The Prestine Landscape (Terrain Works)

[MattyFo]

Lowkee, I really love those marshes!  I am currently working on a swampy area in my region and whn is saw that just now it was perfect. At first I was hoping it was some sort of flora that I haven't found yet   Keep up the great work!!!

- Matt

Lowkee Edit:  Post 100! and my first moderator abuse

[marsh]

Oh wow. Awesome exemplars. 
Something I noticed on the marshes. At different zooms they change locations. Which I'm guessing just has to deal with the way the game handles textures. 

,marsh

[Lowkee33]

Something I noticed on the marshes. At different zooms they change locations. Which I'm guessing just has to deal with the way the game handles textures.

Quite true.  Textures always start from the top-left corner of the map.  Textures also always face up (water is the easiest to notice this as you rotate).  If you add 3D aspects to the game heavily dependent on the zoom 4 textures, be prepared for them to not line up as you zoom out or rotate the map.

Did some experiments.  In the Terrain Properties Exemplar there is a property called TerrainTextTilingFactor.  It's definition is "100 meters of terrain corresponds to this fraction of texture in farthest zoom".  This value is .2 by default.  A problem right off the bat is that tiles are not divisible by 100 meters (they are 1024, 2048, 4096 meters for small, medium and large).  A round value, like .2, is not going to match up.

I made one texture with easily noticeable edges, and threw that into the game.  This is a picture of the bottom-right corner of a large map, where the problem would be most noticeable.  (Jeeze, just thought of color-blindness... very sorry) 



In zoom 0 (1 on the keyboard), the texture repeats a little more than eight times.  So, 4096/8=512.  100/512= 0,1953125.  Lets throw this number into the TerrainTexTilingFactor.



The grid is hard to see, so I plopped a very fancy power plant.  Interesting enough, 128x128 pixels of the terrain texture is one grid square, making it the same size as a base/overlay texture.

Now that textures actually line up to something, it will be much easier to figure out how SimCity displays them.  I went to zoom 3, picked a texture, and surrounded it with my power plant (didn't want power zots).



I then zoomed out and repeated the pattern



And here lies the problem.  The pattern of plops is dependent upon the top-left corner of the map, since that is where all textures begin.  For example, if I were to have made my original plopping one texture to the right, my pattern of consecutive plops would have been in the green square in the final picture.

In order to keep the marsh appearing the same shape in the same place, the lesser zoom textures would have to be the zoom 4 texture scaled down and tiled.   I will give it a shot, but not optimistic about how good that would look.  The yet unsolveable issue is still the fact that the textures rotate with the view angle, meaning that the only shape that would work would have to be able to mirror itself (like a circle or square, but not a triangle).

[Lowkee33]

Thought I would check in with some terrain shots.  I felt I had to update my cliff/water/beach textures, and this slowed things down a little.  The main issue is the fact that beaches have three textures, upper, lower and deep sea.  A problem is that cliffs can't be too far away from the beach in terms of color/brightness.  For now, I have made the deep sea texture the cliff texture, and made the lower beach the color of the upper beach, but a little darker and with some of the cliff texture.

A general overview of the mod.  This map has a low max height, and I have altered the terrain properties so that all textures are visible.  I generally alter such things for every region I enter, but for any release, these textures will be much more spread out in terms of altitude lines.


Full Size without having to load ImageShack

Part of the cliff texture issue is that it should also blend with the rest of the textures.  The good side is that cliffs only appear on slopes, and that moisture (in a non-seasonal mod) is basically slope.  Therefore, there are textures that appear on flat land, and textures that blend flat land with cliffs.  Of course, there should be many cliff mods, and one doesn't want to have to download a new terrain for each one.  It turns into a matter of file size, so a cliff should blend in as fast as possible.  I made a new estimate on the INI, and it uses 144 textures that I guess will be about 86mb.  Similarly I will make many cliff mods with packs similar to the c.p. rock packs, and this way many cliffs can be used seamlessly.  I will be trying to drop the textures needed for the rock packs, but right now I'm looking at 14mb each.

I may also reconsider this.  This image shows something that would be far less than 86mb, but still good cliffness (though this particular example wont work because it would mean you would only want to use this cliff texture).

I still have to figure out how sharp I can make the texture switch and still be happy.  C.P.'s technique is very nice, but I have a lot more options with the program that I use.


Full Size

Finally, a look with some flora/lots.  I did a city test the other day, and I have to say, I am quite pleased with the color of the lower terrain as it compares to various $$ and $$$ base textures.


Full Size

[marsh]

I really like the colors and everything. It's looking real beautiful. The only thing I would say is to make the rock textures less, blurry, I guess you can say.

[Lowkee33]

Thanks Marsh.  I agree about the cliffs, and have corrected this.  The sun shines on my monitor, so sometimes I think I am doing well and I am not  .  I ran the option "detailize" and am happy with those results.  btw, saw your picture in the competition, may have voted for it but for your TilingFactor set to .2.    

Back to the Terrain Tiling Factor.  A value of .025 (or  .0244140625 to match the grid) will display one complete texture in zoom 0.  The proper size of this texture (to not blur or loose pixels) is 2048x2048.  Had some fun with this picking textures from the web.  Hard to find a grass texture that is meant for such things though.



A closer zoom, just to look  .  You can see by the water, just because they are seamless doesn't mean they are good for SC4.



We dont do png because of file size right?  Here is a link to a png.

These 4 textures weight 40mb, so thats the cost.  Pretty though.

[Girafe]

Water is really good.

I am less convinced by the grass texture, too teal for me. Moreover I am asking if there is not a problem of scale. Indeed one tile is 16m x 16m and the grass textures seems to be really big for this zoom.

But I think this project is going on the right way and I trust you 

[Lowkee33]

Water is really good.

I am less convinced by the grass texture, too teal for me. Moreover I am asking if there is not a problem of scale. Indeed one tile is 16m x 16m and the grass textures seems to be really big for this zoom.

Agreed.  The beach is off too.  Getting the Tiling Factor figured out is what spurred these pictures.  Typing "water texture" into google gets some good results, as well as cliffs.  Grass and Beach are harder, because they all either have shells or blades of grass that will never be seen from so far away.

What do you think of the colors of the grass texture though?  Adding blue to the grass I did not think of.  It's even gray in places, though I think that is rocks.   


I think  2048x2048 is too big for right now.  512 textures are 500kb each.  1024 textures are 2.5Mb.  My thoughts are this:  175 512x512 textures would make for a very seamless terrain with many texture "nooks" (flowers and what not).  1024x1024 textures are almost big enough that you can't see the repetition in zoom 5 and this is pretty alluring.  I have an idea for "mini mods" which would be less than 10Mb each.  Still thinking.

Right now I play with 1024x1024 Cliffs, but I have a 1024x1024 grass texture.  The blades or grass are a little big, but I think acceptable.  As one zooms out, the blades turn to clumps, and eventually it is mostly a green texture with random noise on the hue and saturation.  A good trial I would say, but overall, too green.  The cliff is a WIP, and I am currently dealing with those black areas.  The detail of the grass in zoom 4 is lost in Jpeg



 
 
 

Zoom 4	Zoom 3	Zoom 2	Zoom 1	Zoom 0
Full Size	Full Size	Full Size	Full Size	Full Size

Argh, Tables... They don't make it through the quick modify?

[Ramona Brie]

This'd be good. I use CP's Olympic terrain, but it might be too green in the long run.

[noahclem]

Great progress on the grass texturing     I could see how it might be too green for some but I wouldn't think for all. I'd love to use that texture even as-is. I agree a bit with Girafe on the scale of the grass but as I mentioned it already looks great and I'm sure you will discover the best way to implement your textures.

The water and cliffs are looking extremely promising as well. 

[Lowkee33]

Thanks for the comments

Just letting you know I am still working on this.  I keep learning new things about Texture Maker, the most recent is the RGB mapping of an image.  This helps because I learn the extreme saturation/brightness of a texture, and can make sure that I never make pure black/white (just like sound recording I guess).

Perhaps the texture wasn't too green, but I would say too dark.  Did some brightness changes, and it turned out the dark was also causing blending problems.  Opens up some disk space, so I got working on more textures.

Hospital picture for scale:	Some Maxis Base Textures:	DEA Dirt Tracks with MTP overlays:	Basic Farms:
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[Jack_wilds]

Lowkee33

are you working towards becoming the newest CP terrain expert  as your on the track of reinventing, reinterpreting, retexturing and recreating such things... keep it up the efforts and you maybe become legendary as his work... just popping to say Hi! and see whats new... also took the new textures to check 'em out...

Jack

[Girafe]

Excellent work on the green textures. 

I didn't have tile to check all the files bu I will do next week end.

Your cliff are always a problem but i am sure you will work again on them 

[Lowkee33]

Your cliff are always a problem but i am sure you will work again on them

Those are the Maxis Cliffs, and yes, they look like garbage spread out like that (they aren't seamless, nor where they created/imported in a lossless manner).

My cliffs aren't the greatest either.  Still working on it, and I think I have a new texture making strategy too.

@Jack:  Nice to see you here

[marsh]

Love those most recent textures. They are similar to the maxis textures in some sense. (Which isn't a bad thing) 

,marsh

[Ramona Brie]

I found some other hidden properties that deal with fog effects in the Ingred.ini file. I also found the other things you did.

[Lowkee33]

I found some other hidden properties that deal with fog effects in the Ingred.ini file. I also found the other things you did.

What are these "other things"?

Got another grass texture.  I made the blades smaller, and kept saturation/brightness nearer to standard base textures. Zoom 4, and Zoom 6 on the keyboard (3 and 4 in reader).

Also, I am opting out of JPEG, instead only providing links to PNGs.  I havent been told not to do this yet. 

Take care.

[j-dub]

All I can say is after looking at those two shots, I like what I see.

[Lowkee33]

Thanks J-Dub.

I've gotten to a point where I think most of the basics of the grass textures are done.  Right now there are 14 different grasses, 6 for level terrain, and 8 various slopped ones.  I will probably be making zooms, though each one adds 500kb, and I am not too sure it matters.  The closest zoom will have more details, and perhaps even added things (what, I do not know).  It's basically the difference between something that is 24mb and something that is 8mb.

Scree is way behind, I don't really have a good shot of it.  Snow on slopes is going to have to blend well with cliffs, and I am not very good at making those textures yet.  In the final mod, scree/rough textures will take up a little less than half of the terrain (unless people say otherwise).

A region shot - The blue square is the city in the next shot.
City - Zoom 0 (1 on the keyboard) - Again, we zoom on the blue square.
Zoom 4 (5 on the keyboard).  Note: these are the sloped textures, not the ones I assume people will be building on, and thus trying to blend lots in with.

How are we doing?  Does it look too blurry, or perhaps just random colors?

Some of you may have read my post about varied regions.  Basically, I am trying to figure out snow lines.  Some people want no snow, and that is pretty straight forward.  I put snow at about 4000m, and this is just way higher than I think anybody actually plays at.

[marsh]

Beautiful work Lowkee. I would make textures for each zoom, depending on how you want the terrain. It looks fine at further zooms, but it makes the terrain look much more lush and bushy. Which may not be good for more dry(er) regions. A possible way would just be to give a couple of the textures zooms. Although on the other hand, it does give the terrain depth. Making it look as if the grass is taller.
...okay I'm not sure about this issue. I was trying to give advice then I changed my mind. 

Anyways amazing textures. I absolutely love the hue of them and this will probably be my terrain mod for my current region.  Are you basing them off of any particular region or just making it to your liking?

,marsh