Terrain Tutorial

I decided to make another part, just as an example more than anything but also I show how you can make overhanging cliffs. First of all, sorry about the large images, these wireframe screenshots don't compress well at all as jpgs, and if I compress them any more they look absoloutly horrible (they are already on high compression :\)

I'm going to make a little sandy cove. First of all, I've just planned it out using the top view.

I started raising the vertecies that will form the cliff, but after doing a few I got tired of dragging them all so far. You can see the ones circled in yellow. Wouldn't it be nice to move them all up at once so I don't have to drag them as far all the time?

Go into vertex edit mode. Hold down Ctrl+Alt in the top view and drag over those vertecies. You won't be able to get all the ones you want in just one go, so once you've selected some, hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift and drag out more boxes to select more vertecies. Be carefull not to click on the actual brush otherwise you will lose your selection (ghey bug).

In the 3D View, hold down Ctrl and drag up with both mouse buttons to move the selected vertecies roughly up to the right height.
That just reduces the amount of dragging you have to do all the time, fight that RSI!

Now we can create an overhang in the cliff. It is VITALLY IMPORTANT that you don't do this step until you've moved the cliff vertecies up a bit, otherwise when you move them so that they overlap the lower vertecies the editor will crash! Once you have some height difference then you are safe to do what you want.
Here you can see the yellow line represents the base of the cliff and the blue line represents the top (well, it's actually about half way up because I'm gonna move the vertecies behind that line in a bit)
Notice how the blue and yellow lines overlap in the top view. If you had tried this before moving any vertecies vertically then the editor would have just crashed straight away.

I've finished off doing the cliffs now (The overhang is still there on the right). Now I need to do the sand as the beach is still flat.

Now, when the sea washes up against the sand, it pushes the sand in the middle of the cove further back than at the edges so I've made some sort of contour lines in the top view to reflect this (will make it easier to make a smoother beach). Notice it's important to think logically when making a terrain. You've gotta think if everything makes sense. It wouldn't really make sense to have a stream running along the top of a cliff, if would be running along at the bottom (sounds like a stupid mistake to make but people still do things like this).
Anyways, I got distracted, back to the beach!

Now I'm just going to do a LOT more vertex editing to finish off the sand. A beach is something that is hard to do because it is vital that the sand is as smooth as possible. If it's not perfectly smooth then it will completly ruin the effect. As you can probably tell I spent ages trying to get it just right. It looks like a complete mess but when you explore it in the 3D view it looks quite smooth.
Btw, I definatly needed grid size 32 here, although I used 64 for all the other steps. (Even after that complete mess of a terrain I still got no bsp errors by the end which I am quite impressed by!)

The shape of the terrain is done so all that needs to be done is texturing (and lighting of course). The texture in the next screenshot is not the actual one I am using. I am only showing this pic to demonstrate how sometimes the Align to wall buttons are completly useless and how with certain textures you HAVE to use the rotate->Align to floor trick!

After stealing a rock texture from UT2003 (The UT ones suck too much) and aligning it properly. It's quite high poly, but even with so much bsp horribleness the node count is still pretty low. And ingame you wouldn't be able to walk out to sea anyways so polys wouldn't really go over 130 for the terrain (that leave about 120 polys to spare for buildings and other deco)

Now, because of the way the beach is shaped, when I add the sheet for the sea it should look nice the way it indents in the middle of the cove (ingame shot with lighting)

Another pic. I didn't bother doing a skybox, so good luck trying to get a decent Sea<->Skybox transition (if that is at all possible O_o)

All done! The map DM-BeachTut is included with this tutorial. You will want to copy that to your UT\Maps directory if you want to view it. Usual stuff applies, please do not use this level as a base for other levels etc etc. I had a vague idea on how to get the skybox to merge with the sea, though I couldn't be bothered to build an actual skybox! If anyone manages something like that then let me know!

Go back to tutorial index

Go back to TEH LAZY MAPPING PAEG!!!1