The Prestine Landscape (Terrain Works)

[Gringamuyloca]

Lowkee33....

It's not lack of interest... just a lack of time.. been on the road and unable to play... but still interested and following along...

Thanks for continuing to share your SC4 (ad)ventures!

[dobdriver]

G'Day Lowkee33,

You have done a ton of work on this subject and it is very interesting, while I still have not completely read every post I will eventually. My own hacking of others mods has been a bit cruder usually to drag the snow higher.

In answer to a question you posed in my map thread about heights, most maps I make probably fall into the 1000-2000m range and a lot in the 2000-4000m range. I have made several at 5000+ but in this range after around 5500m texture tearing both in the region view and city views becomes prevalent.

[Flatron]

At least I would like you to make snow down to sea level, because 1000metres are relatively high for first snow appearence, i think. But your overall work is good.

[Lowkee33]

@Gringamuyloca:  No worries.  The Mod is pretty much done, and so nothing post worthy is happening from my side either.  Thanks for the help. I am looking to get this on the LEX, but it's my first upload and I am slow on the readme side of things.

@DobDriver:  I noticed the tearing at about 4600, but maybe that was because I just made a very narrow/steep mountain.  The way things are now a player will see unique terrain lines up to 2000 meters.  The max terrain height is 4000, so that any map that goes above that wont be ruined on trarraforming.  Increasing the Temp Range Factor make the mod more interesting at higher altitudes will be up to the user.

I just went for what I thought would work best for the average map.

@Flatron:  Working on it.  In this mod every month has a new color scheme.  This scheme is based off of moisture.  The problem is that SC4 maps are more moist of the left side than the right.  This makes the tiles not match up, and if you read some previous posts you will see that when snow is involved it looks terrible.

So snow has to be gradually "pushed" up by having textures that are not really the same, but look similar from the region view.  That can only be done at the rate I used (which is pretty slow, about 1/3 of the texture map is committed to the transitions).


I am thinking about trying a snow/no snow mod with out much seasonalitly.  This way I can bring the snow line to see level.  it will be easier to time with certain props/flora .  I don't think every month will be seamless between tiles, but perhaps I can make four.

Oh what the heck, I can't leave you with no pictures:



Full Size - 1024x734

This is using Girafe's trees as timed props, Degren's CP flora as seasonal MM-flora, and some good ol evergreens.

[Flatron]

 OK, now I can understand your position. But as you said last I think it should be enough to have four seasons.
The picture is very impressive.

[Girafe]

Amazing work and GIF well appreciate.

I think we need to check together some points about flora items in order to be similar 

[cogeo]

Can you include an additional small mod for the mini-map? This also affects the maps on dataviews. Installing a Terrain Mod doesn't update the mini-maps (they still use the Maxis colours).

It would also be good to mod that awful light blue colour of water bodies at city boundaries.

I think both would be nice additions.

[Lowkee33]

Mini-Map:

I once saw the exemplar that includes the mini-map color ramp, but I don't know where that is anymore.  The only problem (once I understand hex colors ) is that the mini-map doesn't change with the textures.  If you could point me to the exemplar then I could find the best compromise of colors.

Water Color:

Does DobDriver's star background accomplish what you are asking?  I could make one of his "patches" for it, or figure out what he did to make the water go away.

This is why I am working on a list of mods that include changes to the terrain exemplar.  Perhaps I could package a separate download that includes all of the optional type mods.  Perhaps I should let the creators of those mods re-package their work to include my terrain exemplar though.  I really don't know.  I think my terrain mod should do as little as possible though.  Perhaps the installer could have a bunch of options as to what other mods to install as well?

[cogeo]

Mini-Map Exemplar: 0x6534284A, 0x690F693F, 0x8A356F2C
or from iLive's Navigator, select Data View & Graph -> Data View -> Mini Map, right-click and select Synchronize.

As you can see, it's a simple elevation-to-colour mapping (or else, colour as a function of elevation).

[marsh]

Thanks for that help.  (On the previous page.) I simply changed the Temperature Range Factor to a high number on Orange's Pyrenees terrain mod, and now the sea-level textures are everywhere. It looks wonderful in my desert-region.  When yours comes out I will try and modify that for my own use. (I may have questions.  ) Thanks!

,marsh

[Lowkee33]

@Cogeo:  Still no luck with the water.  It isn't any FSH between 0x00000000 and 0x000FFFFF.  After that my computer can't handle making so many files.  Nor is it any of the water IDs.  I deleted a ton of stuff from the Maxis dats (including all of 3-5), and any time the game doesn't crash it loads with the bright blue water edge.  There is a FSH that looks like a gradient (like the shading on the edge), but changing it so far does nothing.

@Admin:  Can I get this moved to the BSC section?  Perhaps with my own child board?  I have a few other projects, but they aren't related to terrain.  Thanks.

[deadwoods]

I've just read through the four pages of this. Very impressive piece of work 

This is one of those major game improvements, like the NAM & CAM, that should be packaged up and sold back to Maxis/EA so they can release SC.next!

[Lowkee33]

Thanks Mr. Deadwood .  Right after I linked you to the terrain tutorial I color coded some properties.  I noticed you were there at the same time, so you may not have seen the change.  I think it is an improvement.

I have moved on to making some of my own textures.  At first I covered the basic mods, beach, water and cliff.  Grass was much harder to get a grasp of.  There is an old picture somewhere on the Simtropolis that has all of the Maxis Textures in a nice arrangement.  I noticed that the bottom of each texture matches the top of the texture below it.  One thing that is also known is that we always view the terrain textures from the same angle.  These two facts gave me new perspective on how to make every texture at once.  The premise is to make one huge texture and break it up into small pieces.

I started with a 256x4096 texture that I will break up into 16 256x256 textures.  Fortunately, the program I use (Texture Creator) can do this for me: Texture Test 1

The Zoom 0 (1) results are pretty promising.

Full Size

Zoom 4 (5+6) are not so good.


Full Size

When the textures are next to each other they look great, but on their own the gradient is too sharp.

For my next test I put a single texture over the entire image.  Still 256x4096 here:Texture Test 2

Zoom 0 took a big hit


Full Size

Zoom 4 is looking good (all things considered).  The texture is so small it is hard to see the tiling, but it is there (perhaps lost in the JPEG):


Full Size

The conclusion here is that although a single texture may blur the line, it has dramatic effects on the terrain as a whole, and still doesn't solve the problem.

So far I had been ignoring moisture levels, but I decided to make a 2816x4096 texture.  This would give me 16 elevation rows and 11 moisture rows.  The results were not as promising.  A moisture level can exist on both sides of a texture, not like elevation which only happens to one side (Although I guess that is not true is it...).

So I went back to a 256x4096 texture.  This time, after breaking each texture into pieces I made it seamless to itself.  I also added a brush which does make it look a little like grass, but I lost all of the other texture.  The original: Texture Test 3

Zoom 0 still looks good.


Full Size

Zoom 4 is okay.  Although seamless, perhaps I should avoid vertical lines and drop the contrast.


Full Size

This last picture also shows two textures blending into each other.  For these tests, the Spread Curve for all zooms is 0,1,1,1,2,0 compared to Maxis at 0,1,32,1,64,0.  This means they use much less area blending into each other.

I am also putting off making the different zooms for each texture.  For now it seems the zoom 0 needs less tiling abilities, but I will have to do a flat land test.  

I am currently working on a texture that is 1792x8192, which will make 7 moisture columns and 32 elevation rows.  The image itself is 17 MB, so it now takes a while to do anything to it.  The time sort of takes it out of the testing parameters, so I may want to trim it down.  I am mostly figuring out the color scheme, alpha maps, texture patterns that I want, so when I get serious (512x512 or 1024x1024 textures) I can throw the thing on auto-pilot and go to sleep.

[Orange_o_]

You have great ideas, however it takes a lot of trial and error to achieve a good result. Continue. 

[Girafe]

 

too complex for the tiny giraffe

[Lowkee33]

Weighing in at 90mb are 168 512x512 textures.

Now to make them look good...

[Lowkee33]

Some progress today.

[Gringamuyloca]

 
wow! That's some progress! 

Love where you are taking this Lowkee33. 

[Ciuu96]

Looks really great, though in my opinion the rock texture could be better. 

[Lowkee33]

That's interesting you would say that Ciuu96.  That is a 1024x1024 texure (Link.  Any suggestions?  The different zooms are something I will have to work on.  For these pictures I am using the same texture for all zooms, so the details that make the rock look good (to me) in the closest zoom suffer some problems in the others (especially when the texture is viewed from the side).

The rock texture is very important to get right.  At some point I am may subtly add it to all of the other textures, so that it blends well with all of the other textures.  For myself this is something I will defiantly do, for those who like to pick and choose textures I may not.