Show Your Atlas Love
by Jacob Dankovchik · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 08/23/2005 (6:58 pm) · 41 replies
With the new starter.fps for TSE being setup, I've finally been able to fully walk around my Atlas terrains, (I never wanted to port a starter myself..) and I must say, it is absolutely amazing! I never realized just how awesome these terrains truly look until you are on foot walking around at normal size and speed. Theres a special feel that the camera simply can't achieve.
Tonight I made a rugged mountain range with lots of erosion channels. At first I thought the mountains looked a bit small and under-detailed. Then I loaded up the starter.fps and shut my mouth fast. I can explore an amount of detail on foot that I never could've dreamed of before. At the scary thing is, I can easily increase the detail from here if I wanted.
So, I am making this thread for people to show off terrains of their own. I'd like to see everyone's wonderful creations! I have two 30 second videos to offer, myself.
Btw, this was created in L3DT and the videos were compressed using a DivX 5.1.1 codec.
www.planetgargoyle.com/dm/tse.avi
www.planetgargoyle.com/dm/tse2.avi
I'll post some pics in a little bit. Some come on GG peeps, show your stuff with Atlas too!
Tonight I made a rugged mountain range with lots of erosion channels. At first I thought the mountains looked a bit small and under-detailed. Then I loaded up the starter.fps and shut my mouth fast. I can explore an amount of detail on foot that I never could've dreamed of before. At the scary thing is, I can easily increase the detail from here if I wanted.
So, I am making this thread for people to show off terrains of their own. I'd like to see everyone's wonderful creations! I have two 30 second videos to offer, myself.
Btw, this was created in L3DT and the videos were compressed using a DivX 5.1.1 codec.
www.planetgargoyle.com/dm/tse.avi
www.planetgargoyle.com/dm/tse2.avi
I'll post some pics in a little bit. Some come on GG peeps, show your stuff with Atlas too!
About the author
#22
08/26/2005 (4:15 pm)
They don't get used currently, except to pregenerate textures with the code that John Vanderbeck and I worked on.
#23
I added some elements to my Fjord to make a fullblown scene and must say.. I think its simply beautiful!
Excuse the fact there is no Sun or that the terrain ends rather abuptly.. :P
Oh, and the specular is from the water shader that I found commented out. Decided to throw it back in as it added a missing element.
08/26/2005 (4:55 pm)
Hahahah, I'm lovin this thread! I got much to show! I added some elements to my Fjord to make a fullblown scene and must say.. I think its simply beautiful!
Excuse the fact there is no Sun or that the terrain ends rather abuptly.. :P
Oh, and the specular is from the water shader that I found commented out. Decided to throw it back in as it added a missing element.
#24
Thanks
08/26/2005 (7:01 pm)
Cool terrains... I'm looking for an Atlas terrain to use in the TSE demo, if anyone is interested in contributing to it please let me know. Thanks
#25
looks like L3DT is a nice tool...i just jumped into atlas and TSE and havnt even tried fooling around with making a new terrain. Ill have to give both L3DT and terragen a try.
08/26/2005 (7:31 pm)
Wow...those screens are beautiful Jacob. Nice Job!looks like L3DT is a nice tool...i just jumped into atlas and TSE and havnt even tried fooling around with making a new terrain. Ill have to give both L3DT and terragen a try.
#26
btw AWESOME job!!
08/26/2005 (8:12 pm)
So Jacob, are you going to put up a resource on how to use L3DT and how to get beautiful terrain like yours? I would really love to know how to make terrain like that!btw AWESOME job!!
#27
08/26/2005 (8:23 pm)
Yea..l3dt is a pretty powerful looking tool and so far I like it better than terragen. This stuff looks amazing and the textures are really nice. You should put a resource up on how to use this tool with tse...it seems you have a nice handle on things cause that terrain is really sweet.
#28
08/26/2005 (8:36 pm)
Hmm. Never tought about that, but I'm always one to try to help the community, so perhaps tomarrow after work I'll give it a shot!
#29
08/26/2005 (8:56 pm)
That would be very cool! That last screenshot is totaly awesome! I can't wait until you finish the resource. Good Luck! 
#30
08/26/2005 (9:41 pm)
Wow... these shots are looking really awesome. The GarageGames community is the most amazing game dev community on the planet. 
#31
08/27/2005 (12:48 am)
Indeed! Last shot looks really slick Jacob. Go go!
#32
Works sometimes though, with good results.
08/27/2005 (2:25 am)
I tried out L3DT but it crashed on me the first time, then a second time when the terrain was almost finished. Very odd.Works sometimes though, with good results.
#33
Atlas terrain lit only with diffuse (white) and L3DT normal map. I've included shots with the sun
moved around.
~neo
08/27/2005 (7:36 am)
Quote: Jerane: I do wish I could incorporate those normal maps that L3DT makes into TSE :))
Atlas terrain lit only with diffuse (white) and L3DT normal map. I've included shots with the sun
moved around.
~neo
#34
@Jacob: Thos are some really great shots. I found that adding a light sky glow and fog to the background really adds to the terrain as well. I might try working between L3DT and Terragen more .I still like Terragen's texture system more, but L3DT does seem to have better control over designing terrain it seems. I'll see if I can do some work that rivals yours later ;)
08/27/2005 (11:21 am)
@Neo: Hey, that looks great! What kind of performance hit are you taking, if any? That would probably be my main concern at th emoment, but form the looks of it, it might be worth putting in. Thanks a lot for the info!@Jacob: Thos are some really great shots. I found that adding a light sky glow and fog to the background really adds to the terrain as well. I might try working between L3DT and Terragen more .I still like Terragen's texture system more, but L3DT does seem to have better control over designing terrain it seems. I'll see if I can do some work that rivals yours later ;)
#35
the dynamic lighting is in, etc. This can be disabled for fallback and done at the vertex level.
I have this running with full texturing, both detail textures and one or two other things and it runs fine
on the Fx5900 ultra I have here...
~neo
08/27/2005 (12:04 pm)
@Jerane: Not much of a hit as it is only doing one lookup and you are going to need normals anyway once the dynamic lighting is in, etc. This can be disabled for fallback and done at the vertex level.
I have this running with full texturing, both detail textures and one or two other things and it runs fine
on the Fx5900 ultra I have here...
~neo
#36
Muahaha, bring it!! I spent about, 10 minutes total on the fjord. You wanna really challenge me, I'll try puttin some effort into my work!
Oh, and L3DT can export your heightmap as a terragen file so it'd be very easy to work together with them.
Anyhow, I just got home from work and my parents are goin out, so I should have the rest of the night uninterrupted. I'm going to do a little more learning with L3DT then I'll look into peicing together a resource on it.
08/27/2005 (1:31 pm)
Quote:@Jacob: Thos are some really great shots. I found that adding a light sky glow and fog to the background really adds to the terrain as well. I might try working between L3DT and Terragen more .I still like Terragen's texture system more, but L3DT does seem to have better control over designing terrain it seems. I'll see if I can do some work that rivals yours later ;)
Muahaha, bring it!! I spent about, 10 minutes total on the fjord. You wanna really challenge me, I'll try puttin some effort into my work!
Oh, and L3DT can export your heightmap as a terragen file so it'd be very easy to work together with them.
Anyhow, I just got home from work and my parents are goin out, so I should have the rest of the night uninterrupted. I'm going to do a little more learning with L3DT then I'll look into peicing together a resource on it.
#37
Still needs approval I beleive though.
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=8584
08/27/2005 (6:11 pm)
Well, just wrote it up.. Hope I covered everything. I'm a noob with resource writing, so not sure how helpful it'll be. I didn't focus on use of L3DT itself but how to get it to do good things in TSE and important things to note for that. To explain all the tools would take forever. But this should do a minor explaintion for TSE.Still needs approval I beleive though.
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=8584
#38
I'm starting to get quite good with L3DT.. Can pull off what I want when I want it every time just about now. :D
This here is a large mountain range that I made. 40 kilometers. And at that detail, not bad I tihnk. But the texture is low res, I know.. No need to point it out. ;) I plan to re-render it as high-res soon.
12/12/2005 (6:29 pm)
I felt I may as well come back in here seeing how I've been working with TSE terrain a lot more again. I'm starting to get quite good with L3DT.. Can pull off what I want when I want it every time just about now. :D
This here is a large mountain range that I made. 40 kilometers. And at that detail, not bad I tihnk. But the texture is low res, I know.. No need to point it out. ;) I plan to re-render it as high-res soon.
#39
01/01/2006 (11:38 pm)
Been using L3DT a lot on the next project. This program is very awesome, definately worth whatever they charge for it when it comes out of Beta. :)
#40
01/02/2006 (3:51 pm)
Heres a hand-crafted map I just made, the Mountain Lake. Still gotta tweak it though. Going to make the lake deeper, mountains higher, and edit the water properties further. But you get the idea already from this. 
Torque Owner Neo Binedell
EDIT:
Seems generateNormals() is not called from anywhere during the chunk gen, and come to think of it the
shaders don't even access any normals, i.e. they are not lit.
It should not be too hard to add from what I can see though...
~neo