Features in terrain

#1 There's two ways.

1) Make your trench or foxhole part of the terrain. This is what I recommend because it's nice and simple :)

2) Make a model of a trench. In this case if you place part of the model below ground (since it's supposed to be a hole) the player won't be able to get to that part because the terrain is in the way :p That's easy to fix though. Just delete that part of the terrain.

Okay, so why do I mention (2) if (1) is so much simpler? It's because some things can't be done with (1). A tunnel for example. In that case, you need a model for the tunnel, and you'll need to delete the terrain at the entrance of the tunnel.

Hopefully your project can get away with method (1).

#2 I've tried number 1, and it leaves a lot to be desired. The terrain editing tool works for bigger type trenches, but not for human size foxholes. If the brush was smaller than 1, say .5 or something, then it might work better.

I've also tried number 2, it's hard to get your trench/foxhole model to be the same size as the hole in the terrain, and again if the brush was smaller than 1, say .5 or smaller, then it might work better when deleting terrain, and it's really hard to match the texture of the surrounding terrain. I used the same texture as the terrain uses, but it still doesn't look quite right.

Good luck on this.

#3 You could always hide the seams with rocks and foliage.

#4 I haven't actually done either of these, just read about them in forums.

I don't think there's a need for the hole model and the hole in the terrain to be the same size though. Make your hole model bigger than just the hole itself, including a bit of the surrounding ground. The earth level of your hole model should slope downward as you move away from the hole so that the model will fit the terrain smoothly.

This does seem to be more work than makes sense though. Too bad brushes aren't small enough.

#5 Yeah Eric, I put flat platforms around my trenches to fit under the terrain, but it still doesn't look that good. Like I said earlier, the textures, although identical, don't even look the same. Maybe I should shrink the texture for the trench model. My terrain texture is 256x256, I will change it to 64x64 for the trench and see if it matches any better.

[edit]
Here is a screen of the differences in the textures in the terrain, at top, and my trench, at bottom. This is using the identical texture, but the trench doesn't have the detail texture underneath it, so maybe that is what is causing the difference. Too late to mess with tonight, but I will check it out tomorrow.

#6 You could add the detail texture to the texture for the trench in you paint program.