I have recently started constructing some landscapes using the create landscape option in meta and have had decent results creating 3 x 3 map pieces with it, although when it comes to texturing, I hit a bit of a snag.
I have a lot of usable 256 x 256 textures, but what I am aiming to do is to tile them across a particle object...but I dont know if this is possible or how to do it. Basically the 256 x 256 itself is much to small to stretch across a big object thats roughly 6meters by 6 meters, but since the texture is perfectly tilable, I was wondering if I could force meta to tesselate the same texture maybe 3 times across and 3 times down to give the appearance of more details and to reduce the stretching of the texture across the faces.
Does anyone know how I can accomplish this...obviously normally i could just repeat the texture into one large texture and map it that way, but SOM wont accept anything over 256 x 256, so Im sort of stuck.
Todd
I've had an idea for this floating around for a while now which should give you very efficient maps and without that tile effect that is such a trademark of games. I'm on the laptop and thiking out loud here.
Take your 256 square and paint areas ie dirt, grass, snow? whatever with perhaps blend areas between them. Imagine your texture divided into say 4 quarters with an area of dirt or grass in each.
Then select the grass area polys and UV project from above. Isolate those polys in UV and move and resize into the grass quarter. Select some polys you want dirt on UV project,resize,scale ec as before and move onto the dirt area. So you will end up stacking the UVs on top of each other - not great practice but hey.
I hope this makes some sort of sense.
Mark
2011-04-22, 05:38 AM (This post was last modified: 2011-04-22, 05:56 AM by HwitVlf.)
Quote:I have a lot of usable 256 x 256 textures, but what I am aiming to do is to tile them across a particle object...but I dont know if this is possible or how to do it. Basically the 256 x 256 itself is much to small to stretch across a big object thats roughly 6meters by 6 meters, but since the texture is perfectly tilable, I was wondering if I could force meta to tesselate the same texture maybe 3 times across and 3 times down to give the appearance of more details and to reduce the stretching of the texture across the faces.
I might be missing something in your question, but if you're just trying to make a 3x3 map Piece and have the texture repeat 9 times on it, textures "tile" automatically if you 'project' the map Piece onto an area larger than the single-texture. Metasequoia just doesn't show the repeated texture unless you push the 'repeat' button in the UV window. (see picture)
If you're trying to get it aligned perfectly (256x256 per map Piece) you can select each Piece's polygon separately and do a rough 'projection'. Then, in the UV section, select all vertices in that belong in in the same corner and push 'Unify". Lastly, just align the unified vertices to the texture's corners. (see picture)
Is that what you're wanting to do?
(2011-04-21, 09:11 AM)airflamesred link Wrote:I've had an idea for this floating around for a while now which should give you very efficient maps and without that tile effect that is such a trademark of games. I'm on the laptop and thiking out loud here.
Take your 256 square and paint areas ie dirt, grass, snow? whatever with perhaps blend areas between them. Imagine your texture divided into say 4 quarters with an area of dirt or grass in each.
Then select the grass area polys and UV project from above. Isolate those polys in UV and move and resize into the grass quarter. Select some polys you want dirt on UV project,resize,scale ec as before and move onto the dirt area. So you will end up stacking the UVs on top of each other - not great practice but hey.
I can picture what you describe working well for some things; I may try it. I think it would some talent to make the different texture 'areas' blend into each other nicely on something like ground. But for things like square-rock walls, it could be pretty easy. In SoM, it would let you make a lot of unique looking wall Pieces without having to create a new texture pattern for each one.
Personally if i want to project perfectly onto the sides after projecting from the front, i hit f1 to go into front view, make sure ive projected the face i can see, and then i use the rotate tool. Rotate 90 degrees on the Y axis, unselect all, uv select the faces and project. Repeat process.
John to answer your question, I am trying to stray away from projecting altogether, as when i create the landscape and apply a texture to the materials, it nicely fills the entire object without skewing terribly bad on the faces that are extruded...if I project the texture, for example from straight above, then all faces that are perpendicular to that projection get totally messed up.
The objects I am working with are created using a heightmap and metaseq creates a relatively high poly landscape based on that, so highlighting certain areas to do a 'from above' projection is nearly impossible (unless there is an easier way than the method I am employing atm)
I thought it would be nice to utilize the mapping the model gets by default when i just 'apply material to selected faces' if i could just increase the size of the texture about 3x so it is proper scale.
When i get some time at home tonight Ill post some picture examples of what Im talking about.
Ok, I get what you mean now. One possibility, depending on what your mesh is like, is to go to 'Command > Map > [select Square shape] > property' and change the size/angle numbers to get the texture to repeat as desired.
If that doesn't work with your specific mesh, you could use 'scale' in the UVEdit panel with 'snap' turned on. It might help to change the UV grid to match the number of polygons in your land mesh (UVEdit >Config >Grid). With this method, it would be hard to get the mesh to align with the texture's edges perfectly when scaling. But I assume a little stretching wouldn't matter on ground textures, so you can get the size close with 'scale' then pop the mesh's edges into place using 'snap'.
This is the age old problem with UVs
Take this hemisphere for example. The only way to remove any stretching is to put in a seam, which may or may not be acceptable. This is the closest I could get with this plug in - though in fairness its the first time i've got it to do anything!
Todd. the number of polys is adjustable for landscape
While on the discussion of the create landscape feature of meta...can anyone explain what all the different settings of this tool are for?
It seems adjusting the "U" and "V" produces a higher detail landscape, the other settings appear to just adjust the x,y,z size of the final object during output.
(2011-04-23, 02:06 AM)dmpdesign link Wrote:It seems adjusting the "U" and "V" produces a higher detail landscape, the other settings appear to just adjust the x,y,z size of the final object during output.
Thet pretty much covers it. Are there poly limits for the game?
2011-04-23, 08:56 PM (This post was last modified: 2011-04-25, 10:36 AM by airflamesred.)
I was reading something interesting yesterday about re-sizing textures. You guys may already know this -so my appologies
On the left, the original 1024 and on the right a 256 resize. Not a huge amount of difference - not 16 anyway! I was, honestly, well surprised. Most of this was done with some custom png shapes via figures which gives me control over bump or spec at the same stroke. I hate that alpha (transparency) channel - does anyone use it?
