Ace
Terrain - making angles in it and such
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- Ace of Spades
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- Joined: Thu Jan 30, 2003 8:50 am
- Location: West Coast, USA
Terrain - making angles in it and such
How do you add terrain to an area that isn't perfectly square, like trenches that aren't all straight and in line with each other but going at all different angles. How do you match up the terrain with these areas? Patch meshes?
I'm cornfused. I know how to make terrain and all but not sure how to clip it to make odd angles and such. I tried cutting a hole in the terrain once, wrong answer, Radiant crashes. So, I have to make individual pieces to line up but terrain is 512 x 512. Is it a patch mesh thing, and if so, how do you install it with the angles cut and all? Am I really confused or what?
Ace

Ace
- Ace of Spades
- Major
- Posts: 291
- Joined: Thu Jan 30, 2003 8:50 am
- Location: West Coast, USA
- Ace of Spades
- Major
- Posts: 291
- Joined: Thu Jan 30, 2003 8:50 am
- Location: West Coast, USA
Couple step process, as I see it:
1. When plotting the layout of your buildings, trenches, etc. consider 'where' they fall on the grid. LOD is 512x512 all the time and you can only alter this by using the 'shift-F' command and painting/deleting triangles you don't want drawn.
2. After deciding layout, build your brushes as much as possible against one edge of the grid...when you have trenches, of course you'll have or should have many angles in the line...only makes sense.
3. To fill in the open ground between your trench brushes and the LOD I'd recommend using the patch mesh. That way you can still give the terrain some features of height, depression, etc.
4. Or you can use other 'clipped' brushes to cover the open areas. This can be tricky and call for a lot of new brushes which can be a pain to line up and clip consistanly, increasing chances for leaks, etc....BUT does save a lot in FPS because it's faster/easier to drawn flat surfaces than it is to drawn adjusted patch meshes.
In the end, decide what looks best for the situation, maybe a combo of the parts. I did a large hill ALL in brushes using vertex editing to give some unique angles and matched my trench line to it, all right angles, but it worked. Just design to the situation and make it as real as possible, don't take the lazy/easy way out.
1. When plotting the layout of your buildings, trenches, etc. consider 'where' they fall on the grid. LOD is 512x512 all the time and you can only alter this by using the 'shift-F' command and painting/deleting triangles you don't want drawn.
2. After deciding layout, build your brushes as much as possible against one edge of the grid...when you have trenches, of course you'll have or should have many angles in the line...only makes sense.
3. To fill in the open ground between your trench brushes and the LOD I'd recommend using the patch mesh. That way you can still give the terrain some features of height, depression, etc.
4. Or you can use other 'clipped' brushes to cover the open areas. This can be tricky and call for a lot of new brushes which can be a pain to line up and clip consistanly, increasing chances for leaks, etc....BUT does save a lot in FPS because it's faster/easier to drawn flat surfaces than it is to drawn adjusted patch meshes.
In the end, decide what looks best for the situation, maybe a combo of the parts. I did a large hill ALL in brushes using vertex editing to give some unique angles and matched my trench line to it, all right angles, but it worked. Just design to the situation and make it as real as possible, don't take the lazy/easy way out.