| Issue with doing animated maps |
 Jock |
Had a look at that cheers.
Main issue is that all the tutorials i see are all about making brand new landscapes rather than mimicing one from a map. Though they do give a few ideas.
The main issue i have come across so far is that the best way to create the land is displacement maps but of course it help if it all goes one way, so hills but no indents like rivers. If a map like this one, contains 2 then it becomes more complex as i will have to make the background grey i suppose rather than white.
Also the quad patch takes up a hell of a lot of my comp power if i crank up the segments. Therefore i dont have many to play with, so cant really do anything like soft selection, to much accuracy.
Lastly, i also tried shapemerge to get the river but once i do that the patch loses its properties it would seem so units etc cant deform over it.
Not really a question as im working through it atm but more of an update i suppose.
read 670 times
9/26/2007 7:00:30 AM (last edit: 9/26/2007 7:00:30 AM)
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| mrgrotey |
Yeah you need to start with a quad patch a lot less 'high poly' than you need as the displacement add tons more anyway, there are a couple of ways you could do the rivers.
1. have the rivers black on the displacement map, the ground mid grey and the hills white, this will leave the rivers where they are and raise the ground up around them.
2. Have a hill map on mapping channel 1 (with black ground and white hills) and have a river map on mapping channel 2 (with black ground a white river) and give the displacement a negative value. this will leave the ground where it is and sink the rivers down, although this may increase the mesh even more as it involves adding 2 displacement modifiers. ill have a quick go myself, im curious.
read 665 times
9/26/2007 7:10:27 AM (last edit: 9/26/2007 7:11:35 AM)
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| Jock |
What i considered was, have the quad patch only do hills from a displacement map.
Then create a normal plance, which replicates the hills, becasue this would be far easier to modify then when it comes time to render, the plane site on the patch and the patch is told not to render.
This way the units would still move correctly (over hills anyway) and i would have a far easier object to modify.
read 660 times
9/26/2007 7:17:26 AM (last edit: 9/26/2007 7:17:45 AM)
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| mrgrotey |
you mean only have the hills on the quad patch and make an editable poly plane to do the hills AND rivers? yeah that would work, as long as the boxes dont move down into the rivers at any point.
[edit] oh and i was getting confused its not the displacement modifier that addes poly to the patch its the patch deform mod, so having 2 displacement mods wont affect the polycount. and it does work with 2 different mapping channels just tested it :)
read 656 times
9/26/2007 7:23:49 AM (last edit: 9/26/2007 7:26:42 AM)
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| Jock |
Ah i didnt even consider you could use two different displace modifiers. I even thought about the principle (having 2 diff maps) but couldnt see a way round it as the modifier only allows 1. Didnt think of just adding two modifiers.
For a proper job so that the rivers work too i think thats the way forward.
read 650 times
9/26/2007 7:29:56 AM (last edit: 9/26/2007 7:29:56 AM)
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| mrgrotey |
jus remember to make the rivers white like the hills (on a separate map) and give the mod a negative value, if you do a grey map and black rivers (with a +ve value) then the ground will move up over the rivers and you dont really want that if things are in place
read 647 times
9/26/2007 7:31:49 AM (last edit: 9/26/2007 7:32:31 AM)
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| Jock |
One issue ive found by doing this project is that if you subdivide any of your patch, the patch deform tool no longer works.
I subdivided it as you can see to make the creek look a lot nicer, without bumping the main patch up in segments. But then i noticed everything refers to the quad patch as an illegal patch and the deform no longer works.
Just in case anyones interested :)
read 641 times
9/26/2007 10:16:31 AM (last edit: 9/26/2007 10:16:31 AM)
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| Jock |
Last question i promise.
I have worked out how to get exactly what i want with the fences, and basically i draw splines, then divide the segments,extrude, then use a lattice modifier.
I just wondered though if theres an easier way to do it becasue atm i need to divide every segment and eyeball how many i should use so as to provide the struts for the fence.
Is there an easier, more manageable way to split a spline segment into more vertices.
Dont know if how clear the above is so heres a pic if it helps.
read 625 times
9/27/2007 5:21:20 AM (last edit: 9/27/2007 5:21:20 AM)
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| mrgrotey |
you can use a 'normalise spline' modifier, this splits the spline up into equal segments
read 623 times
9/27/2007 5:27:58 AM (last edit: 9/27/2007 5:30:14 AM)
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| Jock |
Cheers!
read 619 times
9/27/2007 5:31:54 AM (last edit: 9/27/2007 5:31:54 AM)
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| mrgrotey |
also you might want to look into the railing AEC object, it lets you pic a spline as a path and if you click the yellowish box next to 'fencing' you can choose the amount of struts .etc you will need to check the 'respect corners' box too.
once you set the first fence up it will remeber the settings every other railing you do after.
very quick after the first one is set up and has amny more options that using a lattice mod
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9/27/2007 5:42:08 AM (last edit: 9/27/2007 5:42:48 AM)
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| Jock |
Even better, thanks.
read 613 times
9/27/2007 5:50:07 AM (last edit: 9/27/2007 5:50:07 AM)
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| markoid |
I was reading through the first page Grotey and when it comes to animating the box,
you said you can animate the box at element level in the editable poly subobject selection (the
editpoly modifier doesnt work this way for some reason, must be the base objects element. once
you animate the element moving then the patch deform mod will take that movement into
account... to save all that palava, can't one just use the patch deform WSM? Then the box will animate independently.
WEBSITE
read 602 times
9/27/2007 7:33:59 AM (last edit: 9/27/2007 7:33:59 AM)
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| mrgrotey |
So you can! clever markoid :)
Jock do that instead, its at the top of the modifiers list
first time i ever used patchs so im not very educated with them
[edit] Ooo thats opened my eyes to the Path Deform Binding WSM, sooo much better than the path deform modifier, it lets you move the object to the path instead of making up its own one!!! at laaaaast! path deforms made easy :) cheers markoid, an unintentional help :)
read 597 times
9/27/2007 7:40:29 AM (last edit: 9/27/2007 7:43:56 AM)
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| Jock |
Yeah thats the one ive been using albeit kind of by accident.
Must admit for what was meant to be a little project its abit more challenging than i first expected. Not too sure how good the final things going to look though.
read 593 times
9/27/2007 7:48:00 AM (last edit: 9/27/2007 7:48:00 AM)
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