Line moving with character on surface

[TerrainAlien 10]

Im an absolutly beginner and im happy i got my first terrain with some objects ingame. One problem holds me to go to the next step. Which false setting or file is causing this bug? Notice the transparent line which is moving with the character.

http://www11.pic-upload.de/25.05.14/82s44c65gimz.jpg' alt='82s44c65gimz.jpg'>

[Juhansson 1]

Its the edge where clutter starts/stops rendering. Its not that of an eye sore if you put clutter in the ground. Im not sure if that is supposed to show up like that though.

[TerrainAlien 10]

good..at least i know what kind of problem it is. maybe you have to disable clutter somewhere, cause i dont have any. thanks!

[bushlurker 46]

Hard to tell from the image, but I - think - what you're actually talking about is the circular area around the player where you see the closeup ground textures under your feet...

They're visible - directly under your feet, obviously, but also out to a specific distance around the player (as specified in your main config), after which they fade to your Overall Satellite Image...

For this reason, its quite important (and often quite tricky) to make sure that the general colour and tone of the groundtexture you use in - eg: a "sandy" area is basically the same general colour and tone of the equivalent "sandy" areas on your Satellite Layer.

Otherwise the differently-tinted Ground Textures visible area will appear as a "halo" on the ground around the player...

B

[TerrainAlien 10]

ok, guess i will have to ignore that small problem for not, - another problem occured...i can see through the surface at some heights. what could trigger this problem? just for the info, island is:

GridSize: 2048x2048

CellSize: 10x

SatMaskSourceImage: 2048:2048

SatMaskSurfaceMask tiles: 2048x2048

desiredOverlap: set to 0

texturelayer: 10

[bushlurker 46]

desiredOverlap: set to 0

set this to the default value of "16" (you MUST have an overlap)

texturelayer: 10

I assume you mean "10m x 10m" - set it to "40m x 40m"

Remember that, since you've changed the tiling parameters for your Sat & mask layers by doing this, you'll need to RE Generate Layers" on the Mapframe Properties processing tab...

PS... with a 2048x2048 heightmap / 10m cellsize, and only a 2048x2048 Sat & mask, each sat pixel is stretched to cover 10m x 10m in game - that will look.... pretty bad...

I'd suggest a 20480x20480 pixel sat & mask - thats 1 meter/pixel which is considered more or less "standard"...

B

Edited May 25, 2014 by Bushlurker

[TerrainAlien 10]

I tried to export the SAT and MASK in L3DT with 20480x20480, -resulted in a crash of L3DT. Or do you mean setting the preferences in the layer in Visitor? Thought that every layermask must me the same meters, in this case like the heightfield 20480x20480

[m1lkm8n 411]

Thing is your height field is 2048x2048 with ten meter grid cells in between. So that's 20480x20480.

A wise person once explained it like this. you can think of the grid cell as a fishnet laid flat on a surface with the knots in each section representing the vertices of your grid cell (which in your case is every ten meters between them). So you take your heightmap which is 2048x2048 pixels and times that by the grid cell spacing which you choose 10. So that's 20480 pixels.

So in game you now have a 20480x20480 meter terrain.

Sooo. If you choose your original mask/sat image of just 2048pixels that means it gets stretched to overlay in game and every 10 meters in game is now represented by 1 pixel which is very low quality.

BUT...if you make the sat/mask image 20480x20480 that now every meter in game is represented by 1 pixel of your sat/mask. Which is a pretty normal representation.

L3dt *should* generate those images ok. But exporting them may be a bit harder due to l3dts kinda poor memory management system. Try exporting it out as a bmp file or even before you generate select a lower tile size. It won't matter on final export but while generating the image it may be easier on the memory.

[TerrainAlien 10]

Thanks a lot for the info M1lkm8n, island looks great with this texture size. however, somehow the satimage shows errors, guess it has to do with overlap, i remember i solved it with setting the overlap to 0 instead of 16. Now bushlurker says there must be overlay. How can i solve this then and what does overlay exactly?

[bushlurker 46]

Did you remember to do this bit?

texturelayer: 10

I assume you mean "10m x 10m" - set it to "40m x 40m"

B

[TerrainAlien 10]

yep did that. this is the project after generating the layers:

all, the satlayer, heightlayer and masklayer have those preferences now. i had to adjust the mask manually from 2048x2048 to 20480x20480 because L3DT didnt let me resize the masc for export.

one thing i forget was to copy the sat, mask and heightfield into the project folder, did that after i generated the layers. if that matters...

also i did not create a mapframe around the map, but used the first default layer.

at big heights i can see through the surface for some reason, had the problem before.

Edited May 27, 2014 by TerrainAlien

[bushlurker 46]

Hmmmm....

Those look like solid, dependable values - should work OK...

Try turning the texture layer size up another notch - 80x80m will be the next available size, thern recrunch layers > re export wrp > repack and check ingame again....

to copy the sat, mask and heightfield into the project folder, did that after i generated the layers. if that matters...

No need for this at all any more - once you import the sat & mask & heightmap they become part of the project fileset and the originals don't need to be in the project folder at all....

B

[TerrainAlien 10]

Hmmmm....

Those look like solid, dependable values - should work OK...

Try turning the texture layer size up another notch - 80x80m will be the next available size, thern recrunch layers > re export wrp > repack and check ingame again....

No need for this at all any more - once you import the sat & mask & heightmap they become part of the project fileset and the originals don't need to be in the project folder at all....

B

Same problem, only other dimensions. I know that this does not occure if i set the overlap to zero, tested this on my last test project. If that works, is that ok?-if not why not?

and please could you tell me what could cause that at bigger heights and cliffs i can see through the surface? only 2 problems remaining to really start to work on a project;-(^^

[m1lkm8n 411]

Maybe try turning the sat/surface mask tiles down a bit. Try 512x512 and keep the 40x40 texture size bushlurker suggested. Then recrunch , reexport , repack

[TerrainAlien 10]

this worked...! However, the outside terrain where land connects to the outside, not water, looks very weird.

this part was edited out in the config and it looked like on the screenshot. not i tired to play around leaving the part in the config, same result.

 class OutsideTerrain
     {
       satellite = "abc\abc_sample\Data\sat.bmp";
       enableTerrainSynth = 1;
       class Layers
       {
         class Layer0
         {
           nopx = "abc\abc_sample\data\abc_sample_grass_green_nopx.paa";
           texture = "abc\abc_sample\data\abc_sample_grass_green_co.paa";
         };
       };
     };

[m1lkm8n 411]

enableTerrainSynth = 1;

That will enable or disable outside terrain. Currently it doesn't work right. I hope they fix it because it's a fairly major flaw in my opinion.

[TerrainAlien 10]

doesnt fix the problem, set it to zero. is that a problem with layers maybe? wouldnt know which?

[m1lkm8n 411]

doesnt fix the problem, set it to zero. is that a problem with layers maybe? wouldnt know which?

It doesn't fix the problem because the problem resides with bis. They borked the outside synthetic terrain in a3. That why I said hopefully they fix it because I think it's a major flaw.

[TerrainAlien 10]

But doesnt this work on other usermade islands for A3? pretty sur there are islands where the outside is ok?

[m1lkm8n 411]

But doesnt this work on other usermade islands for A3? pretty sur there are islands where the outside is ok?

You'll have to test it. So far I haven't been able to make it work correctly on any of my test terrains

[TerrainAlien 10]

Ok thank you. As this only happens with terrain which is connected to the outside area, i would mind making a island which is not connected to the actual outside area. Is there a way to set the preferences in L3DT so the island has no terrain connected to the outside, but only water? Overall this is the idea of the island of course, if we taling about "island";-)

Stupid question...for what do i have L3dT!

Edited May 28, 2014 by TerrainAlien

[m1lkm8n 411]

If yours is an island u need to turn synth terrain off so set it to '0'

The syth terrain was to make the terrain look infinite. But since your terrain is an island you don't need that because the outside of your terrain is water not land.