In defense of Terra Edit
About a month ago, I read a great tutorial by Silver Ibex, about using Terragen for Unreal terrain building. You also need 3D Studio Max, or Milkshape and TrueSpace, to get an ASE file which can be converted to an Unreal brush (using the ASE to T3D converter).
If you want something quick and dirty, there's always Terra Edit. All you need is an 8-bit, grayscale image (topographic map), import it into Terra Edit, smooth it out, tweak, then export as .t3d . Then it's ready for use in Unrealed.
Sample topographic map
Use your favorite graphics program (I use Photoshop) to grayscale it and save as an 8-bit, .bmp file. The image must be 256 x 256 pixels. Terra Edit will tell you if your image format is not correct. The lighter areas represent higher elevation, and the darker areas represent lower elevation. So you may need to inverse your image before importing into Terra Edit.
Jaspos' great Terra Edit tutorial
He recommends using a grid scale of 64, to reduce the number of faces (polys). The smaller the grid scale , the more faces you end up with, raising the poly count. But I'm going to try my luck with 32.
Download Terra Edit (small .exe file, needs no installation)
One more tip: when you import the brush into Unrealed, it's going to be quite small. You can right-click on the brush, to view its Properties. Go to Brush > MainScale > Scale, and change the X, Y and Z scale. To get nice, smooth terrain, make the X and Y really large (like 32) and increase the Z by only 4. Experiment a bit, to see what looks nice in-game.
If you want something quick and dirty, there's always Terra Edit. All you need is an 8-bit, grayscale image (topographic map), import it into Terra Edit, smooth it out, tweak, then export as .t3d . Then it's ready for use in Unrealed.
Sample topographic map
Use your favorite graphics program (I use Photoshop) to grayscale it and save as an 8-bit, .bmp file. The image must be 256 x 256 pixels. Terra Edit will tell you if your image format is not correct. The lighter areas represent higher elevation, and the darker areas represent lower elevation. So you may need to inverse your image before importing into Terra Edit.
Jaspos' great Terra Edit tutorial
He recommends using a grid scale of 64, to reduce the number of faces (polys). The smaller the grid scale , the more faces you end up with, raising the poly count. But I'm going to try my luck with 32.
Download Terra Edit (small .exe file, needs no installation)
One more tip: when you import the brush into Unrealed, it's going to be quite small. You can right-click on the brush, to view its Properties. Go to Brush > MainScale > Scale, and change the X, Y and Z scale. To get nice, smooth terrain, make the X and Y really large (like 32) and increase the Z by only 4. Experiment a bit, to see what looks nice in-game.
posted by [DHR]smeerkat at 1:04 PM
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