bitmap will give a 1024 min to 2048 polycount initially, polycount reduction can be then applied.

Bastard'O
 

Gringle

New Member
Apr 11, 2000
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Wow!! I never expected this much of a response and I'm thrilled to death. I knew I posted in the right forum: you guys are the greatest! /infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif
Okay, now that the groveling is over, let's see if I can address all this.
First, Bastard'O, you're the greatest, man. I read the posts in this forum for a LONG time before I registered and posted and I totally respect the hell outta you. This might be what pained me so about not fully grasping the TerraEdit tutorial /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif. In fact, they frustrated me the most because I would be on a roll, understanding quite a bit, and then it would be like you left a gap in what to do. It was like I missed something (I know, I know, I probably did
sarcblink.gif
). As for the 256x256, I kinda just threw in the texture size that UnrealEd imports, since I basically knew zero about TerraEdit other than you move the camera just like in UnrealEd /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif. As for the details of the map, it is designed to be not very eye-candy-ish (definitely not a word) at all. It is designed, unfortunately, for ridiculous numbers of people/bots (16-32). I definitely want to keep it playable for most people but if someone can't run it on their 486, I'm not gonna change the whole thing. As for how to play it, online, offline, whatever, they're both acceptable /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif. Thanks Bastard'O, I'll take a closer look at the tuts now.
As for TerOmen, I found the tutorials very helpful (especially the basic grayscale heightmap one).
Thanks to *everyone* for all your support and advice. Now I know what to do if I ever have questions. You guys are the greatest /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif


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---Gringle, webmaster of The Redeemer
 

Gringle

New Member
Apr 11, 2000
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USA
www.utworld.net
Just to let you guys know: I fixed all those damned BSP holes by turning off Merge Coplanar Polygons [thanks Lost!!] and by reading all those tutorials again I feel like I have an excellent grasp on the whole thing and I hope to send you all a nice map in a *month* (hehe) showing my thanks.

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---Gringle, webmaster of The Redeemer