[ART] Texturing a custom terrain

[ClayPigeon]

I'm making a custom terrain in maya, a little steppe.
However, whatever texture I'm assigning it, the result looks really bad in game, even if it looks great in maya. I'm wondering how can I texture it right, like in this one for example:
http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-15613.html
(Grass & Mountains)

Here is how it looks for me:
Maya:


Game:

[Acies]

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotli...3-udk.html

[ClayPigeon]

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotli...3-udk.html

Will it be exportable to maya at the end of these 4 hours? (Don't wanna watch 4 hours for nothing)

[Traggey]

Yes it can.

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

However, whatever texture I'm assigning it, the result looks really bad in game, even if it looks great in maya.

Looking at the screenshots, I'd say it looks pretty much the same, only that in game you're much closer to the terrain than in Maya's viewport, so you see the low texture resolution. Or rather, you see that the scaling of the texture doesn't fit the scale of the mesh, with one blade of grass being half the size of your character Therefore, I conclude that scaling up the uv coordinates of your terrain mesh, so that the texture gets repeated more often, should help.

[ClayPigeon]

However, whatever texture I'm assigning it, the result looks really bad in game, even if it looks great in maya.

Looking at the screenshots, I'd say it looks pretty much the same, only that in game you're much closer to the terrain than in Maya's viewport, so you see the low texture resolution. Or rather, you see that the scaling of the texture doesn't fit the scale of the mesh, with one blade of grass being half the size of your character Therefore, I conclude that scaling up the uv coordinates of your terrain mesh, so that the texture gets repeated more often, should help.

Thanks but I'll ditch this one. It looks bad and I prefer creating a way better one using the tutorial Acies gave me. But just as a side note, if I stretch the UV map, it looks better in maya but then it looks worse in the game.

Acies - in this tutorial I see that the mesh goes up to 4M polys... Are you sure it's good for hpl2?

[WALP]

However, whatever texture I'm assigning it, the result looks really bad in game, even if it looks great in maya.

Looking at the screenshots, I'd say it looks pretty much the same, only that in game you're much closer to the terrain than in Maya's viewport, so you see the low texture resolution. Or rather, you see that the scaling of the texture doesn't fit the scale of the mesh, with one blade of grass being half the size of your character Therefore, I conclude that scaling up the uv coordinates of your terrain mesh, so that the texture gets repeated more often, should help.

Thanks but I'll ditch this one. It looks bad and I prefer creating a way better one using the tutorial Acies gave me. But just as a side note, if I stretch the UV map, it looks better in maya but then it looks worse in the game.

Acies - in this tutorial I see that the mesh goes up to 4M polys... Are you sure it's good for hpl2?

Maybe try projecting the UV's from top orthografic view?, dunno if maya have that options but if the uv's are mess thats a good alternative.

About lowering the poly count you can try making the terrain manually by extruding and adding edge loops. Might sound a bit time consuming but once you get the hang of it , it is quite flexible and you are able to get more control and an insanely large reduction in polycount. having a plane with a reference is a good idea to start.
If you dont feel confident about doing it manually maybe you could take a midway by first making a highpoly one with millions of poly and making a low poly on top of it by snapping to the surface as if you were doing retopology.

[ClayPigeon]

However, whatever texture I'm assigning it, the result looks really bad in game, even if it looks great in maya.

Looking at the screenshots, I'd say it looks pretty much the same, only that in game you're much closer to the terrain than in Maya's viewport, so you see the low texture resolution. Or rather, you see that the scaling of the texture doesn't fit the scale of the mesh, with one blade of grass being half the size of your character Therefore, I conclude that scaling up the uv coordinates of your terrain mesh, so that the texture gets repeated more often, should help.

Thanks but I'll ditch this one. It looks bad and I prefer creating a way better one using the tutorial Acies gave me. But just as a side note, if I stretch the UV map, it looks better in maya but then it looks worse in the game.

Acies - in this tutorial I see that the mesh goes up to 4M polys... Are you sure it's good for hpl2?

Maybe try projecting the UV's from top orthografic view?, dunno if maya have that options but if the uv's are mess thats a good alternative.

About lowering the poly count you can try making the terrain manually by extruding and adding edge loops. Might sound a bit time consuming but once you get the hang of it , it is quite flexible and you are able to get more control and an insanely large reduction in polycount. having a plane with a reference is a good idea to start.
If you dont feel confident about doing it manually maybe you could take a midway by first making a highpoly one with millions of poly and making a low poly on top of it by snapping to the surface as if you were doing retopology.

That actually sounds pretty good, but it's still gibberish for me, mind explaining a little bit?

[Rapture]

Here is a Maya specific tutorial, but any retopology tutorial from any 3D program would work since they use the same principle (That I am aware of). The buttons/options may vary slightly though...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdDSbQn1Hg


//////////////////
But to explain it from a Blender point of view...

(1) I have this high poly mesh, but the polygons is to way to high to be realistically used in a game.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/32/...logy1.png/


(2) To start retopology, you want to make a plane (Make it whatever way you do in Maya.)

Spoiler below!

(3) Then turn on your "Snapping "and look for a option to change the snapping to "Faces". This way moving the vertices of your plane will attach itself to the closest surface.

Spoiler below!

(4) Now take your "Plane" and attach all 4 sides to the tree, make it as squarish or rectangular. Avoid making skinny triangles since it screws up the texture and will make animations look bad.
Duplicate/extend, whatever you do in Maya to make more vertices and make faces.

The point of this is to grab as much detail as you can while keeping the "Tris" count low. Justification for different "Tris" sizes depends entirely on the object, (e.g. How important it is, how big it is, whether it's a static or entity prop, a NPC, etc...) and what the game and/or engine can handle.

Amnesia to me has a norm for 500-1000 tris for grabbable entities, 5k for enemies, and static_objects fluctuate (Anywhere from 50 to 3k normally). Look at current models in the Level Editor and look at their "Facecount" if you want to know what ballpark your retopolgy should aim for.

Spoiler below!

(5) At the end of this, I got 3148 tris. My justification for this high polycount is the base because of the 5 holes I made at the base which ate up a lot of time.

I screwed up the UV's on the lowpoly model (Middle) so the normals are a bit fucked up near the branches. But that won't be a problem with your model since it's a basic terrain.

Spoiler below!

[ClayPigeon]

Here is a Maya specific tutorial, but any retopology tutorial from any 3D program would work since they use the same principle (That I am aware of). The buttons/options may vary slightly though...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdDSbQn1Hg


//////////////////
But to explain it from a Blender point of view...

(1) I have this high poly mesh, but the polygons is to way to high to be realistically used in a game.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/32/...logy1.png/


(2) To start retopology, you want to make a plane (Make it whatever way you do in Maya.)

Spoiler below!

(3) Then turn on your "Snapping "and look for a option to change the snapping to "Faces". This way moving the vertices of your plane will attach itself to the closest surface.

Spoiler below!

(4) Now take your "Plane" and attach all 4 sides to the tree, make it as squarish or rectangular. Avoid making skinny triangles since it screws up the texture and will make animations look bad.
Duplicate/extend, whatever you do in Maya to make more vertices and make faces.

The point of this is to grab as much detail as you can while keeping the "Tris" count low. Justification for different "Tris" sizes depends entirely on the object, (e.g. How important it is, how big it is, whether it's a static or entity prop, a NPC, etc...) and what the game and/or engine can handle.

Amnesia to me has a norm for 500-1000 tris for grabbable entities, 5k for enemies, and static_objects fluctuate (Anywhere from 50 to 3k normally). Look at current models in the Level Editor and look at their "Facecount" if you want to know what ballpark your retopolgy should aim for.

Spoiler below!

(5) At the end of this, I got 3148 tris. My justification for this high polycount is the base because of the 5 holes I made at the base which ate up a lot of time.

I screwed up the UV's on the lowpoly model (Middle) so the normals are a bit fucked up near the branches. But that won't be a problem with your model since it's a basic terrain.

Spoiler below!

Thank you so much for this so detailed comment, I'm doing my best to reduce the polys on my terrain now, but first I have some more texture problems to resolve.