Tips for a Hand Painted Atlas Texture?
by Thomas Phillips · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 10/14/2006 (8:14 pm) · 4 replies
Can anyone provide any tips for creating a hand painted Atlas texture?
I have generated a flat 1024 x 1024 geometry in raw format, and have many different parameter combinations for atlasOldGenerateChunkFileFromRaw16() and atlasGenerateTextureTOCFromLargeJPEG(). I have tried texture sizes of 2k, 4k, and 8k square, and have tried leaf nodes up to 10. I have also tried reducing the scaling of the geometry down to 0.1. In no case am I able to get an Atlas terrain that looks very detailed. Both large leaf node numbers and large image sizes cause TSE to fail. Scaling the geometry down (so the texture is larger relative to the geometry) causes gross errors in texture scaling. (The center part of the terrain becomes more pixel-dense, while the edges become less dense.)
Any tips, guidelines, screenshots of highly detailed terrains (drawn by hand), or other words of wisdom would be welcome.
Tom
I have generated a flat 1024 x 1024 geometry in raw format, and have many different parameter combinations for atlasOldGenerateChunkFileFromRaw16() and atlasGenerateTextureTOCFromLargeJPEG(). I have tried texture sizes of 2k, 4k, and 8k square, and have tried leaf nodes up to 10. I have also tried reducing the scaling of the geometry down to 0.1. In no case am I able to get an Atlas terrain that looks very detailed. Both large leaf node numbers and large image sizes cause TSE to fail. Scaling the geometry down (so the texture is larger relative to the geometry) causes gross errors in texture scaling. (The center part of the terrain becomes more pixel-dense, while the edges become less dense.)
Any tips, guidelines, screenshots of highly detailed terrains (drawn by hand), or other words of wisdom would be welcome.
Tom
#2
Or are you referring to the blended texture shaders?
I also found references to a detailTexture variable in creator/data/newMission.mis and www.garagegames.com/docs/tse/general/ch05s04.php, however I haven't seen any documentation on this.
(Sorry if this should be obvious -- "detail texture" is already in my non-Torque vocabulary as a texture used to modulate a primary texture. Kind of like a normal map.)
Tom
10/14/2006 (9:26 pm)
Is this the line you are referring to?atlasSurfaceDynamicLightingP.hlsl: OUT.col = diffuseColor;//lerp( diffuseColor, fogCol, fogCol.a ); //* (detailCol + 0.6)
Or are you referring to the blended texture shaders?
I also found references to a detailTexture variable in creator/data/newMission.mis and www.garagegames.com/docs/tse/general/ch05s04.php, however I haven't seen any documentation on this.
(Sorry if this should be obvious -- "detail texture" is already in my non-Torque vocabulary as a texture used to modulate a primary texture. Kind of like a normal map.)
Tom
#3
You can make some decent terrain with Atlas, but it's definately not easy. Atlas seems to cough on larger terrains, so I've in general stuck with 32 x 32 x 8 sized terrain for the most part and then scaling the texture by x 8. That results in a pretty good looking terrain which is decent sized, but up close you can still see where it would benefit from detail textures significantly.
On a side note, if you have a registered version of L3DT, have it spit out mosaic files instead of a large jpeg if you have larger texture sizes. I had a lot of problems with very large JPEGs, but once I started using mosaics instead I had less issues.
10/14/2006 (9:49 pm)
The terrain definately could benefit from the detail textures being turned back on, otherwise it tends to look blurry up close no matter how large you make the source textures. They were on in previous versions of atlas, they have been disabled, not sure why. I haven't looked into what is required to turn them back on as I figured it will get back in there in a future update.You can make some decent terrain with Atlas, but it's definately not easy. Atlas seems to cough on larger terrains, so I've in general stuck with 32 x 32 x 8 sized terrain for the most part and then scaling the texture by x 8. That results in a pretty good looking terrain which is decent sized, but up close you can still see where it would benefit from detail textures significantly.
On a side note, if you have a registered version of L3DT, have it spit out mosaic files instead of a large jpeg if you have larger texture sizes. I had a lot of problems with very large JPEGs, but once I started using mosaics instead I had less issues.
#4
I make the terrain it self in Bryce then touch up in photoshop to smooth out the graidient to make shure there isnt jagged artifacts, because you can try all you want to ask for help but if the source art get screwed the your screwed:)
Then i take a set of textures I want to see on my ground...size them...and start painting with the Pattern stamp tool in Photoshop right on top of the heightmap(save to a differnt place of coarse) when its done I save as a JPG for the engine to read for convestion...from here depending on how big the tex image is...if I was making a 1024x1024 hieghtmap then i would make at least an 8192x8192 Tex map but usually i use a 16384x16384 and this will give great resolution....but look at the other posts I agree that detial textures would be great again... when I was playing with them I make 2 large JPG's one coverts the normal way the other I spray a lot of detail type textues on only and blend them using that detail channel the effect is good kind of a backdoor to getting the"More than one detail texture on you map" thing solved:)
**sorry 4 spelling the spell checker is down at the moment:)
10/15/2006 (10:19 am)
Ive been doing all of my Atlas terrain with the large Jpeg methof of implametation:)I make the terrain it self in Bryce then touch up in photoshop to smooth out the graidient to make shure there isnt jagged artifacts, because you can try all you want to ask for help but if the source art get screwed the your screwed:)
Then i take a set of textures I want to see on my ground...size them...and start painting with the Pattern stamp tool in Photoshop right on top of the heightmap(save to a differnt place of coarse) when its done I save as a JPG for the engine to read for convestion...from here depending on how big the tex image is...if I was making a 1024x1024 hieghtmap then i would make at least an 8192x8192 Tex map but usually i use a 16384x16384 and this will give great resolution....but look at the other posts I agree that detial textures would be great again... when I was playing with them I make 2 large JPG's one coverts the normal way the other I spray a lot of detail type textues on only and blend them using that detail channel the effect is good kind of a backdoor to getting the"More than one detail texture on you map" thing solved:)
**sorry 4 spelling the spell checker is down at the moment:)
Torque 3D Owner iHugMedia