Cliff Construction Kit (image heavy)

The Cliff Construction Kit is finally finished. Only the documentation is to be written, and then it's up for sale. The price is going to be $29.90, and will start selling this Friday the soonest. It is only available for TGEA, since it makes extensive use of the latest TGEA features (shaders, materials, dds loading, etc...).

Until the kit is released, I wanted to show you some exciting stuff (so you don't forget that you really want this pack - hehe). The materials up there are a few of the 40 materials that are in the pack. Most of them have 1024x1024 diffuse, bump and specular maps, while some are 1024x512.

The pack uses one click presets on the selected cliff or cliff replicator. Through these presets, you can quickly set your cliff up to reflect more or less light. It is just a few clicks to set up wet cliffs near a waterfall, while those far away can have normal specularity. Since the pack relies on a CustomMaterial written specifically for these cliffs, it is possible to specify color speculars, which can add really nice effects to the scene. One preset that uses color speculars is the gold preset, which adds a golden shine to your selected cliffs.


Hero

The image above was posted late into my previous blog, so I thought it was a good idea to repost it here for those of you who have not seen it yet. Just like the one below in Stronghold Bay.

The kit has a number of features about which I wrote in my previous blog, but let me give you more details on the features of the replicator that was specifically written to place cliffs procedurally.

First of all, selecting replicated cliffs is possible. These shapes are locked, but selecting them automatically selects the replicator in creator mode. This is important, because you can apply presets to replicators as well. So by selecting a shape, you can assign shapes, materials and specular presets without even leaving the creator.

There are 8 slots for shapes and 8 slots for materials from which a replicator will choose. Through shortcuts, you can select the active slot for a shape or a texture, and add a shape or a texture for the replicator to that slot. This is pretty handy, because you don't have to look 16 times for dts files and textures on your hard drive. You just press ctrl-1, click a texture, and it's in the pool of possible textures. Selecting another slot will add any clicked texture to that slot. Clearing a slot through a quick key combination is also possible from the creator. Of course, you can still hit F3 and finetune any parameters. Even there, only the file base name is given, the rest is automatically appended - so you clearly know what file you use. You can just type it in real fast too.

As you see, I really wanted this to be convenient so users are able to work very fast. This is even topped by the fact, that you can select any number of cliffs and replicators - or even a bunch of other stuff - on your scene, and use presets on them. The presets will only be applied on your cliffs and cliff replicators though - but you do not lose the selection, which is important to be able to quickly use cliff modifiers.


Melting icebergs in Stronghold Bay

Some of the other more interesting features of the cliff replicator are the following:

- You can choose up to 4 terrain materials, where your cliff should not be placed. This is something similar to what the fxSurfaceReference resource does, except here all you need to do is just enter the base file name of the terrain texture. The rest is automatically taken care of.

- You can align your shapes to terrain, and when aligned, you can choose to make them lie on the ground - that is, as if they would fall from above - they will lie on their largest area side. This is a really useful feature for cliffs, and it adds more realism to their placement. You can chose to flip a cliff to lie on the other large side as well.

- Through all the options it is possible to wrap your terrain with cliffs. If you create the shape of your terrain, the cliffs can follow, align to and add shape to your terrain. You can keep your existing map, and add a lot of realism through cliffs and overhangs.

There are other neat features, but I'll keep them for the release announcement. :)

Below are a few images of the same scene with the same replicator (exact same settings) using a different shape.


A few of the 15 shapes that come with the Kit

Note that only one kind of shape is being used on each image. Using different shapes can result in a different environment, so it is easy to make the replicas follow your idea - while leaving all settings unchanged.

On the right is an image with 3 shapes and 3 textures mixing, but it didn't come out quite good, I was in a hurry to take the screenshot. It took about 15 seconds to set this scene up.

There are 15 shapes in the pack. That's 15x40 = 600 different cliffs. :) But since the material on the shape can be dynamically swapped, and using the replicator there's infinite possibilities, it doesn't really make sense to count the number of unique shapes.

So right now, I'm finishing the documentation for the pack. After this, I'm going to assemble a video that shows off some of the eye-candy these cliffs provide.

I am already thinking about an extension to the pack that will use the cliff shader to fake accumulated snow, sand or grass on these cliffs (using textures of your choice) - so you will be able to use them in many more environments. Since this will not be real snow accumulation, it is going to be very fast. This add-on has no ETA as of yet, but it will be available free of charge to every BG Cliff Construction Kit license holder.

I am really excited about this, and curious about how it is going to be taken by the community, so forgive my really long rant. I better go and write docs now.

-- Konrad.

@konradkiss
KonradKiss @ GitHub
konradkiss.com