landscape - ryzom/ryzomcore GitHub Wiki
title: Landscape description: published: true date: 2023-03-01T05:12:07.444Z tags: editor: markdown dateCreated: 2019-11-25T09:43:08.313Z
Creation Tools
NeL Tile Editor
Tiling textures for a NeL landscape can be created in any graphics program, and imported using the Tile Editor tool. Landscape diffuse tiles are authored at 127 by 127px, and 254 by 254px. The image border must be duplicated every 128th line, forming 128 by 128px and 256 by 256px final textures, to allow interpolation to work correctly when the textures are in a mixed texture atlas. A 256px texture is technically equivalent to 4 textures of 128px that have their own design on the shared edges. Alpha map tiles are used to transition between two diffuse tiles, and are likewise 128 by 128px. The same requirement of duplicate edges applies to all matching edges of the transition maps. Coarse displacement tiles of 32 by 32px can be used as bump maps that will be applied by the landscape lightmapper to give the landscape a rougher and more varied texture at a distance. A tile set can have a microvegetation set attached to it.
Textures
Microvegetation
Autodesk 3ds Max
The only currently available software to create NeL landscape is 3ds Max. A standalone landscape editing tool is pending.
Landscape geometry
Landscapes in NeL are created using Bézier patches, which are more flexible than a height field and can do things like make creases, concave elevations, holes and more. While texture tiles are painted at a fixed subdivision level, the patch mesh itself can have varying levels of subdivision for modeling more detail into the landscape where needed.
Texture painting
A landscape can be painted using one tile bank. The painter tool will randomly pick diffuse textures from a tile set, and use the transition textures to fade between the different materials. A bump displacement can also be selected to add roughness to the far terrain lightmapping, and nearby terrain subdivision. In addition, vertex coloring can be painted on, to increase the terrain's color and texture variety.
Static scene construction
Static scenery can be added into a 3ds Max zone. Usually, the meshes are prepared in a separate file, and XRef'd into the zone scene. Large unique constructions may opt to be lightmapped. This implies that each instance will end up having it's own mesh copy with the lightmap's UVs applied. Small repetitive meshes, such as street lights and other small clutter may opt to use real-time lighting instead, be included as vegetation, or alternatively be added at runtime as a dynamic entity by the game implementation. At the moment, only non-moving scenery can have fully walkable collision areas.
Flora or vegetation
NeL offers several features specific to rendering trees, such as radial normals and wind swaying effects. Additionally, LOD billboarding can be used to efficiently render a large number of trees, plants, and other static items such as signboards at a far distance.
For microvegetation, see the Tile Editor above.
Ligo Brick Tools
World Editor
Object Viewer Qt
Implementation Guides
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