The Massive
by Jacob Dankovchik · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 06/18/2005 (6:45 pm) · 26 replies
I finally figured out how to make a terrain and so the first actually aimed goal of a terrain I'm making, I'm titling "Massive". I figure the Large terrain was good, but Massive is better. ;)
It's not ready yet because the processes take forever, but I promise to have shots of it tomarrow. I wanted to mention it though. I figure with Massive, i'll be putting Atlas to a bit of a test.
The terrain, according to my calculations, will be 24,576 meters by 24,576 meters. The texture will be 32,768 by 32,768 pixels.
I recently discovered the use of a new tool, L3DT, which I've already found to be a life-saver with this terrain. Unlike terragen, it's completely free, no restrictions on use. Also it skips all the extra bits terragen does like renders and skys, etc. Instead it'll just make your height map and terrain texture, which is all I need. And it does all this very quickly and very easily. I am amazed at the fact that it can light a 2048 square heightmap in less then 30 seconds. It also handles texture generation very well and prevents texture tiling.
You can also load climate profiles for your map which dictate which textures go at which heights on the map. So if you are creating terrains of a certain area of world, simply define its climate and all the terrains you produce will work under the exact same ruleset.
I definatly recommend this tool for people working with Atlas, it seems like a dream come true for me.
And I will have shots of the Massive tomarrow. Tonight while I sleep I'll render up the texture. Then I'd like to get a few tweaks made on my exporting of the chu file. I'm having trouble getting it detailed enough, it keeps exporting really flat.
It's not ready yet because the processes take forever, but I promise to have shots of it tomarrow. I wanted to mention it though. I figure with Massive, i'll be putting Atlas to a bit of a test.
The terrain, according to my calculations, will be 24,576 meters by 24,576 meters. The texture will be 32,768 by 32,768 pixels.
I recently discovered the use of a new tool, L3DT, which I've already found to be a life-saver with this terrain. Unlike terragen, it's completely free, no restrictions on use. Also it skips all the extra bits terragen does like renders and skys, etc. Instead it'll just make your height map and terrain texture, which is all I need. And it does all this very quickly and very easily. I am amazed at the fact that it can light a 2048 square heightmap in less then 30 seconds. It also handles texture generation very well and prevents texture tiling.
You can also load climate profiles for your map which dictate which textures go at which heights on the map. So if you are creating terrains of a certain area of world, simply define its climate and all the terrains you produce will work under the exact same ruleset.
I definatly recommend this tool for people working with Atlas, it seems like a dream come true for me.
And I will have shots of the Massive tomarrow. Tonight while I sleep I'll render up the texture. Then I'd like to get a few tweaks made on my exporting of the chu file. I'm having trouble getting it detailed enough, it keeps exporting really flat.
About the author
#2
06/18/2005 (7:18 pm)
Well, so far i exported one at full size but quite flat, minus the texture. I got the entire thing on view with a 25000 meter view distance and this thing ran GREAT! Even with the whole thing on view, was very comfortably playable and when i exported the .chu i remember the triangle count still being quite high. Not sure how much this'll change once i get the settings right. But good sings already!
#3
06/19/2005 (11:55 am)
Well, theres been a bit of a setback. I had my texture rendering as I slept but something went wrong and it was unable to save and was lost. Im still working with this terrain, getting comfortable. Will have pictures by tonight. :)
#4
06/19/2005 (3:40 pm)
I look forward to seeing them. :)
#5
06/19/2005 (3:41 pm)
Me too, sounds neat.
#6
06/19/2005 (4:33 pm)
Ya, now im having issues with some strange jagged spots. Like, single verts all over are pulled up or down and make a really weird spiky pattern all over.
#7
Only problems i do have with such a big map is that textures sometimes dont match up, LOD wise. I could be right on top of one chunk and the one right next to it wont have the right lod matched up to it.
Any one have any ideas why this happens, as i dont see it on smaller terrains?
06/20/2005 (5:33 am)
Sounds like your getting far there Jacob. I recently did something similar but was having problems with my memory use. Some of the programs i use wont create a 16k by 16k height file. Currently what i am doing to solve this is having 4 8k x 8k terrain raw files and one big 16k x 16k texture. This gives me a 32km x 32km terrain with a texture resolution of 1 pixel/2 meters. Looks pretty good so far.Only problems i do have with such a big map is that textures sometimes dont match up, LOD wise. I could be right on top of one chunk and the one right next to it wont have the right lod matched up to it.
Any one have any ideas why this happens, as i dont see it on smaller terrains?
#8
And this keeps getting delayed due to complications.. Today should be the day though!
06/20/2005 (6:47 am)
Well for the heightmap im using a fairly small one but with a large tile size so it gets stretched out to the right size isntead of having to use a massive heightmap and suck my memory totally dry. :)And this keeps getting delayed due to complications.. Today should be the day though!
#9
Btw, the texture is absolutle crap res, I know this. I tried to build my 32768 texture but the program crashed when it was exporting and it was lost and it takes a long time to generate, so I haven't gotten to it yet. I'll try to generate a new one tonight and post higher-res texture pics tomarrow. But here it is for now!
In these first 4 pics I used the orc as a size reference and in the 4 i moved backwards in a straight line from the orc. The 4th is a different position though.
The terrain is a total of about 5.5 million real triangles according to TSE. I would also like to say that on the fifth picture with the WHOLE thing on view, with a view distance of 30,000 meters, the game feels prefect, very easily playable and comfortable.
The Massive was a big test for me and the Atlas terrain. It was my first terrain and I wanted to see if Atlas could do what GG says, and it sure as HELL can! Great work guys, this is awesome. :)
on my TODO list is re-render the terrain to try to clean it up further. There are some odd rough spots, issues with what im assuming is the error metric thing, etc. Also I want to add water to it. Then I'm going to redo the texture and see if I can get a nw skybox and make a full-blown scene with it.
Now onto the juicy stuff!
Awww, look, its the Orc!
Hey, where did he go? Oh, there he is.. Getting smaller...
Orc? ORRC? Where are you?! At least theres still tons of terrain to see yet...
Ah screw it, he's gone..
And the full-on nude bodyshot! Err.. terrain-shot, whatever. :P
And gameplay was smooth and fast the whole time. Of cource, my RAM was basically prison-raped from this whole thing, both generating and running. But it was worth it!
06/20/2005 (11:31 am)
K, here it is finnaly! Eventually I figured out what to do in order to get this terrain build acceptable. I'm probably going to ocntinue to mess with it though. Btw, the texture is absolutle crap res, I know this. I tried to build my 32768 texture but the program crashed when it was exporting and it was lost and it takes a long time to generate, so I haven't gotten to it yet. I'll try to generate a new one tonight and post higher-res texture pics tomarrow. But here it is for now!
In these first 4 pics I used the orc as a size reference and in the 4 i moved backwards in a straight line from the orc. The 4th is a different position though.
The terrain is a total of about 5.5 million real triangles according to TSE. I would also like to say that on the fifth picture with the WHOLE thing on view, with a view distance of 30,000 meters, the game feels prefect, very easily playable and comfortable.
The Massive was a big test for me and the Atlas terrain. It was my first terrain and I wanted to see if Atlas could do what GG says, and it sure as HELL can! Great work guys, this is awesome. :)
on my TODO list is re-render the terrain to try to clean it up further. There are some odd rough spots, issues with what im assuming is the error metric thing, etc. Also I want to add water to it. Then I'm going to redo the texture and see if I can get a nw skybox and make a full-blown scene with it.
Now onto the juicy stuff!
Awww, look, its the Orc!
Hey, where did he go? Oh, there he is.. Getting smaller...
Orc? ORRC? Where are you?! At least theres still tons of terrain to see yet...
Ah screw it, he's gone..
And the full-on nude bodyshot! Err.. terrain-shot, whatever. :P
And gameplay was smooth and fast the whole time. Of cource, my RAM was basically prison-raped from this whole thing, both generating and running. But it was worth it!
#10
06/20/2005 (11:46 am)
L3DT is a really great little took, but it doesn't handle the creation of LARGE scale textures well. Nothing out there really does which is why Ben and I wrote the texture generation tool. If you use it you will be able to generate 32k, 65k, or even larger textures easily. It does this by outputting them in chunkcs (L3DT calls it mosaic..same principle) and then Atlas reads those chunks in and stitches them together for you.
#11
06/20/2005 (11:57 am)
Ya, i tried the texture generator, but it was basically kickin my ass. ;) For some reason when I would try the layerByHeight tihngs would get screwed up. For example, if I put a grass texture at full strenth at the lowest high, 0.5 at 0, and 1.0 at highest, worked get, blended out right. But if I changed those numbers any, the height values, it would basically stop blending. What would then happen is it would show certain heights with full strength and the rest as nothing. So I just went to L3DT after several hours of messin with the generator and no luck.
#12
I do know its very hard to visualize though and thats why a GUI is defintly planned. Once I get the last few core features finished then the GUI is my next step.
06/20/2005 (12:18 pm)
Wierd. It almost sounds like your control points were specified in ascending order or height. That would screw it up. Beyond that i'm not sure.I do know its very hard to visualize though and thats why a GUI is defintly planned. Once I get the last few core features finished then the GUI is my next step.
#13
BTW that mars terrain was done with the TextureGenerator.
06/20/2005 (2:35 pm)
Quote:Atlas reads those chunks in and stitches them together for you.What is the command that does. that the only command i know is mergeTQT which doesn't work.
BTW that mars terrain was done with the TextureGenerator.
#14
06/20/2005 (2:36 pm)
Here's a good question (not sure you can answer it though). Given a reasonable speed for running, how long would it take that Orc to run from one corner of that terrain to the other? Care to take a best guess?
#15
I honestly don't know. That's Ben's side of the house :p Its possible he hasn't added it in yet, but if he hasn't I know its planned. That chunking is what allows insane sized textures which was one of the main goals of the whole project. Its quite amazing really. You can generate textures of ANY size limited only by disk space. After all what good is terrain as big as the visible galaxy if your terrain texture is only the size of the moon :D
Sweet!
06/20/2005 (3:39 pm)
Quote:What is the command that does. that the only command i know is mergeTQT which doesn't work.
I honestly don't know. That's Ben's side of the house :p Its possible he hasn't added it in yet, but if he hasn't I know its planned. That chunking is what allows insane sized textures which was one of the main goals of the whole project. Its quite amazing really. You can generate textures of ANY size limited only by disk space. After all what good is terrain as big as the visible galaxy if your terrain texture is only the size of the moon :D
Quote:BTW that mars terrain was done with the TextureGenerator.
Sweet!
#16
Well, I calculated out a couple days ago that if you were to put the orc and a sort of realistic walking rate of 4 miles per hour, which is a little faster then most people's average walking speed. It came out to about 3.8 hours to walk from one end to the other. Thats not including hills and other obstacles. So, if you were to have this in your game with a walking character moving an even slightly realistic speed, expect to spend, give or take, 4 hours walking across it.
Not bad, huh? ;)
But thats walking, not running. I'll get a running speed in a second.
K, for a running speed of 9.5 miles per hour, which I found mentioned as an average speed for an 18 year old running 1000 meters, I got 1.6 hours. But of cource, nobody could ever hope to maintain that sort of speed for 24,576 meters.
06/20/2005 (3:41 pm)
Quote:Here's a good question (not sure you can answer it though). Given a reasonable speed for running, how long would it take that Orc to run from one corner of that terrain to the other? Care to take a best guess?
Well, I calculated out a couple days ago that if you were to put the orc and a sort of realistic walking rate of 4 miles per hour, which is a little faster then most people's average walking speed. It came out to about 3.8 hours to walk from one end to the other. Thats not including hills and other obstacles. So, if you were to have this in your game with a walking character moving an even slightly realistic speed, expect to spend, give or take, 4 hours walking across it.
Not bad, huh? ;)
But thats walking, not running. I'll get a running speed in a second.
K, for a running speed of 9.5 miles per hour, which I found mentioned as an average speed for an 18 year old running 1000 meters, I got 1.6 hours. But of cource, nobody could ever hope to maintain that sort of speed for 24,576 meters.
#17
06/20/2005 (3:43 pm)
Ok my bad. I just checked with Ben and the chunk support is not yet implemented on the terrain side of the house. So that was my mistake.
#18
I'll try something smaller, but bigger then what I got now tonight. Maybe 16384. 32768 if i can would be nice though.
06/20/2005 (3:49 pm)
I'm going to try another texture tonight. Oh, and recently, SOMEHOW, i found 16 texture tiles for this terrain, at 4096. Well, except for one, for some reason its only 512.. But hell, I can make it work. So basically I have a 65536 texture ready. No clue how or why though because I never made one.. But its there. But I can't peice it together in a program, my RAM dies out on me and crashes stuff. So, i need that chunking function in TSE for that part.I'll try something smaller, but bigger then what I got now tonight. Maybe 16384. 32768 if i can would be nice though.
#19
06/20/2005 (3:53 pm)
The "chunking" generator code is on my todo list; probably post TDN private launch. :)
#20
06/20/2005 (3:54 pm)
BTW, very cool project, Jacob. It's nice seeing someone really push the limits. ;) 
Associate Kyle Carter
L3DT is a cool tool; I was wondering how long it was going to take before someone in the community started using it. :)
I look forward to seeing how the terrain looks and runs. And how big the datafiles are. ;)