Terrain Techniques.
by Shehryar Hydri · in Torque Game Engine · 03/21/2005 (2:11 am) · 1 replies
Hi !
I am new to Torque and wanted to view the Terrain generation technology used in Torque Game Engine for research purposes. So far on the basis of my findings I have come to know that Torque uses Quadtree for the purpose of continuous LOD generation (Uses heightmaps for Terrain Generation). It also uses Ligh maps for hills and buildings that cast shadows. Now what i want to know is :
1) How does Torque achieve the effect of infinite terrain by tiling the same height map. Where can I find further information on it and which part of code deals with tiling.
2) Are the light maps used by Torque generated by artists or does it compute the light/shadow maps on the basis of Sun position at run time.
3) It uses blends of various textures to give the final texture of terrain. What textures does it blend e-g detail map, bump map etc. Again these textures are provided by artists or are they procedurally generated.
4) How does Torque achieve seamless integration of Terrain with the Interior engine.
Please can anyone specify me the techniques involved and the links where I can find further information on these techniques or the parts of code that can address my questions.
Regards.
I am new to Torque and wanted to view the Terrain generation technology used in Torque Game Engine for research purposes. So far on the basis of my findings I have come to know that Torque uses Quadtree for the purpose of continuous LOD generation (Uses heightmaps for Terrain Generation). It also uses Ligh maps for hills and buildings that cast shadows. Now what i want to know is :
1) How does Torque achieve the effect of infinite terrain by tiling the same height map. Where can I find further information on it and which part of code deals with tiling.
2) Are the light maps used by Torque generated by artists or does it compute the light/shadow maps on the basis of Sun position at run time.
3) It uses blends of various textures to give the final texture of terrain. What textures does it blend e-g detail map, bump map etc. Again these textures are provided by artists or are they procedurally generated.
4) How does Torque achieve seamless integration of Terrain with the Interior engine.
Please can anyone specify me the techniques involved and the links where I can find further information on these techniques or the parts of code that can address my questions.
Regards.
About the author
Associate Kyle Carter
2) Computer generated. They are static lightmaps.
3) Artist created diffuse maps are blended into terrain texture tiles, which are rendered. Detail/bump maps are not blended as they have significantly higher texel densities.
4) It uses a scenegraph architecture. See sceneObject.h
To fully understand these issues in Torque you are looking at probably six months of pretty thorough studying.