Terrain Tips

[TseTse offline]

Just thought i'd post a few tips for those trying to figure out how to get a good workflow for terrain construction in UED 3.0

There are 3rd party programs for making heightfields, and you could even export one from torque... but here are my tips anyways.

* You can copy a TerrainInfo object from another map into yours, which will give you a starting heightfield and various texture layers in myLevel without any problems. Otherwise, just create a new one as directed in various tutorials.

* If you start with a terrain from another map, first FLATTEN the whole thing at a medium height and go through each texture layer and remove the textures on the map. This is good to do early and is a good feeling for warmup.

* Check lighting source and sun direction up front, so you get shadows generally from the proper direction from the start. Also, be sure to check the ambient lighting so that it isnt too high.

* You generally want to keep the min/max radii the same, and smaller than your initial desires (i tend to use a medium size for early blocking)

* Turn fog off in the viewport. Perhaps toggle terrain view in the Top viewport, if needed. That is useful in seeing a nice top-down shot of the terrain as you block out the initial design.

* Run a test - RAISE & LOWER terrain areas to highest and lowest amount possible. Check that the scale is what you want. Check that the terrain location is where you want it. Adjust accordingly. You dont want to be wishing you could have higher/lower terrain later, so make sure you get the scale right the first time.

* In order to carve the biggest hills - RAISE up a bit of terrain to the main height you want, and then use the FLATTEN tool to spread out what you want at such a height.

* Switch between FLATTEN and SMOOTH with a medium brush size. Regularly rebuild the map to see lighting updates. You should be able to very quickly carve out the broad design of the map's terrain in this way with just these two tools.

* Do not try to detail the terrain yet. Only detail as you playtest and design mesh/bsp. Try to stay with the broad, ugly terrain structure for a while until you know the design and scale are correct, and plug away at the detailing in waves.

* Do not SMOOTH on the outer edge of the terrain unless you want to crash.

* Depending on map style, design the terrain with the idea of adding a FEW antiportals under major mountains to increase FPS. Do this up front and test.

[Cinderkarst offline]

Could you give us an outline/link to how to import Torque terrains to UEd? This would save me a lot of time if I could just do it in T2 and then smooth and texture in UnrealEd.

Thank ye!

[TseTse offline]

a terrain is merely a texture (set of textures, when you include actual stuff on it). you import a bmp and set it up. importing into unreal still will require some tweaking and scale manipulation.

im not really gonna get into the whole process of using 3rd party stuff to make heightfields, as i am more inrterested in helping out those who want to really learn how to use the UED terrain tools.

it's one of those cases where going the easy route up front ends up costing you time in the end.