Thanks " The_Isolator "
I just started over from scratch and got it to work. However I cheated a little because the 2nd tile I used had a small tree on it to start with so I just deleted it and put my tree in place of it.
All that said I have to learn how to do this so I can put together some other tiles without them all looking the same.
Take your first tile, duplicate it, completely I mean, and rename it... say tile is named ttr05_a01_01,. so, name the duplicate ttr05_a01_02 (those last two digits are designed to be the variants of the main tile name, the main tilename being the first 9 characters ie ttr05_a01 is the main tile name, the last two digits 01 or 02 or 03 are the variants. That is how I will describe them from now onwards:
So, main tile name, variant 01 would be your normal flat type terrain, variant 02 might have a tree or a large rock etc. variant 03 is where you get creative. You take the ground AND wok mesh objects, hide the rest of the objects, take those two objects and grab a vertice somewhere in the middle... grab the SAME vertice in both objects, IE the wok and the texture plane, and lift or raise that vertice by a few millimeters or centimeters, your choice, that will auto change the shape of the ground. Do this to a few different vertices... NEVER grab a vertice on the outside edges though. That way all your variants CAN paint in the same location on a map. The engine will auto-choose for you when it fills an area, the more variants you have, the wilder or different the area will look when filled. I usually like to have at least 2 completely flat sometimes 3, all diffferent variant names, but all basically flat. That way when it auto-paints, it will grab more of the flat tiles than the raised or lowered sections.
You do have to remember to make adjustments to the wok object inside of Gmax to use the proper face type, typically 2, to block shooting through things, Type 7 also works but doesn't block the shooting and in my opinion it gets way overused by folks that just don't understand what the WOK is supposed to accomplish... sounds, grass growth, ability to shoot through or over, ability to walk through or over, etc. Powerful, but it does mean you have to pay attention to what you are doing. Folks learn this the more they spend time attempting to create new tiles. There are only a few shortcuts that actually work well, and most times you are better off not using so called shortcuts, and just create the object that you need. You can attach tall objects to the flat walk mesh, you just have to learn how to remove faces and properly attach the objects to the wok. Not really hard, just time consuming.
One thing to consider, if you lower a section, you want to make sure that it never goes below zero. If you need it to go below zero, then you need to raise the entire tileset upwards. The engine has a terrible time dealing with shadows and lighting below zero, but if the raised terrain starts at 1 meter instead of zero, that gives you a 1 meter depth that you can go downwards with and the engine will have no issues. Most folks raise by 5, not really needed, but it does give you more room to go downwards below the flat section of ground.
So, variant one might be completely flat
variant two might have a large rock
variant 3 might have a tree
variant 4 would be another fairly flat one, but maybe a smaller rock this time
vairant 5 might have a small plant of some type
variant 6 might have another tree, either smaller or larger or moved to a different part of the tile than the first tree tile
ad-inifitum. You have the options of creating up to 99 variants... never seen that many, but the power is there if you want or need it.
By using the variant number for all the tiles that fit that same type of position, you still leave the next tile in the group open,
ttr05_a02_01 might be a tile that bumps up against another terrain type or maybe it is a tile that had a road or whatever.
ttr05_a03_01 would be the next tile in the base terrain that does something different, maybe it is used for the raised section etc.
Bioware never really specified, but if you look at their tilesets, and only look at a single terrain section of tiles, you begin to see how they were working things. Unfortunately, each tileset is just a bit different, even if they did attempt to follow the base naming convention.
The next LETTER group chosen is typically the next terrain, so maybe letter b tiles are all water, letter C tiles are all trees, or whatever..
They started at letter G for their crossers, and crossers extended up to letter K I believe, might be L. So, G might be road, H might be stream, I might be a wall tile, etc .
Groups started using letters for rows, and the numbers for columns in a group. So, ttr05_M01_01 would be first row, first tile, in a group. N01_01 would be first tlle in the next row of the group, O01_01 would be row 3, P row 4 etc. It is easy enough to figure out if you look at a couple of groups to see the examples.
Groups tended to use letters from M through Y, depending on how many groups they used, groups and features are considered the same in the Bioware naming convention.
The letter Z was typically reserved for edge tiles. Seldom do you need many edges, but you have up to 99 possible options for edges. Edges also were designed to paint alongside the different terrains.... groups typically didn't use an edge against them, but they would work regardless because each tile is defined with the TYPE of terrain that paints against the sides anyway, so an edge for Grass would paint against any group that used Grass as the base terrain type etc.
That was how Bioware attempted to manage tilesets. Some of their decisions did not always make sense until I was told that their bug management system was designed to track the bugs by terrain types, so that they would know who to assign the bug reports to, IE which person would be responsible to fix a given bug was determined by the person that created whatever terrain the bug matched against or whatever group etc...
Anyway, by having up to 99 variants for a single tile's position, you can really get a very varied tileset to auto-paint. The engine goes row by row in it's choices for the tiles it paints in a given location and keeps track of which tiles it has already used. There is some variability meaning that the engine CAN choose to paint two of the same tile right next to each other, IE two ttr05_a01_01 side by side, but most times it will paint one of the other variants for A01, like A01_02 or A01_05 etc...
That engine is truly powerful. Our main complaints surround how we are limited to a single texture for the same object, can't get multiple textures to help paint the same object to give it more detail like say Skyrim does... I think there are at least 5 textures assigned per object in Skyrim... other games allow more or less depending on how the engine was setup. Aurora only gives you ONE texture assignment. That is what our biggest limitation besides only being able to use a single Z level for walking... But for an engine designed before the big graphics cards started coming out, BIoware did an amazing job giving all of use the power to build so much with the tools we were given... If only the other game companies would bend and give their communities the same sort of power with the newer games. Oh well.
WE have learned how to get around some of the limitations, like duplicating an object and offsetting it by 1mm and painting an alpha texture on that object, allows us to add smudges of dirt or blood or other stains to an object... at least visually, and this has been used to great extent by the community to come out with some really amazing things... running water for one... the feeling of more depth in an object for another...
Shadows still cause us issues, but again we can create shadow box objects with no texture assigned, simple shapes that generate simpler shadows, that don't cause the engine to choke so much. There are limits to where this can be applied, but if done with those limits in mind, the player at the end, seldom notices the lengths that the artists have done to get the image that they see. Some are so skilled that I am still in awe with their skill sets.
Oh well, preaching to the Choir I know. Just a set of reminders about all the little details that entail creating a tileset, and the reasons why those details are there. They give us enormous power, but they have to be created correctly.
Retour en haut
