how i can get rid of the texture spots in terrain?

[subabrain]

Hello again,

okay - a question again :P

and this is:

how can iget rid of the texture spots on a terrain?

i hope you know what i mean 8)

example:

http://i.imgur.com/kdc2bQt.jpg

thx a lot for answers!

Greetz

Robert

[Duion]

Do the terrain textures correctly.

Explaining everything would take too much time but I give you some basics:

Here is an example of one of my materials:

new TerrainMaterial()
{
   diffuseMap = "art/terrains/grass/ter_grass_short_01_B";
   diffuseSize = "200";
   detailMap = "art/terrains/grass/ter_grass_short_01_D";
   detailDistance = "100";
   macroSize = "30";
   internalName = "ter_grass_short_01";
   macroStrength = "0.5";
   detailSize = "4";
   macroMap = "art/terrains/grass/ter_grass_short_01_M";
   parallaxScale = "0";
   normalMap = "art/terrains/grass/ter_grass_short_01_N";
};

The diffuse map gives the color of the terrain and it should be really big and the detail map gives the details and it should be without or almost without color, since it will blend to the diffuse map. Macro map is like detail map just bigger, for medium range and normal map for shadowing details and parallax.

You can also look at the textures how I made them: https://github.com/Duion/Uebergame/tree/master/art/terrains/grass

Or just play the game and see how its done in realtime.

[LukasPJ]

So, I actually didn't find any official tutorials on this topic, so here's a little rough explanation by me.

In order to avoid the repetitiveness you have a selection of different textures you can apply to the terrain.

The diffuse texture provides color for the terrain, you should use it for the over-all color and not for finer details. If you only have a diffuse texture, then it's okay if it looks blurry, it just shouldn't look repetitive and it should reflect the color of the terrain at this area. For example, green for grass or white for snow.

The detail texture is used for the up-close texture of the terrain. This is usually a gray-scale image, or even better a high-pass filtered image. It applies a detail to the underlying diffuse color, for example pebbles for rocks or straws for grass. It can contain colour, but often the best results come with less color in the detail texture, as you can then have different nuances to your detailed texture based on the diffuse texture.

The macro texture, afaik, has the same role as the detail-texture but is used for medium-distance detail instead of the close-up.

Lastly, the normal texture contains normal and height-map information for even cooler detail.

What I often do, is to set the diffuse texture to a huge texture which is as big as the terrain-heightmap (e.g. 2048px * 2048px). This allows me to paint the overall terrain-color anyway I want and with no repetition. E.g.

http://i.imgur.com/m5ADwGg.png

Then I can control the micro-detail with the detail and macro maps.

[subabrain]

hey,

ah ok now i understand! :)

Thank you very much!

Greetz

Robert

[Jason Campbell]

Thanks also, I've been using torque for a long time and never bothered to look into the macro layer.

[Duion]

The macro layer helps most to break up the repetitiveness of the texture, if setup well it is almost impossible to spot where the texture repeats.

This is an advantage you have in Torque3D over other engines, since I have not seen macro maps yet in other engines.

But the macro map gives you also problems, since each texture adds to the ground it can get very dark or bright, so all your textures have to be very low in contrast.

So if you make terrain textures try to set them to medium brighntess, like the brightness value goes from 0-255, make the overall texture around 128 brightness level, that way it will combine well.

[LukasPJ]

The macro layer helps most to break up the repetitiveness of the texture, if setup well it is almost impossible to spot where the texture repeats.

This is an advantage you have in Torque3D over other engines, since I have not seen macro maps yet in other engines.

But the macro map gives you also problems, since each texture adds to the ground it can get very dark or bright, so all your textures have to be very low in contrast.

So if you make terrain textures try to set them to medium brighntess, like the brightness value goes from 0-255, make the overall texture around 128 brightness level, that way it will combine well.

That's odd, it shouldn't work that way. I fixed an issue like this a long time ago do you still see this behaviour?

It's should not add them up, but rather interpolate between them iirc

[Duion]

As far as I know the textures use the multiplication method, not add, maybe I expressed myself wrong.

But the bright and dark spots still add up, since they get multiplied, thats why I said to make the textures mostly neutral brightness, since if they are bright they brighten everything up and if they are darker than average they darken everything.