Ok, I have begun work on making terrain. (1st step in RO map) ....

and I do this from the UDN's terrain tutorial

Then open the Texture Browser and select the texture you want to use for your terrain, for example grass or mud. Go back to the Terrain Editing Window and this time select the Layers tab, and select the upper layer. Press the New... button there to create a new layer, again leave the package at MyLevel, and click OK. This time, an AlphaMap texture was created and the terrain got a new layer.

And I do, but it says it cant create whatever its supposed to.... and I am very confused and agrivated! :cry:

come on, Burnside... you know the drill. Check the forums first. :P

I brought up this point with Red yesterday right here

Bahh, now the viewports are white. Gotta reboote! hehe

And the post had nothing to do with my problem

No updates on the terrain yet. Been working with it for an hour or so and still no success. The closest I came was to make a large box and put a smaller box inside and was able to get the terrain entitie in the map. I did get the textures to go though. You have to name all three boxes where it says MyLevel, group etc. Still looking at it. I will do this or die. They make it sound so easy. It doesn's say one brush inside another brush.
Tried importing from terredit but nothing happened when I imported the file. It saw it but that is as far as it went. Be patient. :casanova:

I can't try this right now. Maybe someone else can. Here is what I found this a.m.


Note: Use the UDN terrain tutorial for pictures and reference. That is the most correct form of the tutorial if not a bit user unfriedly.

Part A: Setting Up the map.
I will go through real quick here since people should be familiar with this.
For this make a cube large which is large enough to fit the map. If it is an open aired map plan on making a bigger cube since you wont want your rocket hitting the sky. Subtract the cube and apply some non used texture to the walls. Select all the walls and set fake backdrop and unlit in the property. Make a skybox and you should be set.

Part B: Setting up the ZoneInfo
Navigate through the actor browser till you come to Actor Browser->Info->ZoneInfo. Add the zoneinfo somewhere in the middle of the map. Open ZoneInfo properties and in ZoneInfo set bTerrainZone to True. Also give a nonzero value to ZoneLight->AmbientBrightness so that you can see the terrain. I give 128 normally. Once that is done you are mostly set.


Part C:Creating the Terrain
Now click on the terrain editor icon and the terrain editor will pop up. Click the new terrain icon at the bottom of the Terrains tab. A window will pop up asking a number of questions. Enter "MyLevel" for package and group names and set the Terrainname to something you like. You can leave the rest alone. Click ok and you should be set. A terrain height map texture will be created in MyLevel->MyLevel. This will be created by default in G16 format so you need not worry. You should see a terrain (hills) icon pop up on the middle of the cube now.

For those who prefer using heightmap do the following.
Create a grayscale (8 bit) 256x256 image in painshop pro of photoshop. Set background color to grey and start coloring in contours. Once done save it as a bmp and import it into the MyLevel->MyLevel group. Remeber to uncheck "generate mip-map". Once done close the terrain editor and open the TerrainInfo properties. Navigate to TerrainInfo->TerrainMap . Choose the imported texture and click on use. Now the terrain will use 8 bit textures which is not what you want. So Open up the terrain editor again and right click on the texture icon in the terrain tab and select conver to G16. Once that is done you are set.

Part D: Creating layers
Go to the layers tab. Select a texture for the layer. Click on new. Enter the same Package and Group name you want And also the Layer name you want. Now comes the important part. There is a field called Alphafill. Do the following. The R,G and B are set to 0. Now drag the sliders across and set them to 255 each. Leave the Alpha at 0. Once that is done click done and the terrain is added. You should be able to see the terrain now. Previously the problem was the AlphaFill had a value of 0 everywhere which created a problem and people who used the UDN tut (which is the right way) couldnt see the terrain. Before adding other layers do whatever touch up/modelling work you need to do on the terrain. Once that is done add as many layers as you want. But make sure that the value of Alphafill of these new layers is 0 in R,G,B i.e. black.
BTW the UScale and Vscale scale the textures. So if the terrain is big the you can use that.


Part E: Editing layers
This is the process where you modify the alpha map of the layers. Select the layer you want to modify the alpha map of in the layers tab. Dont modify the map for layer0. After that select the appropriate tool and start painting as mentioned in the UDN tutorial to modify the alpha map. You can create some really cool stuff using this.

If you somehow loost the terrain and cant seem to get it back do the following -
Once you create a terrain initially export the default alpha map into tga. If you run into the above issue reimport the map. Select the imported texture, right click on the layer and select use the selected alpha map from the pop-up menu.

After this you should be done. I will add how to add decolayers a bit later. Post your tips/suggestions at the bottom and I will modify the above appropriately.

One more thing is DO NOT follow the leveldesigner method since it says "For the AlphaMap of Layer 0, it should be a pure white, 256 color (8-bit) image. Import it into MyLevel as you did with the HeightMap with no compression. Assign it to the AlphaMap property."
This is INCORRECT. The alpha map is a RGBA8 image. You can get into some serious issues when doing multi layer editing if you follow that. Use the above method. Its much safer.

Additional Troubleshooting

No matter what I do my terrain doesnt show up
This may be due to a number of different reasons. Go through the following step by step. Remember there is a actor browser for quickly locating actors.
1. Search for the zoneinfo of the map and make sure that bTerrainZone is set to true. Also make sure the ambient brightness for the zone is set to a not zero value.
2. Search for TerrainInfo actor and make sure its there.
3. Not open up the terrain editor and make sure the terrain info is there in the Terrain tab and the layers you added in the layer tab.
4. Make sure that for atleast one layer you set the value of Alphafill to R:255 G:255 B:255 and A:0. This is the main reason why terrain doesnt show.
The terrain should show if the above is done properly.

I added the terrain and it shows but I am not able to use the terrain editing tools to edit it
Again a step by step checklist.
1. Open up the terrrain editor and make sure the terrain texture type is G16. If not right click and convert it to G16 format.
2. Make sure you have selected the terrain you want to edit in the terrain editor.

This is the thread I got the other info from. Can't wait to try this evening.

www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=267a6d6c465c1e69700a1a4e28354951&threadid=216389&pagenumber=1

AHHAAH!

RO's co-leader just gave me this link! hehe, thanx anyways red! ......terrain..... biggest topic in mapping... flat land is so... the 90's... lol

I finally got it to do something different. It put a flat terrain at the level of the little terrain icon. At least I am making some friggin progress today. Won't be long and maybe we can be making mountains. lol Later

hehe, cool. So.. was everyone stuck on the part of which "Rebuild All" was the option to do from the tutorial on UDN? ....cause, I couldn't get past that has it didnt make a flat "brush"........ hehe.

been playing with the terrain and came accross a few things that I thought should be mentioned.

I tried to open the last map that I had working with the terrain... and the terrain was gone. I was so confused and after about an hour of fiddling, I gave up and closed the program. Upon closing, it asked me to save myLevel texture set. Aha!.. that was the problem, I reopened the editor and there was my terrain. It all had to do with the myLevel texture set not really being there.

Once I solved that problem, I could go in and add even my bitmap terrain which worked great.



the black/white image is the bitmap I created for the terrain bmp.

some other good things to know: right click your terrain and align it to the floor. Do the same with your player start so that they are both low to the floor.

Your terrains Z axis point I think is at the middle gray level. White is below the center of the terrain while black is above it. This is important because terrain that has been aligned with your floor.. the white area will be below the floor.

That's all I got for now.