Sahara Discussion Thread

#121 Thanks Richard, glad you like it! :) There are also discounts from time to time plus all our products are going to converge towards a lower price point (sooner rather than later). It's a cool new trend around here (Torque, then AFX - I hope we're gonna be the next ones), so I'm very happy to follow. Maybe others will as well. :)

But that permanent price drop will be synced with the introduction of a new thing we'd like to show everyone - which doesn't quite have an ETA yet. It's very likely to be shown in February though. (I know that was as cryptic as it gets, but I can't say more just yet because we're still working out the finer details.)

#122 you know konrad... you're a tease :p

#123 Hehe, yeah, but it works! :)

#124 Our servers might be unreachable in the coming days as we move our architecture over to the Amazon EC2 cloud.

We hope to sort everything out by the end of the week. Hopefully it will result in a more responsive connection for you, but more importantly in more reliable hardware - something we've been having troubles with ever since the website was online.

The outage will not affect our emails, so please contact us at the support address in your docs or konrad _at_ bitgap.com.

Thanks for your patience!

#125 @Konrad: not so much work... Avira seems very responsive :-P

#126 @JoZ: Well, thank you anyway! :)

#127 Bye the way I had the same problem with DSQTweaker :-)

#128 It always feels good to not be alone in trouble - especially if it's my good friends at BAG. :)

#129 The website is functional once again, thank you for your patience.

The Bitgap web server is now located in the US (east coast) instead of Central Europe.

I've received a few reports that downloads would sometimes be dropped with large files. I think we have sorted that problem out, but if you have any annoyances, be sure to let me know!

#130 Konrad, it sounds interesting, but I really have no idea how it works, and the technical details in the webpage are very scarce. How does it work exactly? For example, I have a model of an statue and I would like to have moss over it. How would it look? What does the "accumulation" feature actually does?

I know that some of these questions are somewhat answered in the cliff pack product page, but it's not exactly clear.

Sorry if I'm sounding bitchy, that's not my intention. I'm just trying to provide the vision of a newbie regarding your products, as right now it seems that the presentation of Sahara is geared mostly towards persons that already know what the Cliff Construction Kit is about, and that have been following it's development.

Thanks for reading! =)

#131 Hey Oscar,

No problem at all. Please check out my resources, the trick behind it is explained in one of them. I'm on my phone and can't copy / paste (yet :)).

#132 http://www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/15675
Thats the resource i think he means.

You can get some very natural looking effects with this Oscar. You chose your "accumulation map" which it overlays ontop of your base textures, this can either make it look like dust has settled on the model, or moss is growing up it for example, or using it to blend rocks for example into your desert level by having the sand texture from that map 'settling' on your rocks, or the same with snow.

As far as a technical explination goes on the tech, check out konrads resource

#133 Really nice! Thanks for the links! =)

#134 FYI - we were having a few issues with emails not being sent from the Bitgap website (ie. when requesting a new password). The issues are now completely gone - sorry for the trouble!

#135 I'm trying to get some cliff shapes to blend in with the terrain materials.
The accumulation texture is only one texture but the terrain materials have a detail and normal map in addition to the colour map. Any suggestions or maybe some more controls to alter the look of the accumulation texture to better blend in with a terrain material?
Also it would be nice to alter the sliders in game like with CCK rather than in the shape editor, or an I missing something here?

#136 Use the detail texture as the accumulation map skipp

shape editor ? You can do it in game, the sliders are in the material editor and you can see the effect 'live' with the shape texture you have selected

#137 Thanks. I'll give it a try.
Do you use greyscale images for your terrain detail maps or just the same texture as in the diffuse slot?
I've been experimenting with both.
The example in my post (above) is with a greyscale detail texture on the terrain (on the right) and using the colour map of the same image as the acc texture (on the left) which is also the diffuse of the terrain texture.

Alternatively I can use the colour map in both diffuse and detail slots of the terrain which gives a very bright terrain colour and still doesn't blend well with the acc map (see below) but looks too colourful in comparison rather than the opposite.
If that makes any sense.

#138 Youre not going to get it to be seamless where the terrain and the object intersect if thats what you mean.

I use a full colour image for the diffuse, anda amodified version of it for detail, by running through a highpass and sometimes adjusting the contrast etc.

T3D doesent need to use greyscale images anymore for the detail maps like it did with TGEa etc, it can pull colour from the detail map.

Download these 3 files, its a diffuse, detail and a normal map with parallax in the alpha
Diffuse

Detail

Normal

This will make a terrain material that looks like this

Diffuse only, set to 16 size i think

Detail map ontop of the diffuse, pulling colour from the detail map

Normal map applied with around 0.07 strength on the parallax

As you can see, the detail map is just a modified diffuse map, and on something that has high contrasting details like the stones in that one against the mud, id doesent work too well from distance as a diffuse if you have the setting too high as you will see 'massive' stones from a distance once the detail map has faded, so would suggest blending them all out on a diffuse such as that one.
The detail map is run through a photoshop highpass filter then had the colour levels adjusted slightly and the contrast faded a little
The normal map has a heightmap in the alpha channel if you want to take a look and see how they are set up.

Part of the problem is though that terrain materials are set up differently to object materials for shape use. Much more options for shapes, and it doesent look into the alpha channels the same way it does for terrains to grab parallax from the normal etc. So youll need ideally a second set of the same material used on your terrain, but is set up for shape usage, then just find that balance in the setup with the scaling of the texture used as an accumulation map against the terrain.. its abit of swings and roundabouts but once you get the hang of it setting them up kinda comes second nature...

#139 Not sure it's a valid solution but have you tried adding a decal to blend between cliffs and the terrain?

#140 Thanks very much Andy there's some interesting information there.
I will have to experiment as you say and set up some materials by hand using trial and error to look like the terrain materials.
It's a shame that objects and terrain can't be better integrated together in some way so they blend together and make a more natural looking environment in the same way terrain materials are blended together.
I'm sure most people won't notice but it would just make life easier if things were set up in this way from the outset instead of having to fudge it.
I'll look into using decals but I'm thinking this will not be a very efficient method, alternatively I could just use plants and rocks scattered about to mask the line.