Oh Boy. That Darn EasyGen Metashader

[diego]

Has anyone been able to get a metashader to work in Mohaa?

I've ready every post in this forum regarding easygen. The universal answer people have is to use LOD terrain. But since my map is for mutliple games, I need to stick with a terrain type that will work in all of them. I prefer not to try Gensurf until I've exhausted all my options with easygen.

So, wth that said. If anyone has been able to get a metashader to work in Mohaa that allows the textures to blend together with a vertex alpha map, could you post a sample of it here? It doesn't have to be from Easygen.

I can get my terrain entity output fine. All the correct key/values are in the terrain entitiy. I'm just not getting something right in the shader export. I believe it has to do with what texture/shader is assigned to the top surface.


And yes, I've looked Nemesis's Tutorial several times. But with that I get 2 results, either I have an unblended base texture on everything, or I get a black texture with a white grid. --- ie no texture (depends on what I specify as the top surface).

All the other tuts I've seen for easygen are for Quake or Wolfenstein and you don't have to modify the top surface shader in those tuts.

[jv_map]

I don't think you can get any vertex alpha data in mohaa

[diego]

I've found some more tutorials for Jedi Knight and Soldier of Fortune that are a little better, but I don't think I'll have any better luck experimenting with the minor variations.

Also, It looks like a basic phong shader doens't work on the brushes either. I don't want my terrain to look blocky. I've also tried using the latest version of q3map2 instead of the mohaa q3map. But the compiles are the same.

Looks like I'm going to have to admit defeat on this one. I guess I'll have to use LOD terrain for mohaa, and then rebuild it from scratch for my ET version.... what a pain.

[jv_map]

You mean you could play a q3map2-compiled map in mohaa?

[Mj]

I think the only way to build variating textured LoD, or any groundsurface is through the decals. One can add ones own decals and play with them ingame in the ingame editor - maybe you could 'paint' paths and ground irregularities on that way? It can work extremely well... or extremely badly. But either way, it can take a long time to do the whole map, unless you use big custom textures to paint on. It might be worth a try...

[Rookie One.pl]

You can use the same height map for both EasyGen and LOD. Just remember to resize the image to 50% when exporting LOD height map to EasyGen.

[diego]

You mean you could play a q3map2-compiled map in mohaa?

Well, I thought I was able to. I just went through the logs and It looks like I was getting a fatal compile error. So in reality, I was loading the same bsp each time, but with the different shader changes. That made it look like it was compiling because the map was different each time I loaded it. It's also interesting to note that q3map2 was not reading my .pcx alpha map. I might have to try it one more time with mohaa's q3map and see if it was having the same problem.


MJ,

Do you mean scale it up 50% or down 50%? I'll probably work with high res heightmaps and scale them down to the appropriate size when I'm done. I was thinking about using a printscreen of my maps building layout to help plan the textures. I was also thinking about trying your terrain texturing trick. But I would probably apply it on a limited scale in areas where it might be possible to tile it. I don't want textures as big as the one you made, but I could live with a 2048 x 2048 image. I can only use 1 texture per LOD terrain right?

Can you actually use decals on LOD terrain? I thought decals were made out of brushes inserted into other brushes with a polygon offset parameter.

While I'm on the subject, I'm sure this is already in here somewhere, but if a piece of an LOD patch can be seen, does the entire thing draw? If I leave my terrain in pieces, Am I risking people seeing holes in the ground at lower resolutions?

This is just one more thing about mapping I never intended to get into. I'll have to add it to the list along with shaders, scripting, and Vis.

[Rookie One.pl]

Do you mean scale it up 50% or down 50%?

LOD -> EasyGen = image size * 50%.
EasyGen -> LOD = image size * 200%.

I can only use 1 texture per LOD terrain right?

Wrong. You can select single patches by holding Ctrl+Shift.

[Mj]

About the big texture trick; use it wisely and sparingly; that massive tex i used almost killed my smaller computer

I seriously reccomend playing around with the decal tool and learning the power of decals (and yes they are applicable to lod) - and you can make custom decals available to the pushmenu decals tool buy editing the urc file (found in pk0 somewhere... can't remember off the top of my head ), its easy enough to exit to add new decals to your list

Not that you can really see it, but in my sig all the ground changes are done through decals - to begin with it was just a big flat sand-thing...

[bdbodger]

don't forget to do the decals last I think that if you recompile the map you need to do it again .

[diego]

Ok. Thanks guys.

Up 'til now I've really tried to avoid the decal thing. But maybe I'll give it a try on some extra details. But being able to use multiple textures on 1 LOD will make it easier for me to make my own blended textures.

Since I have to go this route, I'm gonna go back through all the LOD posts and tuts again so I won't spam the scripting forums with any more questions on it.