Stridor's Map Making Tutorial Part #2

[Stridor]

EDIT: THE WHOLE MAP MAKING PROCESS HAS BEEN REVAMPED BY THE NEW MAP MAKER TOOL WHICH IS CURRENTLY IN OPEN BETA!
THIS THREAD NO LONGER APPLIES


This is a follow on from Part #1 http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1788093

Ok we have now finished with NTG and we wave it a fond farewell. We have what we came for, our 65x65 pixel heightmap as well as the beginnings of our map.bmp. The next tool in our tool-chain is Milkshape 3D (MS3D). This is a low cost, low poly, easy to use 3D editing program which is pretty fully featured for the price.

The website is here http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/. You can use the program free for 30 days, after that there is a $US35 registration fee (as of 27/4/08). Why I recommend MS3D is because of it's ease of use as well as the fact that it is the only program I have found that exports directX in a format that PCK understands, short of spending hundreds (thousands) of dollars on high end tools. MS3D can be used to make not only new maps, but also all new placeable objects if you so desire. Currently work is under way to see if it can be adapted to allow export of fully animated vehicles and men, which so far, alas, has eluded us.

What about Blender you ask? Whilst Blender is free and very capable, I developed a serious migraine attempting to understand/work with it's UI, not to mention that I had no luck at all with their DirectX exporter. If there are any Blender experts out there that can perhaps help out, your help would be greatly appreciated.

While I will give you a very brief overview on how MS3D works, better "nuts 'n bolts" tutorials can be found here http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/ms3d/tutorials.html. I recommend you read at least some of them so you can get a handle on how the basics work. Trust me it really isn't hard at all.

[Stridor]

Alright then!

Load up MS3D and you will be presented with the following default screen (see SS). You start with 4 main view ports of your work (labelled) These are totally configurable. If you right click in any of these views you will be presented with a popup menu which allows you to configure each view in many different ways, including but not limited to maximizing it, changing projections, etc. There is also a "Reset View" option here which is helpful if you have totally lost your way and can't see anything anymore [:D]

In general you navigate around each view as follows:

To pan hold down the middle mouse button (wheel) or the control key + drag the mouse
To zoom in/out either use the mouse wheel or hold down the shift key + drag the mouse
To rotate the *3D view* only, hold down the left mouse button and drag.
The right mouse button brings up the context menu.

At the top of the screen is the menu bar, to the right is the tools panel which has several tabs you can choose from. Each tab opens a new panel which normally has sub options and we will explore these later.

And as always the origin marker is shown in every view for your reference.

[Stridor]

The next step is to make our mesh from the corrected heightmap which we last edited in our graphics editor.

From the menu bar select Tools->Height Map Generator. This brings up the heightmap gen dialog. Next click on "Load Height Map" from the Files box and load up the heightmap you made earlier (in Part #1). It should look like the SS below. Notice how in properties it identifies the width/height as 65x65 which is good.

Press OK and your mesh will be made for you. Neato!

[Stridor]

Ok if it all went well you should be greeted with the view in the SS below.

But hey what is this nasty lip on the right and bottom edge?

Well on closer inspection you will see that MS3D has made a 66x66 vertex mesh instead of the 65x65 (64x64 squares) that we were expecting. Why is this?

Beats me [:@], some mix up between vertex and triangle I guess . But not to worry we can fix it no problem.

[Stridor]

Select Model tab in the Tool panel. Then click on Select and in the select options select the Vertex option. Ensure all other check boxes on this screen are cleared.

Ok now in the Top view window click and drag a selection box around the rightmost line of pixels. Hold down shift to include the bottom row of pixels and draw a selection box around those as well. If may be helpful to zoom in or maximize the Top view window (which you can do from the right click context menu) so that you can see the individual vertices more clearly. Now press delete on your keyboard, the mesh will now be correctly sized at 64x64 triangles (65x65 vetices) and those nasty lips will be gone [:)]

EDIT: If you pre-smoothed your height map in photoshop (your bitmap editor) prior to importing into MS3D, after deleting the hard lip, you might notice a tiny "micro" lip left along the right and bottom edges. Yo fix this select those edge vertices again as you did above and do a very small (-0.01 Y) relative move on them. That should be the final fix you need to make.

[Stridor]

Ok next up we need to move the map so that the origin is located at the top left corner of the map as seen from the Top view.

To do this draw a selection box all the way around the ground mesh so that *all* the mesh is selected.

The in the tools panel select the Model tab, then in tools->Move In the move options type 32 (= 1/2 64) into both the X and Z boxes. Ensure Y = 0.0. Make sure all the X,Y,Z buttons are activated and ensure that the move mode is set to Relative (this is selectable from the drop down box). Then press the move button and the mesh will shift so that the top left corner is perfectly centered over the origin (see below)

MS3D has a good undo system, so that if you ever make a mistake simply select Edit->Undo (= Ctrl+Z) from the menu bar. Just to be safe you should save your work frequently.

[Stridor]

Next up we are going to use the map.bmp that we worked on in part #1 as a background image to help with calibrating the river bed/roads.

To do this make sure that you unselect the move option in tools, otherwise unwanted mouse movements will move your mesh. Better still deslect the selected mesh from above. Now in the Top view window (the view we have been working in) right click and select background image. A popup box will be displayed. Enter the location of your map.bmp and ensure that you enter in the values as shown below. If you have done it right (your map.bmp needs to be 1000x1000 for it to work) then you will see your map.bmp overlaid by the mesh geometry.

I maximized the top view window for the screen shot to give you a better view.

[Stridor]

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[WhiteOwl]

[:)] Stridor, I see you know your technical writing!

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: WhiteOwl

[:)] Stridor, I see you know your technical writing!

Yep

[Stridor]

Ok where were we? Oh yes sea level.

What we need to do now is to determine a reference point for our map so we can scale the Y axis appropriately. As we have a river we can use "sea level" as our reference point.

To do this select Plane from out tools pane. Make sure HDiv and VDiv are set to 1, then in the Top view window drag out a plane which completely covers the river system.

[Stridor]

With the water level "plane" selected, press the move option button, ensure that the X and Z axis options are deselected in the move option box. Ensure that the Y axis is active and then put a little positive number (0.1 or even less) if you want to move the water table up or a small negative number (-0.1) if you want to move the water table down. Make sure that relative movement is selected and then repeatedly push the move button.

This will move the water table up (or down) to the desired level. In this case I wanted a little land bridge at the southern end of the map where vehicles could ford the river, so I adjusted it to my liking.

If you look at the Right View now you can see the relative water level or sea level, this will help us scale the rest of the map in the next section.

[Stridor]

Before I do final Y axis scaling I want to talk a little about problems caused by a disconnect between the information stored in the map.bmp which the PCK engine uses to "see" terrain, and the actual mesh itself which the smelly humans will use to "see" the terrain. The problem in this instance is water.

The plan is to use the "river plane" as a separate water mesh which will have a water texture and essentially sit on top of the ground texture. Ground under the river plane will be underwater! This is how the humans will see and recognize underwater.

The PCK engine however sees "underwater" as that nice blue pixel river in the map.bmp. So it is vitally important that the river and ground mesh matches to the bitmap that I have painted otherwise it if doesn't, in game units may do some apparently odd looking things. Like move underwater, or refuse to move near to the river because the AI thinks it is already underwater!

The issue is how do we get these two different things to match up?

Well there are two solutions. The first is easy, if a bit of a cop out. This is the solution I will show here [:D]. I don't want to make the more elegant but also more technically demanding solution the default one for first time map builders. For those of you who are keen to see a better solution, there is a nice tutorial on how to use MS3D to build 3D golf courses which can be found here http://www.golf-simulators.com/3d_model_design_tutorial.htm That tutorial will teach you how to increase mesh polygon details in places where you need it, like, surprise, river beds. The techniques taught in that tutorial will also help when you want to install defensive trenches into your maps in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible.

[Stridor]

To be continued ...

[benpark]

This is fantastic stuff. Thanks for doing it.

Two things I did differently, that still got me results somehow (but not recommended)-

I resized my height map in Photoshop for input to MS, rather than clipping the extra vertex on the sides. I'm not sure if that will cause headaches down the road, but it was easy enough. I also input the heightmap through the "Tools:Terrain Generator", and selected my .bmp there. There is also a "randomise" selection for those willing to try something...unorthodox.

[Stridor]

I am under some time pressure ATM so will continue this as I get the chance [:(]

Ok, where was I ???

Oh yeah, map.bmp, mesh match-us.

Look at the SS below. This is from the "Top View" which has been maximized and zoomed in to get a better look. The "Grid" which is overlaying the map.bmp is the actual mesh triangles. Notice how the river / mud transition is not aligned to a mesh boundary? (shown). This is not normally a problem for other terrain junctions, and is probably not a *major* problem for water / mud transitions either, but what I have elected to do is to use this "Top View" screen capture as an overlay in photoshop so that I can now redo my map.bmp such that all the "water" pixels are now aligned to the mesh boundaries. To do this I did a "Prt Scr" screen grab of the top view (at full resolution) pasted it onto one of my working layers for the map.bmp project, decreased the opacity so that I could "see through it" and then just painted my new river pixels so that they now are aligned to the mesh boundaries. Simple! [;)]

What this means is that I will be able to go back into MS3D, select just those "water" faces and then drop them below sea (river) level so that it will be obvious to both the game engine and the human player what is "above" water and what is "below" water. As I indicated in post #13, there are better solutions to this problem which entail subdividing the mesh into smaller sections locally to provide a more natural curve line, but I think I will leave them to a more advanced map making tutorial which will also cover the placement of trenches and map mesh optimization, all of which require some specialized techniques.

[Stridor]

Now it is time to scale our map.

Recall that we have an X extent of 64 units and a Z extent also of 64 units. Later we will be scaling these to the directX equivalent of 1000x1000m. But what about the "height" (Y) axis? To scale this we need to have two known Y points. In this case we will be using the river (sea) level and the height of the tallest hill as our calibration points.

In the "Right" view, move the mouse cursor over the river water level and then record the Y axis coordinate. Next move your mouse over the highest hill top and record that Y value. You can zoom into the view with the mouse wheel (or shift left click drag) to get a more accurate reading.

On my map:

River level Y = 3.582
Hilltop = 12.733

Difference = 12.733 - 3.282 = 9.451

Now all I need to know is how high the real hill was above sea level and then we can scale our Y axis appropriately. In your maps you may have good data on on hill elevations (" eg. Hill 273 ") and should use that. I want to make my hill 50 meters above sea level, so my final scaling value will be:

Y Scaling = 50 meters * 64 mapunits / ( 1000 meters * 9.451 mapunits ) ~ 0.35 (note how the units all cancel out)

So If I scale my Y axis by 0.35 then my map will be in perfect 1: 15.625 (1000/64) scale.

[Stridor]

To do the actual scaling, select the select option in the Tools panel. Then drag a selection box around both the ground mesh and the river plane to ensure they are all selected.

Then choose Scale, scale from the origin, type 0.35 in the Y box and ensure that the Y axis is selected. The Z and X axis can be left at 1.0 = no change or unselected as you like. Press the scale button and you will see your creation shrink in front of you. Note, you may have been so used to its original mountainous contours you will become slightly surprised at how flat it now looks. Don't worry, what you are looking at right now is probably far more accurate than the good looking (but unrealistic) Himalayas you were working with before [;)]

[Stridor]

Now it is time to give our map some of those nice "rock walls" you see at the edge of the map in the game. These are not totally necessary, but help prevent you from looking under the map when you zoom out. They also finish off the map nicely and add a professional touch.

To do this Select the Groups tab from the tool panel. You will see a selection box with the name of each mesh collection (group) which is currently being worked on in the MS3D. Currently there will be 2 meshes

Terrain <No Material> - This is our ground mesh
Plane01 <No Material> - this is our "river" mesh

The "<No Material>" means that no texture has been applied to the mesh yet. We will come to adding textures in a moment. Below the group selection box are the group orders buttons and smoothing groups. You can ignore the Smoothing groups for now, but the group order buttons are useful. With Plane01 selected Type a new meaningful name in the Rename box (something like "River") and press Rename. Then press Hide and the river will disappear for the moment.

Now go back to the Model tab and click on select. As you did in the start of this tutorial draw a selection box around each of the edge vertices of the mesh. Hold shift down to add each new edge in turn. Next from the menu bar select Vertex->Extrude Edges... and you will be presented with a dialog box as shown below. Set the options identical to those shown in the screen shot and press Ok. You should see your mesh now has a little skirt [;)]

[Stridor]

Next we are going to "regroup" the wall faces as a separate mesh. To do this go to select mode. Select Faces and ensure the "by vertex" checkbox is checked. Then draw a selection box around the bottom most vertices of the wall in the Right view mode. This will select only the wall faces.