79 réponses à ce sujet

[dunniteowl]

Environmental Objects do not have any collision data applied to them, so they take a smaller memory footprint, both in terms of file size overall in the module and they do not stress the computer as much when it comes to detecting collisions and pathing.

That said, if you convert them to EOs, then you also have to manually edit the walkmesh with the Walk/No Walk tool in the Terrain Tools if you have to have your EO placeables "solid". If you do nothing, then the EOs can be walked through as if they weren't even there. This might actually be nice for some placeables to act as illusionary secret entry ways, come to think of it.



dunniteowl

[Vaalyah]

Can I change into EOs just objects in the background or also those in the foreground? (of course checking manually the walk area around them) And... how can I change an object into an environmental one? :-D I am still new of the toolset, so probably I am asking a lot of silly things...

[Vaalyah]

Thank you very much! I just only need to find some time to TRY all these suggestions... I need a holiday '

[Vaalyah]

So, I had extremely few time lately due to a family problem (mum had an accident), but this is my first attempt while running with the in-game engine. I have to admit that while in game, the texturing is far better than in the toolset. What do you think? Could you give to me some suggestions/opinions? I need to improve!

http://lh5.ggpht.com...czM/Modulo1.jpg

http://lh3.ggpht.com...XqQ/Modulo2.jpg

Moreover, I have a problem. I built a fence and put 2 cows inside. Now, one of them is "in the middle" of the fence (a piece of it is crossing the animal), but I double checked and in the toolset, the cow is perfectly placed INSIDE the fence. How can I solve this?

[PJ156]

First off check the mesh around where you have placed the cow. If the area the cow is on in the toolset is not walkable or baked as walkable the game will jump the cow to a walkable location in game.

One thing that might have done it is you have put too many placables in the area and it has baked non walkable.

Might not be that, but it's something to check.

PJ

[Vaalyah]

Oh sure, that is the problem. I put the area not walkable because I didn't want the characters to be able to enter in the fence. So, how can avoid NPCs and PC to enter the fence (to have it crossing their body :-P ) without putting that part not-walkable?

[dunniteowl]

Cut out a small area just on the INSIDE area of the fence (where the cows will be) and make your fence just on the edge of that area so that NPCs and PCs can get right up to the fence. If you do it right, the cows will still be pretty close to the fence due to their longer necks (though maybe not due to their larger collision boxes.)

You need to make sure that the area goes COMPLETELY around the fence for at least one full poly square, not just a triangle, or you could run into problems. Also, make sure that the cows are not in the Non-Walkable portion of the map (off to the outside edges, they don't like being stuck there and will pop back too. And this is an official bummer, because with creatures doing that, how do you simulate a field of cattle off in the distance?

dunniteowl

[Vaalyah]

About the cow: thank you for the explanation, I think now I get the thing clear! :-) I just thought that the fence collision box was the one that should have taken the characters a bit far from the fence itself, but from what I am reading, it doesn't seem to work in that way! o_O

About my textures, I think the bigger problem I have is that the village area is totally flat. I have to add some noise and raise a bit around the houses. To say the truth, the path texture is mud_number_something with a dark-reddish brown for deepening the colour. But I am still experimenting. I really would like to being able to see the movie-tutorial linked before, but my connection simply doesn't accept to download all those big files :_(



Any suggestion about where I should add grass? I would like to add some, but in the middle of the town is just stupid, because frequent walking of people would have already destroyed all the grass...

[PJ156]

I use grass to accent areas and use it very sparingly. Others use more.

Use it to surround items that have not moved in a while (barrels, fence posts etc). Then in open areas in small clumps. If you go for small clumps of taller grass or weeds you might colour the base of that area with a pea green which highlights it in the same way as you might colour round the base of a tree.

I think you may find as many different opionions on how grass should be used as there are modders. So play and see what you like.

If you are going to use noise height lock your houses first. In town though you may want to use the raise terrain at low strength and a smallish brush I personally think that can give better results.

PJ

[M. Rieder]

Chaos Wielder wrote...

People will like you for your screenshots, but they will love you for the memories.

Hey, that's nice.  I'd say it was signature material.  Also, it's good advice.

[dunniteowl]

Personally, I don't like using the Noise tool -- at all. It's too choppy, even at low percentages. PJ156 is probably close when it comes to opinions on grass useage, but there are some general agreements when using Grass:

1) Use it at low percentages and use sparingly to start (there's a limit to how much grass can be placed down before it stops letting you add grass to any more of the area.

2) Start with where you need it most. This is things like PJ156 said, items that don't move or haven't in a long time and places that get light decently well. Bases of houses, barrels, fenceposts, along walls, the edges of the road, base of trees and ponds, horse troughs and such things where foot traffic doesn't trample it down regularly.

3) Use small brush settings and low pressures. You really shouldn't be using the grass tool on anything larger than a 3 or 4 size inner brush and about 10% pressure for starting off and no outer brush. Once you get your necessary details down, then you can increase the size of your brush and maybe the pressure too. (largest brush size I've used is about15 Inner and 4 Outer for a large pasture, and I left the percentage at 10% and got what I felt were great results for pastures.)

4) Always attempt to balance across the module areas that you're using grass in, as evenly as it makes sense to do, so that when you hit that limit on grass placement, you don't have these huge 'bare patches' where you meant to use the grass, but got carried away in just one corner of your area.

Beyond that playing with it and testing is the best way to go with grass. You can add three grasses at once and make it a mixture, so if you have the SoZ and MotB expansions, you can take three different colors of flowered grasses and mix them in for a field of wildflowers.



Flat areas. I don't like them, either. As I said, I hate the Noise tool. If you know where you want houses to go before you start, then you can use the Raise and Lower Terrain tools set to a large brush setting (like 15 Inner and 8 Outer) and set it to something low (like 5%) pressure you can leave the houses/buildings where they are and not height lock them and raise your ground in great swirling and random motions across your area to make rolling plains, hilly terrain, or rough, mountainous foothills if you like.

Now I tend to have an idea for my town before I start, including what kind of terrain it has to be and so make my terrain first before putting down placeables at all. So for me it's not a big deal.

I have changed my mind, though, like you and decided an area is too flat for my tastes. And you can height lock all your building placeables if you like and make your terrain changes (if they're not big changes) and then adjust as you see fit afterwards. There is also a Flatten Under Tool in the Terrain Tools that makes placing a building placeable (mostly) easier. Sometimes this tool doesn't give you the results you wish. Like one time I was intending to make a house go into the side of a steep hill and I used the flatten under tool and it did the entire building placealbes collision box area, cutting away the hill to a very large degree, which I couldn't fix easily. So considering where you are going to place your buildings and how you want to do your terrain changes you have several options.

As always, keep at it and good luck. My toolset is now back up and running and so I will be adding some more screen shots to these conversations (sadly all my older stuff is all gone.) For me, losing my data is more like a minor setback coupled with another opportunity to do it better without worrying about how much change I have to put into that module area I've already spent dozens of hours in.

dunniteowl

[Vaalyah]

1) thank you for all the suggestions, as usual. Each time I have some free time, I try to follow your guidelines and experimenting following your words.

2) about how I plan area... I usually draw a sort of sketch on the paper, to represent what I have in my mind. The I draw it again in Photoshop, in order to put some colours, just to have an idea. Then I open an area and with a red/fuchsia/bright colour I draw the shapes of the houses, just to have a guide. Finally, I place the blueprints and modify the terrain. The problem is that I had not tried with a village before and I started with the idea that the houses should be at the same level. Now I understand that flatness is too unreal and that I have to move a bit the soil.

Question: when I raise/lower the terrain under a house, does the house follow the terrain or do I have to move the blueprints accordingly?

I know my questions are silly, but please remember, I'm just a noob of the toolset!

[_Knightmare_]

Vaalyah wrote...

Question: when I raise/lower the terrain under a house, does the house follow the terrain or do I have to move the blueprints accordingly? 

The placeable will drop down with the terrain, providing:

- you raise/lower enough of the terrain around/under to affect the placeable's position (which isn't much)
- you do not have either Height Lock or Position Lock set to true in the placeable's properties.

You will most likely have to fine tune the placeable's height setting as a corner or whatever may still be above/below ground, depending on the terrain slope.

[Vaalyah]

But should I have to raise/lower the terrain with a brush at least as big as the house, in order to see the placeable moving up or down?

[PJ156]

Vaalyah wrote...

But should I have to raise/lower the terrain with a brush at least as big as the house, in order to see the placeable moving up or down?

No, once enough land under the building is raised the building will rise. As _Knightmare_ said it is not much of the area under the house. For instance grab a house in the toolset and move it towards raised terrain, you will see it will rise very quickly and not imbed itself in to the hill. Al ternativly take a small brush and experiment. Ctrl Z will undo the action so it wont be a pain to clean up after yourself. 

PJ

[Happycrow]

Good work! The improvement's clearly visible.

Suggestions:

1. Look at where high foot traffic would run, and path it appropriately.

2. Don't forget to shade (and shrub!) "seams" such as the lines presented by houses and fences where it's harder to cut weeds, etcetera.

3. Add color and dark tones to areas that would get shaded, and lighten up areas that are in direct light a bit.

4. When you start getting a better sense of what you want to do, follow Dunnite's lead, and look at the different textures/patterns, and think about what kind of terrain or region they say to you. Altered and consistent texture selections can give two otherwise identical areas a very different feel.

[Happycrow]

How people raise and lower terrain is very, very idiosyncratic. Generally speaking, you want to be careful to avoid sharp edges, and you'll want to adjust the walkmesh to make it ABSOLUTELY smooth (get in this habit early, your players will thank you, as a sloppy walkmesh can be just as dangerous as a heavy-duty NPC). That said, people either tend to use the flatten tool heavily and make lots of plateau-like elevation changes, or else they blend several rolling sections together (I'm in the latter camp), which looks more natural, but takes longer to do manually and can create walkmesh issues later.

[dunniteowl]

Oh god, Happycrow, don't I know it~! Walkmesh tweaking is a sometimes lengthy process. My biggest issue is getting tired of doing it and then trying to rush through it. That said, I wouldn't want to push Vaalyah too far over the edge with information and deal with her questions as they come up, much as I would like to provide more, I fear it would overwhelm with the sheer volume of little details that we all have picked up over the years.

That said, when you get to that point, Vaalyah of having to properly set up a walkmesh and then bake it so its what you are intending, by all means, please ask those questions too.



With raising and lowering terrain, I always tend to use a low pressure setting and wide, sweeping motions to begin with and a very large brush. Settings usually start off with: Brushes: Inner = 40, Outer = 12, Pressure = 10%.

This allows you to see very gentle swells come up and gives you time to control your rising or lowering terrain and make moves to it without creating these very strong edges to your terrain changes. Once you get the feel for this method, you'll probably want to increase the pressure for some stronger hills and valleys, and of course, change the brush sizes to suit your needs. It's a good initial brush and pressure setup to provide you with a sort of "sandbox" learning curve.



Houses or any placeable for that matter, will attempt to stay 'on top' of the ground. If you go into the Properties tab of the placeable, you can select Height Lock - True and the buildings can be moved around, but stay at the same height setting. Another thing is, in your method of coloring the ground where you want the houses, you can mess with the terrain and then use the Smoothing Tool to gently flatten the area where you wish to place the houses (*which would be on your reddened areas) and you can get some really good results that way.

I am starting to think that answering some of your questions would make a great series of video tutorials.

best regards,

dunniteowl

[Hoegbo]

I|m not good at explaining how to do areas but if you like I could take one of your areas and give you some examples on how I do stuff. so you get the finished area and few screenshots alongside to show what I did and comments on why, along with a few tips.

[Vaalyah]

As usual guys, thank you so much for all your help! I am overwhelmed with things to try :-D

To say the truth, till now I had not found so dramatical the entire baking process. I suppose I've been lucky: no strange shapes, no strange path, no strange soil altitudes. But don't doubt: as soon as I'll have problems also with it, I would not be ashamed of asking :-D (I'm shameless :-P )



@ Dunnite: I was starting to think that I should do a summary of some of my questions/your-answers to write a tutorial :-D



@Hoegbo: that would be extremely kind of you! Moreover, my areas are so small I don't think the files are too big. I've just checked. I have 2 areas inside a single module (some tests). Is there a way to extract just the area of interest?

[Vaalyah]

Thank you! Now I just need to know where I should send the area :-P

[Hoegbo]

check your PM