.Map :: MoHAA Mapping

I dont know if anyone had thought of this, but in my new map for MoH:Vietnam, (a big map for planes and things) i wanted to make a peninsula. So the first time ever, i used PSP to make my terrain, and it turned out just great. But texturing? Reeeeealy difficult. I would have had to make many different textures for each angle, ect, which explains why all MoH:AA maps are very right-angle-ish. And the fact i couldnt do paths annoyed me too. soooo in a stroke of genius, I enlarged my heightmap around 1000%, and used the textures in correspondence with the height, and then appiled the thing as a whole to my terrain!

More freeform

Hope this is useful for some of ya,

Mj

That look excellent MJ , I dont understand how you did it, can you explain it in more detail, like how do you increase the heightmap and whats a heightmap anyway ?

Cool I actually tried that for my first mohaa map but in my case it looked horrible ... looks like you got it to look much better - I'm really impressed . Out of curiousity, how many textures did you use and of what size?

I will try an explain in some detail... unfortunatley a teacher confiscated my keyboard and mouse 'cause i was playing after lightsout, so you have no pics, i'm afraid.

Ok, since i'm lazy, here is how to make a heightmap
http://users.1st.net/kimberly/Tutorial/lodterrain.htm

What i did, was count the number of lod squares along one side of my map (in my case 32, for the whole grid) and multiply that by 256, half the original heightmap tga file size in pixels.( = 8192) So, I resized the heightmap image to 8192 pixels (height and length) Thefore we now have 256 pixels per LoD Square, and saved it as a jpg (when i first saved it is a TGA file, it was 150MB ) And ended up with a 700kb file. Make it into a texture, select the LoD in question, and apply the texture. It should come up 4 times, one of the heightmap in each quadrant. Just texture window, and scale 2, 2, and it should fit like a glove
The picture might need flipping, just use PSP for that.

Then go into game, and the white should correspond with the high parts of your terrain, and the dark, the low. If all's cool, then you can texture your image, using the heightmap as a basis (EG the black line = a river, so mud tex there, the white is mountains, rock tex there ect.) i used stock mohaa textures, and balr14's excellent textures, and made them patterns in PSP, so i could just apply them with the brush

My paths are pretty stupid looking, but thats because my PSP skills are pretty low...

I hope some of that made sense, if not just complain, and i'll try again

Mj

what ever made you do tht Mjdude? but it's brilliant!

I understand, excellent work and a great idea,

Hallo
I use a nice software for this FreeWorld3d (there is a demoversion if u wanna check it out), u can paint-sculpture the terrain & paint your textures in layers and blend them together so u get nice soft edges.
Ive used a bunch of terrainmodellingsoftwares but this 1 I really recommend.

Below is screenie from a map I started on where I used this technique.

Hmm, It looks really good. But isn't an MTEX value of 79 a bit high? Anyone with more experience care to elaborate on the effect that will have on FPS?

I don't know what kind of system you have or your settings, but I wouldn't want my map to run at 29 fps.


Oh, and that software is only $20. Probably a good investment if you are a terrain newbie like me. And it also looks like it might be more useful with Pacific Assault's method of mapping.

But I want to see what LOD is like the hard way first.

Ric-hard, how can you export the stuff you make with that program to radiant? Does it really make LOD patches? or does it generate terrain from brushes? or do you just export a height map?

what ever made you do tht Mjdude?

Ehm.... good question

About FPS + Mtex, its a biiiiiiiiig map, (full grid) and i managed to up the FPS with this 1 big texture. There are a few cons though, like the terrain image is 15mb for me...

So far Ive exported heightmaps to use in radiant. Im still waiting for my activationcode for FreeWorld3d.

Can you guys please use smaller pictures I would hate to have to change your image tags to links .

Which max-size is suitable?
640x480?

Make your images 50% or 66.67% of your normal screen resolution size. For me, I always have to brighten and sharpen them a bit.

bdbodger wrote:Can you guys please use smaller pictures I would hate to have to change your image tags to links .

True... MJ please resize your image to 640x480 or it will have to be replaced by a link... the forums need to be readable