Mapping: Terrain Morphing 4km vs 2km

[CodeRedFox]

I believe that's because your using the out of bounds as part of the level.

[Rhino]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Pride

maximum allowed 'amount of polygons' is 1024x1024.

Therefore the only way to get a 4km map is to use a 1024 scale 4.

max by the editor is 1024x4, but you can hack the files to change the scale of the terrain, but I have not found a way to change the scale of the terrain textures.

[Fishbone]

The engine actually smooths out the terrain? Or does it optimize the terrain by replacing 4 polygons by 1 dynamically. Just like the Optimize modifier in 3ds max.

If the former, do you have any idea why the BF2 engine would do that? There doesn't seem to be any advantage as the amount of polygons remains the same. If the latter, well then it is quite obvious that the BF2 engine doesn't like steep terrain as it will probably average the height values of the vertices. No suprise there.

[CodeRedFox]

The engine doesn't like steep terrain. In fact most engines do not like it. So keep that in mind when creating a map. Maybe Rhino or I will be able to give you a degree number you shouldn't pass. I'm only guessing here but I think each angle shouldn't be over 45 degrees. This means from one polygon to the next, not overall.

[space]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]CodeRedFox

The engine doesn't like steep terrain. In fact most engines do not like it. So keep that in mind when creating a map. Maybe Rhino or I will be able to give you a degree number you shouldn't pass. I'm only guessing here but I think each angle shouldn't be over 45 degrees. This means from one polygon to the next, not overall.

I've managed to achieve fairly steep slopes on my map without much apparent morphing. The best technique is to use the smooth tool on the lowest setting size setting, and set it only to either raise or lower. Its far from prefect, and its still possible to drive up very steep slopes, but it works quite well.

One idea I had to minimise morphing is to edit the heightmap in photoshop. ( Ive not tried this but it should work ) I think that if you used a gaussien blur, it should be possible to equal out any extreme changes between adjacent polygons. This should have the effect of applying the smooth tool on lowest setting, on every single polygon on the map. Instead I did it by hand when I first started my map, and it wasnt much fun :/

Imo the main problems with 4km is the lack of terrain detail, as each polygon is 4m in game, so its hard to make trenches etc, and also the dynamic shadow problem. The shadow problem isnt too apparent on Kashan and Qinling as the sun is directly above, so you dont often see the aircraft vehicle shadows, but if you have the sun at dusk or dawn height, then it becomes much more of a problem.

[Tannhauser]

With the shadow problem, where does the shadow appear then? Or is it the shadow flickering problem i've seen on some mappers trying 4km on the editor's forum?

[space]

The dynamic shadow appears wherever it should be cast by the moving vehicle/aircraft etc. Thing is that instead of a nice vehicle shaped shadow, you get large black blocks, that look terrible. I think Im right in saying that only the people travelling in the vehicle see the problem, but I might be wrong on that.

[e-Gor]

It's not terrain smoothing that's happening - it creates lower LODs. Visually, this has much the same effect on steep areas - it just samples at a quarter (or a 16th) the number of points, so any steep slopes will appear more gradual since the distance between the points on the terrain is larger. So, everything you said in the tutorial is valid, except for the reasons behind it :P

Again, the lower density of points means that the effect is a lot more noticable (as it appears on larger scales) on scale 4 maps than on smaller ones.

[Madhouse]

So really the only fix we have is to smooth out the terrain or use static mountains?

[CodeRedFox]

Yep those two will help. Unless someone else can find another tip.