Terrain Problems

BLACK_PHOENIX · Post by **BLACK_PHOENIX** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:37 am

how do use terrain as an object i can walk on. the level im doing is not flat and has many hills and lots of terrain. ive modelled it and then exported but that doesnt work well. then i tried gensurf and got nothing what i wanted.

i got 3 3D drawings of my level. i now what shape i want but i dont know how to do it in RF.

Post by **Jay** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 6:39 pm

Divide your terrain into sections and export them seperately as *.act files. This is important because otherwise RF cannot optimize the rendering of the landscape and everything gets SLOOOOOOOW (in simple words). Do NOT use many polys. There should be 1,5k polys in one section at maximum. normal should be 500-1k polys. Otherwises everything gets way slower.

Now add them as StaticMeshes give them the VisCheckLevel 1 and the CollisionCheckLevel to 2.
Also set UseFillColor to true. This disables lighting on the terrain which makes everything faster.

Spyrewolf · Post by **Spyrewolf** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:32 pm

myself I tend to use bsp for terrain, I think it's quicker and easier to implement also if done right the effect can be just as good as .act based terrain.

I use Nems terrain generator it has alot of cool options for building terrain.

http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=8

also with this option you can set the terrain as 'sheet' (i think it's sheet??)
and this only renders the top faces and increase frames,

which I think is far faster way of doing thing (faster as is frames) + collision is included as well.

psYco · Post by **psYco** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:19 pm

that sounds very interesting spyre! please do tell me where i can get this? And do i understand write that you can make your terrain in this and then it generates a bsp, which can be imported into RFeditpro and then can be used in levels?

Oh and just wondering, but i thought you were using torque, black phoenix?

Spyrewolf · Post by **Spyrewolf** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:20 pm

oops was in the middle of editing the post and forgot about it-- please see above link added

that sounds very interesting spyre! please do tell me where i can get this? And do i understand write that you can make your terrain in this and then it generates a bsp, which can be imported into RFeditpro and then can be used in levels?

yes thats right the only thing though is you will have to retexture you terrain that is not really that hard though. onething to keep in mind, try not to make your terrain to complex they will run in RF no worries, the editors will slow down a fair bit however

the best way to get around this is to 'group' your terrain and show and hide the sections your working on, this sounds hard but it's tonne better that trying to align .act files etc... plus if you want to add detail you can completely hide your terrain altogether if you want to.

psYco · Post by **psYco** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:24 pm

WOW! OMG! If i can make stuff HALF that good i would be thrilled! MAN! that is quality!!!

BLACK_PHOENIX · Post by **BLACK_PHOENIX** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 1:18 am

it doesent directly export as bsp files. it can only export MAP.

but then how do i import MAP into rfeditpro

scott · Post by **scott** » Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:35 am

i belive .map files can be used the same way as .bsp files, click file and open, then in the file type select .map and it will then load the .map file into your curent world.

i just downloaded the terrain generator and i just loaded a folder with textures in, this is the only programe that i know that loads all textures at once side by side and can view quickly without having to wait for the image preview to load, and is a good use of my computers 2GB ram

i just loaded a gig of images and its still rnning perfectly

hike1 · Post by **hike1** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:58 am

What's the 'scorched earth client test?'