The new textures and transition

[kanttori]

Some instructions to the new Terrain Editor update. I hope this is helpfull to the old and new map makers.

There are now ovly00XX.bmp and ovly00XX_a.bmp files that are almost the same as the plb000X.bmp and plb000X_a.bmp files were earlier.

Early there were six (plb0001_a.bmp - plb0006_a.bmp) black and white transition textures, now there are four more (but the new names) because of the new river/lakes textures.

There are also 10 totally new textures from where you pick the transitions. Before this update the transitions were taken from the first sub texture terrr000X.bmp.

THE OLD TRANSITION TEXTURES (BUT THE NEW NAMES)





GRASS transitions (look above):
ovly0001.bmp is the 256 -colour source texture which you use when you create transitions.
ovly0001_a.bmp is the b/w alpha texture. White is shown, black is not visible from the source texture.

SWAMP transitions:
ovly0002.bmp
ovly0002_a.bmp

FARM transitions:
ovly0003.bmp
ovly0003_a.bmp

ROCK transitions:
ovly0004.bmp
ovly0004_a.bmp

FOREST transitions:
ovly0005.bmp
ovly0005_a.bmp

SNOW transitions:
ovly0006.bmp
ovly0006_a.bmp

THE NEW TRANSITION TEXTURES:

RIVER1 transitions:
ovly0007.bmp
ovly0007_a.bmp

RIVER2 transitions:
ovly0008.bmp
ovly0008_a.bmp

RIVER3 transitions:
ovly0009.bmp
ovly0009_a.bmp

RIVER4 transitions:
ovly0010.bmp
ovly0010_a.bmp

THE NEW TERRAIN TEXTURES:

RIVER 1



terr0007.bmp (river WE, look above)
terr0107.bmp (river NS)
terr0207.bmp (river SW-NE)
terr0307.bmp (river NW-SE)

RIVER 2
terr0008.bmp (river NW-E)
terr0108.bmp (river W NE)
terr0208.bmp (river W-SE)
terr0308.bmp (river SW-E)

RIVER 3
terr0009.bmp (river N-SE)
terr0109.bmp (river N-SW)
terr0209.bmp (river NW-S)
terr0309.bmp (river NE-S)

RIVER 1
terr0010.bmp (little lakes)
terr0110.bmp (little lakes)
terr0210.bmp (little lakes)
terr0310.bmp (little lakes)

THE NEW COASTLINES ARE:

terr0000.bmp (water, of course old one...)



terr0100.bmp (coastlines N-S, look above)



terr0200.bmp (coastlines W-E, look above)



terr0300.bmp (coastlines "corners", look above)

Notice that the water and coatline textures are 512 x 512 pixels bmp files but they are covering 1 mile x 1 mile area. All the other textures are covering a quarter mile area!

In the water/land "corners" it seems that the TE use both those N-E / S-W (terr0100.bmp and terr0200.bmp) textures and "corner" textures (terr0300.bmp) together.

[kanttori]

Coastlines are build as shown in this picture:

[USRanger]

Thanx Kan.  Some of these questions were already runnin' through my melon.

[Saxman]

I still wish the coastlines weren't so...repetitive. Or at least if you have adjacent tiles with a straight coast the beach didn't end up looking like a bunch of camels in a conga line.

[MotleyCH]

What about the ..well i guess they are swamp textures..but they look like farms. There are about 13 of those combined in the savedtex folder, but you can only pick one of each (farm and swamp).

How do you get those to show in the TE?

[MotleyCH]

I also thought there would be more forest textures to use in this TE, big square blobs are kind of ugly.

[Easyscor]

Originally posted by MotleyCH
What about the ..well i guess they are swamp textures..but they look like farms. There are about 13 of those combined in the savedtex folder, but you can only pick one of each (farm and swamp).

How do you get those to show in the TE?

You came very close to figuring it out. Most of those textures are only 1/2 mile squares in game.
Try this, select a large area of grass or forest in your terrain while under the Terrain tab. Then hit the Randomize button and watch what happens, now you've got it.
So lets say you want to do a gully or ravine, (later you can edit those textures to photo realistic) use the Manual button and you can place individual 1/2 mile sections,  more rocky looking textures in the 1/2 mile x 1/2 mile sections along the steep sides of the gully and more forested or grassy looking textures on the flatter slopes in the bottom. Having really nice looking valleys or gullys is nice but since you have better things to do with your time then setting as many as 2 million tiles, use the Randomize button instead.

I hope that helps.

[MotleyCH]

Thank you sir!

[kanttori]

Here are some repairs and additions to the text I earlier wrote very busy:

RIVER 1
terr0010.bmp (river corner)
terr0110.bmp (river corner)
terr0210.bmp (river corner)
terr0310.bmp (river corner)

Ity means that they are little waterways in the terrain tile corners where river is crossing over the corner from tile to another tile:



Notice, that RIVER textures are 512 x 512 pixels bmp textures but they are covering one squaremile. Normal 512 x 512 terrain textures are covering one quarter mile.  But the transitions are same as with the basic terrain textures: two half mile transitions (from 512 x 512 ovlyXXXX.bmp textures) to the each side of the square mile.

It means that the transitions are not matching as you can see when looking the default river textures with the Terrain Editor. That is because the 512 x 512 river texture is "stretched" over the one square mile Tile.

I have at least two solutions to the river textures:

1) You must make your 512 x 512 source terrain textures (For ex. all your four farm textures) smaller to 256 x 256 textures and use four of them to create one 512 x 512 river texture.

2) You can use also 1024 x 1024 river textures, it works. Then you must not make your 512 x 512 source textures smaller but you still need four of them to cover one mile river texture. It looks much more better, but the maps file size is coming very big with all those 16 x 1 Mb textures.

Notice: When you make these river textures using your custom terrain textures as source material, remember to make some variations to all of them adding and hiding fields, grass, forestes etc. to different places. Then the landscape has not so much repetition.

The biggest work (except for the custom coastlines placing) with the Karelia was the terrain tiles: They are matching ALL together and they have not very much repetition, but the editing and testing was a fool's work...

[NHawk]

I was waiting for my new HD to get here before I DL'd the new TE. But now you have me curious. The river textures were in the last release of the TE, but now I have to see what's different.

[NHawk]

Originally posted by kanttori

It means that the transitions are not matching as you can see when looking the default river textures with the Terrain Editor. That is because the 512 x 512 river texture is "stretched" over the one square mile Tile.

.....

Ok, DL'd and checked textures....

You've got me confused on this statement. I checked River1 and River2 and they ARE still made up of 4 individual 1/2 mile textures. (which if you didn't know all terrain textures are now 512x512, and have been for a few versions of the TE)

Use "Manual" and you can change each quadrant.

The transitions don't match until you terminate the river either with River4, farm or into a body of water (which really needs to be edited to look more like a delta).

[BlauK]

NHawk,
interesting observation

So the "subtype" selection above is just a quick way to select same number for every subtile, but one can actually go manual and select e.g. the river4 small water corner to every corner in that one mile square.

The problem seem to be, that this has not been intentional, since the river parts do not match in the middle if one messes with the manual settings. However, I think this can be used for making more variation to the rivers!

[NHawk]

I just did a quick test terrain and flew over it. The transitions aren't as clean as they look in the TE.



The seams are in the corner where I changed the textures manually in 4 1 mile square grids. So, the textures are manually assigned in 16 1/2 mile grids.

hehe...had to change the references to 1/4 mile to 1/2 mile since that's what they are. 1/4 mile grids would give us 4 across and 4 down not two.

Here's the view in the TW with grid lines removed. The seams show up there.



The same general view with the grid in place...


The matching problem is only in the corner of the 1 mile grids. Everywhere else if you manually set the 1/2 mile textures it matches fine.

[NHawk]

After playing a little more (changing the textures to solid colors) it would seem Kanttori is correct. The rivers ARE one texture, not 4 like the rest of the terrain.

[croduh]

In oe there is now an option to "stretch selected texture to cover whole tile".Meaning 1 x1 mile.