TSE Atlas terrain capability?
by Patrick Meloy · in General Discussion · 10/19/2006 (7:42 am) · 8 replies
I thought I remembered a feature list someplace that claimed Atlas could do not only vertical terrain, but overhangs as well. Now I cannot find mention of it.
Could any atlas owners tell me if atlas can do such things? While i don't need overhangs, I would like to be able to make vertical terrain and things like narrow paths along cliff faces. At the moment I'm attempting to make a DIF like a cliff face and paths on it in TGE, but it'd sure be nice to have terrain that could do that!
Is this possible without having 80 foot wide paths and angled "cliffs"?
Could any atlas owners tell me if atlas can do such things? While i don't need overhangs, I would like to be able to make vertical terrain and things like narrow paths along cliff faces. At the moment I'm attempting to make a DIF like a cliff face and paths on it in TGE, but it'd sure be nice to have terrain that could do that!
Is this possible without having 80 foot wide paths and angled "cliffs"?
#2
10/19/2006 (8:45 am)
TGE terrain cannot be vertical as far as I can tell. The mesh verticies are fixed as far as X/Y placement goes so you cannot have one directly over the other. Having a "flat" area on the cliff face is sort of possible but the path is very wide and the final clif area would take up a giant area on the limited TGE terrain - thats why the DIF attempt. 
#3
10/19/2006 (9:05 am)
I see...I whipped this up pretty quickly in TGE, but I'm guessing you're looking for perfectly vertical cliff faces, which you're right TGE can't do. I'm also guessing you would need paths to be more narrow than that.
#4
10/19/2006 (10:52 am)
So... does Atlas do vertex-based terrain, with overhangs?
#5
10/19/2006 (6:40 pm)
Yeah, the path is far too wide. This needs to be an "inch along and fall off a lot" type of affair, with twists, turns, false trails etc. Even if TSE can do the overhang and vertical stuff, I'll probably still have to throw in a few DIF or DTS bits to get exactly what I want. 
#6
10/20/2006 (8:31 am)
Yeah JW, it is based on chunkLOD.
#7
TGE terrain is heightmap based - where you can only have 1 height value per x,y position
TSE (Atlas2) terrain is polygon based - but currently there are no tools to actually make the overhangs. But thats changing soon.
10/20/2006 (8:33 am)
YesTGE terrain is heightmap based - where you can only have 1 height value per x,y position
TSE (Atlas2) terrain is polygon based - but currently there are no tools to actually make the overhangs. But thats changing soon.
Torque 3D Owner Rubes