The Prestine Landscape (Terrain Works)

[Lowkee33]

Thanks Marsh.  I don't think I would be going too far off base to say that the images you have seen are the lushest textures I am going to make.  I have no specific area of the world in mind, though the where I live has a big effect on what I think terrain is (New England: temperate, rocky, and eroded).  I also live in the city, so most cliffs I see are those carved out by the highway makers.

I think I have found a good way to make Zoom 0.  The processing takes about 30 minutes per texture, so I only did one today.  I feel safe saying that I wont make a zoom 1.  Zoom 4 is a detailed zoom 3, so zoom 2 just needs to be a good transition.  Maybe I will do a zoom 1, but it's just different green noise at that point...

The final argument in favor of zooms:  Base Textures.  These do have zooms, and so detailed terrain does not blend well with them.

Made my first attempt today at my own base textures.  I think the results are pretty good:

In-Game.

As far as me mass producing Base/Overlays, this is out in the future.  I may first make overlays that are transitions to he textures we already use.  I am not saying this in a competitive way, but I feel like if I were to make new textures, they would have to be better than what we already have.  This is a steep task.  Then I might decide I need to re-lot some things.  At that point, I might as well re-desc...   

Oh well, take care.

[marsh]

I may first make overlays that are transitions to he textures we already use.  I am not saying this in a competitive way, but I feel like if I were to make new textures, they would have to be better than what we already have.

Heh, yea it seems like that for everything these days. Although I think the base textures look great.

For me I'm used-to seeing things different. I live in a high-plains desert. Everywhere theres just patches of tall prairie grass. So New England is a rainforest compared to where i live. 

[Lowkee33]

Thanks Marsh.

Things have been slow lately as I try to figure out how to make rocky textures.  Think I got it with this one (cliff texture on top).



Take care all.     

Edit:  Now that rocks are in stage 2, I can get stage 1 of snow going.  A little teaser before I call it a night:

[Rayden]

I'm really loving your work, it's getting better and better.

[noahclem]

Those textures are looking great Carl!    Very nice start on the rock textures.

While I'm posting I thought I'd ask if there is any quick way to tweak the Pyrranean Terrain Mod for a greener, lusher look. I read through the posts in your signature but still don't understand how I might go about this. I hope you don't mind me asking about that in this thread 

[Lowkee33]

Thanks Rayden.  I've got some really dirty snow brewing right now .  I learn more and more about Texture Maker all of the time (it's how I made my new avatar).

@Noahclem:  Thanks.  I don't mind at all, though the other thread might be a better place.  Where exactly are you getting stuck?  I am afraid that if I just explained it again right now I would explain it in the same way as in the tutorial. 

[Girafe]

Snow textures is good and the rock's one is better than the icecream 

[Ol.S / Benoit]

Love the textures ! Great job 

[Komsip]

I saw that you had managed to tweak some terrain mods to make them look different in different seasons, what is your technique for doing that?

I don't need a lot of variety, just that any very green grass goes brown the colder half of the year.
I have tried changing the TemperatureRangeFactor up and down in the CPT terrain mods with no positive or negative change at all.
One thing I wonder is if there is a way to use the textures that a terrain mod uses for higher altitudes in the winter, "lowering" the textures when temperature changes.
How did you do it? I'd be super super grateful if I could make the terrain change by time of year, because i like to use seasonal trees, but there is no point in doing that when the wintery trees without leaves stand on sharp green grass. Really the only thing I need to change are the grassy green textures to be more brown or moss-green like grassy areas tend to be in the winter, snow is not necessary and actually not wanted since the trees i use don't get snow on them in winter, they just drop all leaves.

[Lowkee33]

Hi Komsip,

Unfortunately, the temperature simulation doesn't work.  The only thing to say about temperature is that it gets colder as altitude increases.  What does change is moisture, and this is what I used to make the mod.

Terrain textures are controlled in the terrain INI.  There is a table 32 rows and 16 columns big.  The first row is the coldest area, and the first column is the driest area (the bottom right "slot" is the warmest and wettest). 

So, textures don't change in an up/down sort of way, they change in a left/right fashion.

The mod that I made is in a purgatory of sorts.  There hasn't been as much interest in it as I might have thought.  However, if you want I can send you the download link so you can try it out for yourself. 

[Komsip]

I'd be very happy if you could send it, even if could just have a look at your INI section I'd be happy
I'm also very curious how you set up the Terrain Properties and Weather Tuning Parameters exemplars.

[Komsip]

I have been able to do some things with the weather properties and the terrain settings recently, but it is very hard to predict what will come out of it. It would be really nice if you could show me what you did when you managed to control the seasons as well as you showed you did some posts back.

[Lowkee33]

Hi Komsip, I sent you the mod.

The offer is open to anyone else who wants to try the seasonal mod out.  Just let me know if it all works correctly and such.  I thought I posted this offer on the front page, but it look like not.

I heavily rely on this mod that I posted on page three: Direct Link.  This will change your Power Data View so that it shows Moisture instead, so you can really see what effects you are causing.  The moisture simulation is loaded while loading the city, so you can see results without having to "play" the game.

After that, I mostly played with YearlyAmbientMoisture, YearlyAmbientMoistureVariation, and YearlyAmbientMoistureVariationFactor.  The latest I know is found in the "Terrain Exemplars Explained" link in my signature.

The most difficult part of the mod was getting snow to look right in the region shot.  There was a lot of fudging that I did.

When I started making my own textures I tried to do something a little better (Girafe's pines do have snow, so snow on the ground makes sense.  Decidous trees don't really collect snow anyway).  However, there is just too much sacrifice to get a mod to go from all snow to no snow.  At the moment I am doing a completlty stagnant mod.  The way the weather exemplar interacts with a tree controller makes it important to be careful, but I'm thinking I might just go default Maxis weather for my textures.

 

[Indiana Joe]

I'd be interested in trying out what you have so far.  Though I'm by no means a modder at all.  I don't even have iLives Reader, so do you have your mod far along enough that I can use it without that?

[Lowkee33]

For all intents and purposes, the seasonal mod with CP's textures is done.  All you need to do is install it, and tell me what you think.  I packaged it last year, when I wasn't too sure about HTML, so the readme could use an update.  I'll send you the link 

[carelo91]

I keep coming back to this thread to read on the progress and stuff, and it's been a while. I really do love this idea, but  a couple posts back I saw you said that this mod is stagnating, that there's not enough interest. I don't mean to breathe down your neck or whatever, but this would be very neat to finish, I actually believe that is should have much more interest.

Very good work though, and congrats on everything you've found out.

[Lowkee33]

Thanks carelo91.  There are two mods in these pages.  The first is making a seasonal terrain mod using CPs textures, and the second is me making my own textures.  The seasonal CP mod is done.   I want it to be on the LEX, and for this it needs to go through the wringer a couple times.   However, there hasn't been much demand for it, so no one is really testing it.  Therefore, it is slow to be publicly released.  Perhaps I should sticky something to make this more clear.


   Progress on my textures is also slow.  I've been busy, but progress is being made.  This is something I do for fun, so general opinion has no influence on it    (other than critique, which has been helpful all the way)

[Lowkee33]

Winter break is here, it's about time for an update.

Blending snow with cliffs has been a real challenge.  Cliffs will try to blend with any texture, so it is hard (impossible?) to blend a dark cliff with snow.  Looking at other terrain mods, I think the blending that I have is comparable.  This means that all of the textures are ready for finishing touches!

The next steps are getting all of the texture exemplars working together, finalizing the beach/water textures, and re-instancing everything to conflict with other terrain mods as little as possible.  This last step doesn't really matter, but perhaps those with messy plugin folders would appreciate.

some pictures: (note the hospitals  )

Here is a picture of where water meets land.  There is still much to do here, particularly setting the transparency for water.


A larger image, focusing on the cliffs


Moving up to the snow areas.  Again cliffs are tough to blend with.  I will be making a snowy cliff for the snow fans out there, but for now I am just getting together something to be happy with.


A much larger image that shows this whole scene

Finally, a region shot.


Btw, this region is Pishkun Shores by CycleDog.  It can be found in CP map pack #1.  We can compare my terrain to what I am guessing is Missouri Breaks.
 

Have happy holidays!

[Ramona Brie]

By the way, I would be willing to test these. I currently use the Olympic terrain mod and Brigantine water and am tiring of the bright green look. Let me know if you want that. My most recent region is a river with no mountains and a lot of valley space.

[Lowkee33]

Hi Tracker, Once I get this installer made I'll send something over.

This started out as a quick question, but if I'm asking, I might as well ask right

This mod is going to have a few options:

1) No Snow / Snow (no snow is default)
2) Normal / High Snow line (normal is default)
3) Regular / Ennedi's Jagged Edge Cliffs (Regular by default)
4) Regular / Coastal (Regular by default, coastal will make the water more transparent)
5) Erosion / No Erosion (Erosion by default, any opinions about this?)

Five radio buttons, I don't think too much .  Are there any suggestions for more?  Every option is inclusive, so I'm making an installer with 32 possible file configurations  .  If anybody wants an NSIS script for something like this, I can attach it.

The readme will of course explain better, with pictures too.

Question about #2:  What snow lines to you want?  I'm thinking default will be 750m and high is 2500m.  Way off?  High is supposed to be more realistic, while default puts snow on most Sim City type maps.

It isn't really effecting a snow line either, because you can choose it either without snow.  Here, the purpose would be to have more variance on any map.