Hey everyone

I'm developping a storm chasing game for about 2 years now, and I'd like to reproduce the U.S. great plains environment. I never worked on the graphics of the game since now, so here is how my game looks like (I know, Eeewww)

Streets are blocks, and terrain is basic and ugly...
IMAGE1
IMAGE2

And..

I would like to make it look more like this (Grass, plains, and you can see the street):






So, I'm a real newbie with terrains and "good-looking" stuff, so what would be the steps of making it look great? I mean, I've seen some wonderful graphics here, very impressing, so I know it's possible...

Thanks!

Hi,
well there are a few things I see in those two shots that I'd improve:
- the grass texture is very blurry at the moment why not use detail maps (or multitexture but that'd probably impact the framerate more than you want it to do...)
- There seems to be no height difference between the road and the fields, if you look at the photo's you can see ditches at the edge of the fields or the fields are somewhat higher than the road.
- look into getting some dynamic grass, though it probably impacts framerate a bit you could think about doing it at a short distance and then fade it out. That'd make it a lot more interesting.
- Also add white lines to the road

Hope that helps.

cartoon_baboon

Hi,

thanks for the quick answer!

- I don't know how to use detail maps.. Is there any AUM about detail maps?
- For the ditches at the edge of the fields, I would have to model my terrain with it? and what about...
- The roads? Should I use the same terrain with another texture on it? I'm a bit confused lol
- Can I use dynamic grass without using shaders? Because I can't get any shaders to work -_-
- What about the white lines... texture it on the road terrain?

thanks lol

Detail textures are usuallu added to the model as a second skin that is much smaller and usually black/white noise designed to tile well over the main texture. T
hey can be colored as well and can be created to effect nice texture details to any model (just like hmps)

On terrains they are automatic, on models, you need to grab a detail script (look in user contributions, I think slin wrote one for models)or write your own.

For ditches, yes model them into the terrain but look at LOD so that you can have a visual range of up to 15oo quants for example where the ditch will be a ditch but after that distance becomes a skin with the ditch shadowed in.

for roads, your solution will work fine and is the common approach but not as good as block geometry skin effects, use seperate model to get good detail and overlay above scene or stich into place dynamically.

just some of the approaches I have taken over the years looking for good repeatable texture and graphics...

Thank you!