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Texture splatting on models
Topic Started: May 5 2009, 03:18 PM (972 Views)
hepolite
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I've made my terrain as a model so I could add caves and cliffs and such things. Now my problem is that the seams between the different textures are very clear and ugly. I'm thinking of having a new layer with some sort of alpha that makes it fade out, but I doubt that's a proper solution. Is there any way that's easier and more reasonable?

This is what I mean (No splatting):
Posted Image

It looks really bad...
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Despellanion
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Make one big texture for the entire terrain (2048*2048 or something like that) and draw everything there. That would be the easiest way to blend everything.
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hepolite
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I'm pretty sure that would look really bad, because the terrain is very large. I'm also trying to keep the file-size as low as possible. And such large textures, that would eat up the memory, wouldn't it? Right now I've UV-mapped on a texture to every face of the model, and even that looks stretched some places.
Edited by hepolite, May 5 2009, 05:23 PM.
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Dr. Best
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hepolite
May 5 2009, 05:22 PM
I'm pretty sure that would look really bad, because the terrain is very large. I'm also trying to keep the file-size as low as possible. And such large textures, that would eat up the memory, wouldn't it? Right now I've UV-mapped on a texture to every face of the model, and even that looks stretched some places.
If you want texture splatting on terrains just use the terrain renderer. You won't get anything more efficient with Ultimate 3D for Game Maker.
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hepolite
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It's just that I'm not using the terrain renderer, I've made a model. I couldn't use it because I'm having lots of caves and cliffs and such.
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Gandalf20000
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hepolite
May 5 2009, 05:32 PM
It's just that I'm not using the terrain renderer, I've made a model. I couldn't use it because I'm having lots of caves and cliffs and such.
There are two ways I see:
1. Use a texture splatting shader like the U3D terrain.
2. Use vegetation to cover up the seams of the terrain.
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Reikyrr
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3 make fading texture to cover up,
4 make everything the same colour.
~Inspirational quote~
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hepolite
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I'd go for a shader, but I can't find anything, nor do I know how to make one. I could use a fading texture, but wouldn't there be some zbuffer-fight with the two layers? I've had some unwanted results before with two faces lying on top of each other.
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Gandalf20000
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The thing is, a fading texture won't work. To my knowledge, U3D uses multiplicative alpha blending. Therefore, unless the alpha remains at one, or you only have one texture at one, the alpha is going to be screwed up. Think of the full opacity, 255, as 1, and the full transparency, 0, (here's a shocker) as 0.
What happens when you do this equation:
1*0

You get zero. So, if you did multiple alphas, here's what would happen in those spots with contrasting alphas:
1*.5=.5
.65*.3= .195
.5*.5=.25
.7*.1=.07
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Reikyrr
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Gandalf20000
May 5 2009, 11:06 PM
The thing is, a fading texture won't work. To my knowledge, U3D uses multiplicative alpha blending. Therefore, unless the alpha remains at one, or you only have one texture at one, the alpha is going to be screwed up. Think of the full opacity, 255, as 1, and the full transparency, 0, (here's a shocker) as 0.
What happens when you do this equation:
1*0

You get zero. So, if you did multiple alphas, here's what would happen in those spots with contrasting alphas:
1*.5=.5
.65*.3= .195
.5*.5=.25
.7*.1=.07
no not alpha, If your gonna do alpha just make an overlay mesh then make the edges go alpha, I will show you I guess (the day after tomorrow I hope) I don't know if its efficient though.
(schedual, tomorrow trow old paper out, work. the day after tomorrow get new paper in. the day after the day of tomorow get new paper out, saturday work sunday free to study..)

I had vakation so that's why I was bothering you guys so much.
~Inspirational quote~
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Despellanion
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Just to show you that texture splatting on custom terrain models is possible with good result, here's one of my custom terrain models made in 3ds MAX out of a simple plane:
Posted Image
As you can see the quality of texture is fairly detailed, sizing 6144*6144 at roughly 7 MB in size. That's pretty decent to me.
Edited by Despellanion, May 6 2009, 07:25 PM.
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hepolite
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It does look good, but the size is something I can't accept. My terrain texture sizes are less than 200 kb now and they covers an enormous area. I don't want to use a single image, that would take incredibly loads of space, as my game has much more surface area than your terrain there.
Edited by hepolite, May 6 2009, 07:38 PM.
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Gandalf20000
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That looks pretty good to me. What format are you using? If it's .png, you could probably save a couple MB if you're willing to lose a little bit (almost unnoticeable, though) of quality by switching it to a high quality .jpg.

Unfortunately, I think the texture limit size on my graphics card is 4096x4096, so if I tried to play your game, the texture either wouldn't show up or would be horribly scaled.
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Despellanion
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Actually, having one single, big texture would be more efficient than having several smaller in my case for the terrain model. But yes, for big terrains it is recommended to use the terrain rendering system.
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hepolite
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And how would I be able to add the terrain rendering onto a a terrain like this:?
http://i41.tinypic.com/2ps2h48.jpg

And that's just a small part... It's tons of cliffs and caves further up along the river.
And the place where the grass suddenly turns into rock is just what I want to avoid.

The texture size is 256*256 and they're all .jpg files.
Edited by hepolite, May 6 2009, 08:46 PM.
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