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VIP Terrain Mod

Started by Badsim, March 08, 2017, 01:38:00 PM

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Silur

I have no words. This work looks amazing! I Wish You Success. I'll wait for the end of this wonderful and hard work. Thank You.  &apls &apls &apls

_Michael

Looking great! I'd be happy to help test also. :)

Vizoria

Many of those pictures are utterly brilliant. The only thing I can think of is the weirdness of the beach textures; it looks mega gravel strewn on the landscape.

But keep it up! This is shaping up to be the most beautiful and realistic HD terrain mod ever!

APSMS

I agree with others that generally speaking a pebble beach (which I am unlikely to use simply due to having ~zero experience with rock beaches) would probably look better as a noisier texture with smaller stones. Even if it involves artificially shrinking the size of the rocks by photoshop+tiling+image size manipulation. The texture itself is good, but in comparison with the other details doesn't seem to fit.

Conceptually speaking, seeing large rocks on the cliffs and steep hills makes sense, because those kind of rocks are common on mountain slopes, and they are usually of significant size, but when I see similarly sized rocks on the beach, my brain does a double take because there is a size discrepancy that immediately stands out (the two rock types shouldn't appear the same size).

That being said, the other parts of the mod (that are actually integral to the terrain textures, rather than nitpicking the optional beach) look amazing, and although I'm sure there's stuff to be done regarding tiling and distance factors (among other stuff), what has been shown looks absolutely incredible.

Personally, the rock textures on the terrain and cliff faces look the best to me, maybe because so few terrain mods have really convincing rock textures, and the San Diego hill country/mountains is nothing if not excessively rocky.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

My Mayor Diary San Diego: A Reinterpretation

kbieniu7

Thanks a lot, Cédric, for your help :) I didn't know about it before and with your advices I managed to modify it.

However, in my game the banks don't look so nice as in your photo. There's some "squares" with a white/gray-ish textures beneath. Does it mean, that I need to change some textures if I want to have such a smooth transition between land and underwater surface?


Merci en avance ;)
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

Bipin

My oh my, this is just fantastic! &apls

Indiana Joe

#26
Quote from: kbieniu7 on March 12, 2017, 04:52:49 AM
Thanks a lot, Cédric, for your help :) I didn't know about it before and with your advices I managed to modify it.

However, in my game the banks don't look so nice as in your photo. There's some "squares" with a white/gray-ish textures beneath. Does it mean, that I need to change some textures if I want to have such a smooth transition between land and underwater surface?

You can make a texture blend more smoothly by editing it's particular Terrain Texture exemplar.  The beach texture is an exemplar with the name "Texture39" (Group 0x89c2a517, IID 0x00000039).  If Cedric doesn't provide a copy in his mod, you can find the one in SimCity1.dat, make a copy and modify it.

If you increase the "TextureBlendStrength" property, it will cause the beach texture to blend further up into the grass from the water.

--

Incredible work here Cedric, I thought this stuff couldn't get better than what Gobias did, but I was wrong!  Waiting (im)patiently for more :thumbsup:

Matt


Badsim

Hi ,

@kbieniu7 , and useful for any who wanting to get special terrain effects , as what is explained here for CP Italia Terrain Mod can be done with any Terrain Mod ) : what Matt tells you is valuable , but it rather seems to me that you have no beach Mod installed , the fact that beach level is set to 0 doesn't mean you don't need any beach Mod . These are tests I made with CP Italia ( with MaxBeachAltitude=0 and MaxBeachWidth=0x03 ) and CP_OlympicBeach_Optional , available Here on the LEX :

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... this is certainly close to that you want for your rivers banks . On your picture , that's also visible that you need to do some micro-terraforming to level your river banks ( on the closest view , using and holding the Ctrl key ) and these parameters are also adjustable in our Examplar file 00000001 , Terrain Properties , search for properties ModKey1StrenghMultiplier and ModKey1WidthMultiplier :

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Currently set to respectively 0.25 and 0.8 for ( valuable for all Terrain Mods I have checked ) , I personally changed these values for respectively 0.1 and 0.4 to get extra fine micro-terraforming possibilities :

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Those adjustements are now valuable for all terrain tools in both God and Mayor Mod ( as long as you have God Terraforming in Mayor Mode
  installed but everybody should have it installed with ExtraTerrainTools as well ... ) . So this is what you can do :

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This Examplar file 00000001 is common to any Terrain Mod , that's also where some other important values can be easily changed like the sea water transparency and sea level ... this is what did Swordmaster , for example in his MD Port St Claire :

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The water transparency can be changed with properties WaterDepthForMaxAlpha and WaterMinAlpha , it is up to you to make tests to get what you want , personally I changed these values to respectively 22 and 0x9A :

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Taking effect :

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The sea level is controlled by SeaLevel property , default value = 250 :

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... in meters so you can try 251 , 252  , and so on (1 by 1 meter is highly recommended ...) . To be clear , there's a lot of things a Terrain Mod can do for you , but also a lot of things that can be and should be tested and adjusted by any player ... all these informations were already available here and there , but visibly , that's always good to remind them regularly . ;)

Thanks again for this new batch of enthusiastic comments . :thumbsup:

C.

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eggman121

Thanks for sharing Badsim  :thumbsup:

Your Terrain Mod looks really good.

Can't wait for further updates  ;D

-eggman121

Orange_o_

 &apls


Nice work Cédric, I'm glad to see you always active! There are comments from Ennedi in this thread, which might interest you, unfortunately the images are dead: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=6746.20

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kelis

It was a very long time since the last time I write a comment here in SC4Devotion, real Life is taking a lot of time...BUT Today I had to make a stop to write you a comment.
This terrain mod is going to be the reason why I'm going to play SC4 again !! I just felt in love since the first picture that I saw... I can't wait to put my hands in this great terrain mod.

Congratulations for your work, you know it but... any thing or help that you need just let me know it  :thumbsup:

Greetings my friend
.                                                                                                                      

                                                                                     || Benelux Team || Windows on the World || My Photos on Flickr || Kelis BNL Projects ||

c.p.

Your rocks and gravel and cliffs look amazing. :thumbsup: It would be interesting to see a road or something along with the terrain to get a sense of the scale.

matias93

This terrain mod is authentically bringing back SC4 procers of past days!!! Cédric deserves at least a rep point for this, let alone for the absurdly astounding quality of this work :clap:

"Lets be scientists and as such, remember always that the purpose of politics is not freedom, nor authority, nor is any principle of abstract character,
but it is to meet the social needs of man and the development of the society"

— Valentín Letelier, 1895

APSMS

Quote from: matias93 on March 15, 2017, 06:47:48 PM
Cédric deserves at least a rep point for this, let alone for the absurdly astounding quality of this work :clap:
Sorted ;)
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

My Mayor Diary San Diego: A Reinterpretation

Badsim

Hi ,

@David , what a nice surprise to have a visit from you !  ;D I hope everything goes as you want in your personal life ... I'm working hard on this , but not a single day without thinking about you as it will be a restyled and re-moded version of  your PTM . ( If I had known that it would be so much work ... I would have gone fishing instead of starting something like this !  $%Grinno$% )

@Brian , nice to have a visit from you too ...  :) you're the author of the very firsts Terrain Mods and a good number of people are still using some of them , I can remember how Italia has had my preference during a long time . On some pictures shown today , no roads ( I'm working with an almost virgin Plugin Folder to load the game faster , considering the incredible number of tests  needed ... ) but you'll find here and there some flora or Sims or animals to see the scale ...

@Matias , for the K-point , you should have waited a little  ::) , a disappointment isn't impossible  $%Grinno$%  ... thank you ! :thumbsup:


Well , I didn't count how many times I've re-done again and again my textures ( 25 textures for 5 zoom levels = 120 different textures which have to look as seamless than possible , and perfection here , with so detailed textures , is not reachable ) , and finally have had to desaturate them all . I still have the feeling it can  be better , but at some point I have to decide that that's good enough !  $%Grinno$%

(Clickable full sizes )

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City tile and regional view :

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How good a map and a terrain Mod may be , you'll never have only to match them , open a city tile then wait and see ... this Mod has almost infinite subtilities to present , as long as you'll take your part by having the skill and patience to do some serious micro-terraforming with imagination : as already said on my previous post , the properties of micro-terraforming  using Ctrl key are integrated to your Terrain Mod (ModKey1StrenghMultiplier and ModKey1WidthMultiplier ) so I have moded them for an « extra fine » micro-terraforming . Works about textures can be considered like done ( just one or two things to adjust ) , next week I'll start a testing session with the Moding of various properties , the TerrainTexTilingFactor isn't the only one to change considerably the look of a terrain Mod , there's also properties for each texture  determining how it will blend with others ( TextureBlendStrength )  , generally all other authors didn't use them , keeping unchanged the default value = 1 ,  and how each texture strength fall off with distance ( Z0/Z1/Z2/Z3/Z4 TextureSpreadCurve ) . So I have good hope to finish this at the end of the coming week , then files will be sent to testers : Robin ( mgb204) , Antoine ( Girafe) and Jonathan (Kelis ).

The beach will be optional , like the rock and water textures , and if I have enough time I will propose several tones for the rock textures ... I'm thinking too about a basaltic rock texture associated to a black sand beach Mod . Quickly tested :

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Currently , that sand is too dark and the transition with the rock texture is too blurred ... No classical sand beach Mod planned , there's already enough HD ones available . ;)

Thank you all , for the other comments . :thumbsup:

C.


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Kitsune

It times like these I can't hit the like button enough times to do justice ..
~ NAM Team Member

_Michael


vortext

Yep. Stunning indeed. This terrain mod almost makes mmps obsolete.  $%Grinno$%  &apls
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

Simmer2

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APSMS

I'm not sure how I feel about all the pebbles on the sandbars, but like you said it's optional, and I have to agree that the results are stunning.

The basalt sand (black beach) with that lounge chair on it, reminded me of this for some reason:



The blending of the rock textures, along with the details in the grass, make this feel much like an HD version of c.p.'s mods, which I remember distinctly for the wide variety in ground texture scenes that could be made with them, and which I missed when I switched to the HD mods currently available.

Very cool stuff here, and of course HD is exciting, but even if it wasn't it still looks amazing.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

My Mayor Diary San Diego: A Reinterpretation