Stridors Map tutorial #2 question

[rickier65]

I'ver been slowly going through your tutorials. I'm currently teaching myself blender and I'm going through your tutorial as I learn. Right now I'm up to post 16 in your tutorial number 2. But I'm unclear what I need to do in that post (I aslo read further down and saw some more info - but it still wasn't clear.

So let me see if I can rephrase it -- ONce I have the river plane set at the correct level (just enough to have the ford area about right). Then I need to do a screen shot from the top view and then go back into GIMP (or other paint program), and recolor the river to match the river where the plane intercepts the bank?

Thanks!
Rick

[Stridor]

Yes, you can do this in scenedit as well but doing it externally may be easier.

Looks good Rick, you taking to blender, maybe I should climb the learning curve as well, but given that I have all the tools anyway ...

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Yes, you can do this in scenedit as well but doing it externally may be easier.

Looks good Rick, you taking to blender, maybe I should climb the learning curve as well, but given that I have all the tools anyway ...

Ok - thanks - I'll carry on then. Stillnot sure how it will turn out. I'm only slowly figuring it out -and still have a ways to go before I can be sure it will work. And I'm still not sure I understand what I'm doing - just sort of stumbling along.

Rick

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Rick
Ok - thanks - I'll carry on then. Stillnot sure how it will turn out. I'm only slowly figuring it out -and still have a ways to go before I can be sure it will work. And I'm still not sure I understand what I'm doing - just sort of stumbling along.

Nice work Rick!

I know how you feel ... the stumbling along part ... [:)].

Rob

[rickier65]

Well - still struggling along with Blender and Stridors map Tutorial number 2. I've extruded the edges for the walls. Then tried to group the four walls - I don't think I ever accomplished that, though I'm not sure - I might have. I have a group called Wall, but I haven't been able to select it, so not sure it's really there. May have to play with that. But i decided to move along.

When creating the walls, found that my river plane stuck out beyond the boundaries of the terrian mesh, so had to go in and scale it back. When I extruded walls for terrain, I apparently also extruded walls for the river plan as well, so it kinda sits on a rectangular base now.

Tried to find an equivalent of the flatten tool to even up the edges of the walls. Never found one. So it was a manual process of flattening the bottom of the wall and making sure it was below the bottom of the river bed. Tried using snap select to grid, but that didn't really help - snapped to grid, but not to a fixed plane, just to the nearest grid point.


But I'll keep trying this, and I want to get to the point of textruing and exporting to see if any of this is actually working. IF it does I'll come back and try to find an easier way to do this wall stuff in Blender -

Rick

[rickier65]

Well - I was able to take a stickman I created in Blender with one of the Blender tutorials and got it to show up on an existing map. But I'm totally lost when it comes to applying textures to the terrain grid I posted earlier.

I'm not able to apply any of the textures - they don't show up. While I can create the walls, and even smooth out the bottom - I'm not able to separate them into their own group. I can't get them to take any texture.

I can't get the stream textrue to apply to the river plane.

I've gone through about 5 different terrain mapping tutroials online (mostly dealing with Quake and random terrain it seems like).

I might check out MS3D again - or maybe I"ll post some questions in some Blender forums.

And I may start over from scratch testing each step.

I"ve got about three pages of notes - I think maybe I'll start from scratch and see what I end up with.

So - no joy here, back to the drawing board as they say.

Rick

[Plodder]

I've been playing with blender mucking around with the COTA maps, I managed to get the textures showing by removing the link to the height map and linking to a new image.(just like you did with the height map) It wouldn't accept dds though, had to be a bmp,tga,jpg or png. Also change to shaded view for them to show up.

[rickier65]

Hey - Thanks! I've started over from scratch - found a few easier ways to do a couple of things. I'm going to try a couple of things and see if I can get a plain map into PCK. Then I'll come back and try a few other things -

And I've been trying to use .dds files for texture.

Thanks!
Rick

[rickier65]

Well - small update on Blender with Terrain -

I startedover again using heightmap - I followed though Stridors tutorial but left out anything to do with water or walls or bridge just the basic terrain - just trying to see if I could get a directx grid from Blender into PC:K

Then I edited the scene.xml so it didn't try to do anything with wall or river or bridge

USed Motomouse setting (thought I experimented with different setttings). I scaled the Blender file before exporting. ( I tried both scaled and unscaled).


Finally got the terrain to show up. It didn't have the texture from blender - it had a dirty green texture. It was also oreinted wrong. (up and down were ok, but left-right and top bottom were reversed). Tried changing setting in exporter but that didn't help. Other than turning the image totally dark. I went into sceneedit and properties on the lighting and changed from -15 y to + 15Y and got the dirty green back.

But the terrain looks pretty bad. I need to do some more messing around. I'm still not sure of the scale.

Oh and I was able to get .dds textures applied in blender, but they wouldn't render correctly. BUT they rendered ok using the render preview window. Strange.

I've just about given up a few times now - and I may still give it up. But for now I have a few more things to try. (at some point I may have to download MS3D just to see what it looks like when I do it correctly).

In the meantime, I may try checking out the scaling - I guess I need to build scenario for that -- .

I'm still just stumbling around here - if Moto finishes his motorcycles - he might step back and take a look at the maps - seeing what he did with his motor cycle, I suspect this stuff would be a pretty simple for him to sort out.

well - here's where I am but still a ways to go:


Rick

[Stridor]

Rick,

Despite all the difficulies you *are* getting there, slowly.

It would be great if MM could do some simple map tutorials in blender.

If you want to get really good at modelling and expand your horizons stick with blender.

If all you want to do is PCK stuff easily, shy don't you download the time demo of MS3D and give it a go, you don't really have anything to loose and you might find that if you want to keep it the $35 is a small price to pay to avoid all the agro.

Just some ideas

Regards

S.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Rick,

Despite all the difficulies you *are* getting there, slowly.

It would be great if MM could do some simple map tutorials in blender.

If you want to get really good at modelling and expand your horizons stick with blender.

If all you want to do is PCK stuff easily, shy don't you download the time demo of MS3D and give it a go, you don't really have anything to loose and you might find that if you want to keep it the $35 is a small price to pay to avoid all the agro.

Just some ideas

Regards

S.

Stridor,

In the end, I may just do that - at this point I'm still being stubborn. (some might say bull-headed). I may try out the 30day trial just to see how much easier it is.

After reading through your animation tutorial, and Motomouses thread, and seeing Robs thread I doubt very much if I get into modelling anything other than making maps. I read though those threads and pretty much had no idea what was going on. But maps and terrain - those I understand ( well usually). I mean I used to work with topo maps all the time so I ought to be able to sort that stuff out eventually. If not with Blender then with MS3D.

Rick

[rickier65]

Update using Blender-

Ok - started over from scratch (not sure how many times I've started over). Decided to use a little more deliberate approach.

After scaling and checking different settings, but within Blender and in the Exporter I have the following

In Blender - scale factor 200, for x,y,z,
- set location for origin at x=200, y=200, z=0

in Exporter:

Flipped Norm - not flipped
Y axis up
Flip Z - left handed system
Export sel
Bl.normals, no recalc, no smooth

Result was terrain grid 1000 GSU x 1000 GSU (well maybe 1000 x 998) with zero GSU at lower left corner.

Also orientation came out correctly.

However, while I can load in scene edit, when i try to load a test scenario, game engine closes and immediately returns to Matrix menu.

Also, the colo_terrain.x is consistently 1,351 KB, no matter what I do (ie, scaling doesnt effect this, deleting textures doesnt effect this. I don't know if this is a problem or not, but it might be since I see other standard maps with terrain bases at 300-400 Kb.

I need to go back and work on river plain and walls now, as well as the texturing of the terrain.

I'm not sure why these settings don't match up with what Motomouse uses, but I tried his setting first and kept getting wrong map orientation.

Rick

[Stridor]

Rick,

Don't worry about the large file size. I assume that blender exports X in text mode (so you can load it up in notepad and hand edit it if you wanted) rather than binary (which you can't but is smaller). Most of the PCK X exports are in binary to save disk space for you. There muct be a binary switch in the blender exporter somewhere.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Rick,

Don't worry about the large file size. I assume that blender exports X in text mode (so you can load it up in notepad and hand edit it if you wanted) rather than binary (which you can't but is smaller). Most of the PCK X exports are in binary to save disk space for you. There muct be a binary switch in the blender exporter somewhere.

Yes they are in text mode and look to be human readable. I will look around at some point for a binary switch.

Thanks!
Rick

[rickier65]

Well after couple of days of trial and erro, finally got river plane. NOt sure what took so long - seemed straight forward once I got it. I did have a few trials where the plane was there but showed pure white texture instaead of assigned texture, and kept popping in and out.

But started over and seemed to work ok.

Next up is the walls.

Last couple of trials though were back and forth trying to fine-tune the height of the water plane. Finally decided to go into Scene edit and adjust it there. IS that ok to do or will it cause problems elsewhere down the road?

See pic.

Thanks!

Rick

[Stridor]

Rick,

You can adjust it in scenedit just fine. That is a good tip as well.

[Stridor]

double post