8 textures for Atlas working

#21 Great work! im doing a video tutorial set for Grome which should be due out shortly - ideal software for for creating the attributes maps etc... if you don't mind could I add a section in their for the extra channels? (still have to figure out how to feed in the second Opac image.
.
Something I wanted to ask whilst someone is digging around in the Atlas code - can you increase the resolution of the blended so it doesn't blur when tiled to a much higher amount? (you can adjust the tiling in the shaders, but remains the same resolution) - always thought it was todo with the clipMap.

#22 The "blurring" you see when it comes to Atlas Blended and to Atlas Unique even is from the "clip-map" you might have heard of this before, its kind of like LOD for you textures on you terrain. So at certain distances they do look blurry, but it to keep frame rates up:) In this case what I did, and what others have done for Atlas bump-mapping is to use the Clip-map shader in the Atlas.h file which you need from my demo to make everything run once you compile the source of coarse.

Im sure you guys are familiar with opacity maps...with 2 go over all you RBGA channels and make sure none of the B&W patterns in the channels overlap where you don't want them to, that way there is no blending you don't want...and make sure after you turn each Opacity map, and light-map 90'Degrees 'clockwise' and save them...don't ask me why i don't know but it has been that way for a while.

*Tip on painting the Opacity maps- Do one color at a time, or use L3DT's ability to make nice Alpha maps...but make sure they don't over lap each others RGBA area(broken record I know:))

@PUG...;)NP!!

#23 Great resource, but it looks like the links broke today :{

#24 I will try to get it working again thnkx:)

Update: They seem to be working...hmm try again perhaps you have some Internet setting to adjust? if you still can't download or anyone else can't send me an email and I will put the Atlas.h file and the 3 source files into a ZIP send email them out.

lmaceleighton@msn.com

cheers

#25 Here is the error I'm getting when I click the link:

"Invalid Quickkey. This error has been forwarded to MediaFire's development team.

The quickkey you provided for file download was invalid. This is usually caused because the file is no longer stored on Mediafire. This occurs when the file is removed by the originating user or Mediafire."

I'll drop you an email...

#26 Today...err this morning I am packaging these files together into a RAR file, well actually its a RAR/ZIP but that's OK...Just everyone send me an email that wants it and I will send it out ASAP, and if there is anyone that wants to host this file more permanently for me where I can update it without it being a pain, that would be great:)

#27 @Bobby Leighton:
I add your code atlasTexturing.zip to this address:
tge.torquewow.com/AtlasTexturing/


For Update,you can use this ftp by ftp client,such as CuteFTP:
address:
ftp.torquewow.com
user:
tgea@torquewow.com
pwd:
resource

TorqueWOW,Skanda
moviehslian@sina.com

#28 Awesome thanks, I'm hoping by next week there will be a bit more to this resource:)

#29 And by the way guys, posting some screen shots of anything you guys make with this would be great, I always like to see others work, we can call it payment for my "hard" work, lol:) And also if there is any steps with creation that anyone needs help with please ask, i check this many times daily;)

#30 I added an update to the FTP address above, please let me know if there is any problems:)

UPDATE-->You can now(by changing a few number in the marked are of Atlas.h)change the tiling of the individual textures across the terrain:) let me know how this work for ya all, and what else you guys think this need, and I will be making another update to make sure this works with the new TGEA update coming up:)

Peace

#31 Good News!

#32 Hi Bob, just wanted to check - you mentioned in the post above you could change the number of tiles for the atlas, this could already be done in (atlasBlenderPS20V.hlsl), or is this something completely different?

Something I did think of that might be an idea is to support 8 detail textures to go with the 8 tiles - you can get some excellent results with the details but not having the overheads of normal & parallax.

Again perhaps external support so you can define the textures you want used with the Atlas rather the pre-compiled paths?


Will post some examples next week or so of what ive managed todo with it once ive completed a tutorial set.

Keep up the good work!

#33 This is for the tiling of the textures on ONE Atlas terrain, out of the box you may only use 4, and they are stretched from the clip-mapping function, that has been bypassed and now you have complete control over the individual textures as well as where they are place, which is great for roads and anything else that requires exact placement:)
I thought of adding in more detail textures, i did that for the legacy terrain but i have very little C++ knowledge of the way the C++ side of the blender works overall..so getting things to line up right(problem with legacy too) ...also Im using external blend/opacity maps for placement;)

#34 Very cool. I did something very similar some time ago to get road realworld road overlays onto atlas2 terrains. I ran into the problem that i could not use a resolution for my overlay image that was larger than 2048x2048 (anything 2048 or smaller was perfect) or the clipmapbatcher really borked the texture coordinates. By that I mean only the terrain that was nearest the camera had the right texture coordinates when close to the ground, everything outside of this highest texture lod was stretched or tiled incorrectly. I cant remember which as it has been quite some time and I havent been able to revisit this. Has anyone tried non-tiling textures greater than 2048x2048 in size and had success?

#35 Quick question, do both opacity textures have to be normalised together to come to 255, or each separately?

#36 Each channel has a pixel range between 0-255 for each RGBA channel of both opacity maps. When you view each channel separately they should look B&W, and have a color range between 0-255,which is what the shader Is based on. it actually help so lighten and brighten some of them in some cases, like turning down the brightness for the textures in a graveyard scene. hope this helps you, and if you have any suggestions for this project that would be great;)

#37 So, just to clarify :) (sorry its for an Atlas exporter plugin) that each opacity must be normalised individually, not combined.

I think its a great resource already! just allowing 8 layers makes the difference. Personally I wouldn't be so keen on integrating things such as super shaders etc, they tend to bring allot of overhead and im not so sure everyone would want it? but im sure theirs other Atlas annoyances.

As mentioned in the post above, 8 detail textures and external texture paths so you change on the fly I think would be a good step.

Also perhaps rather than using Ves's "atlas.h", one of your own but slightly modified so you can keep the ClipMapping but vary its effectiveness.

#38 I keep using Ves's because it has all the bump-mapping stuff still in it, that way people could see where it was and reimplement it over the 8 textures if they wanted...but that might slow things down a bit without optimization of..well everything;)

#39 :) right sorry to be a pain but:

just to clarify - each opacity must be normalised individually & not combined, or the other way around? (Yes/No).

Regards!

#40 Here is what I do, you said you had L3DT right??

1) Once you heightfield/map is the way you want it in L3DT go to "Generate Alpha", the click "next"

2)This brings up "Alpha map file Output", depending on how many land types will determine how many Alpha maps you will have, you want 8 all together for the finished maps, but right now were only concerned with everything except roads or paths, if you don't have any roads for this map that's OK. "Fill in a name for export", then under "Layers per Image" choose 8-bit so it spits out a separate black and white PNG for each map/land type. At this time you can also check "Make high-res alpha" and change the number to something like 4. then click"OK"
3)open photo-shop or you equivalent, and here I actually use a gaussian blur on each of them, then select the entire map(you'll have to do this once for every map), now go and create a new blank bitmap, with RGB and an Alpha channel, once created select the Red channel, and paste the first map here, then grab another and paste it only to the green channel, and do the same for Blue and Alpha. once that done create another black bitmap and do it again, using what ever naming convention you want for your blend-maps.
4) once ther done you should be able to enter then into the space for it in either you .MIS file of you can do it from the editor but you will need to reset it to see the effect, something i will change in the near future so it updates in real time, or at-least when you push a button.

if you need any of these step clarified don't hesitate to ask, instead of me giving a Yes or No, this might help more, just tell me what step your having trouble with,....this is the way i do it:)