LOD Terrain Help

[*GCC*Nigel]

I'm having a really GREAT time with LOD Terrain (Turbo sarcasm).

I'll make it all pretty looking in Radiant, then compiling makes everything terrible then in game, you can pretty much go into a hole that doesn't seem to exist, look through parts (even though in radiant you shouldn't be able to see through it), will render wrong so you can float in places too, in general, I'm ready to kill LOD terrain. What am I doing wrong?

I remember from somewhere you can use a .tga for a rough terrain base. Is there something I can do with that?

[ViPER]

Trick to lod is use it for smooth terrain transitions. If you want something with drastic indentation use brushes or generate brush terrain with Gensurf plugin

link to download

http://tarot.telefragged.com/gensurf/

look at balr's tut - link on the lower left

[*GCC*Nigel]

I'm using the SDK, which I'm pretty sure (not totally), is NOT the same as the Quake 3 Arena Radiant.

And Balr's tut link is broken/old. I = Turbo sad

I'm just using the LOD for some snow, so there's no logical way you should be able to see from what my LOD looks like in Radiant, but in MoH, it may as well be hot lava - nothing like the snow I had. Nice n' bumpy, but graceful bumpy.

[ViPER]

try this

http://www.badongo.com/file/1066314

[*GCC*Nigel]

Questions - In order of appearance on the tut
Again I have SDK - does my plugins folder go in C:/Prog File/MOHAA/SDK/ or C:/Prog File/MOHAATools/ ?
What does he mean by initial triangles? (need to be 256 x 256 or 512 x 512)
Is Game = Quake3 fine for MoH too?
How do I delete parts of LOD Terrain? *Unless there is actually no LOD terrain made by gensurf...
What if I don't need the entire map LOD terrain - may be answered by previous question
How does he get multi-sided brushes from the LOD terrain (they have caulk on them)
Again what's the 512 x 512 and 256 by 256 thing???

[tltrude]

LOD means "Level of Detail" and it is set by each player in his game options. What looks smooth in Radient can be very rough looking in the game, if the detail level is low. As a mapper, you have a duty to make sure your terrain looks good at all levels of detail.

Around buildings and other key points, you can force the player to see "Max Detail". This is done with the "Facet Editor" (Shift F). See - the MOH Terrain Editing Manual in the MOHAATools\docs folder.

Gensurf and, I guess, that plugin use normal brushes to make terrain. They are not "LOD", but some people like it because the resulting terrain is the same for everyone. However, It is not easy to work with if you need to make changes.

[bdbodger]

Under the lod terrain menu you can use save to image then edit it in a program that can use .tga files . You can blur the sharp edges etc or the whole image . That smooths it out quite a but so appling greater contrast helps . White is the high areas black the low areas and the shades are in between heights . That works ok but better is done right away to do it after is a pain as you will have to raise or lower everything in the map one by one to match your new terrain .

[*GCC*Nigel]

I don't think I'm going to mess with the gensurf thing. It seems to be more for the Quake 3 game than spearhead, after messing with the plugin (putting it in 3 spots or so), none of them worked. Then Radiant stopped working. After reinstalling Radiant & SDK, I promptly deleted Gensurf.

To Tltrude: What your saying is making sense. The different LODs will render differently on different player settings. IE: Max detail will match what I have in Radiant. I just need to be able to see the different LODs and make them all look nice, right? How can I look at the different LODs in Radiant?

The max detail thing - I'm using a small patch of terrain for a small park just for a little more realistic feel, everything else is brushes. Would the max detail be wise here? Or would it cause some poor people extreme graphics lag in game?

To BdBodger: Based on what Tltrude said - Would smoothing things out drastically change what the different LODs look like?

PS I hope I've been using terminology correctly

[tltrude]

In Radiant, there are 4 "scale" settings under the LOD Terrain menu. Scale 4 is as low (low detail) as it will go, but it does not come close to the way it looks in the game. So, you have to check your map in the game at all terrain levels.

Normally you only need to use Max Detail where you do not want the terrain to change at different levels, like next to a building, or other brush objects, that rest on the lod terrain.

The Facet editor will also delete small traingles of terrain in the game (not in Radient). That comes in handy when you want to make a hole leading underground, or a mine enterance.

[*GCC*Nigel]

Thanks for the help, I seem to have a nice looking on all LoDs and functional patch of terrain.