Merricksdad's Black Hills Tileset (First Look)

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I've got enough clover flower stuff to do both yellow and white sweet clover; red, white and hybrid common clover; blue/purple clover/vetch; tall white clover vetch; purple prairie clover, mammoth red clover, and three clover-like perennials which are actually not clover, but native liatris. Once I get some more flower shapes out of my old library, I can do bells, slippers, hearts and breeches while I'm at it.

 

Just finished the golden angle, golden scale functions for automating vegetable plants. I can now do hostas, stonecrop, ferns, and the like, with a click of the button. I can also recreate most taller perennial plants the same way by modifying the rotational clock, and the scale fraction. It should be a good day tomorrow.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Well I spent some time this morning making 4 badlands levels, and while they look good, they are not as useful as I had hoped. I think I will simply downscale them and make them the same. So far I have a top level (0 to -1200) which is mostly white and gray with a tad bit of reddish. That looks the best, but the overall size of the transition makes the majority of the tile useless. The second transition is -1200 to -2000 and consists of a similar colored set of tiles. Again, too tall for good use, but I think I can work with it, especially given that this layer was supposed to have a lot of walkable shelves. The next layer is 600 height and is mostly red and tan banding. This layer is more realistic for game use, even though the section doesn't look as impressive from most camera angles. This section is supposed to be a mix of rounded clays with some semi-jagged parts, cluttered with boulders from the top white section. The next section is the yellow mounds, which are only 400 height. This height seems to be a good use height, but the intended purpose of the yellow mounds was for rounded climbing hills with very little jagged region or special shelves. Below that a yellow floor makes room for more non-base-level grass, as well as a deep stream system.

 

I've run into a problem with the tileset starting at the very top of the yellow mounds. That is actually the floor section from the previous red layer. In the toolset, when I move an object across its walkmesh boundary, the object jumps to 0,0. Similarly, if I walk across that boundary in-game, I am sent up to Z=0, even though my walkmesh is lower, centered on z=0, and all points are directed to be below that level. The actual ground level at that tile is -3000, which leads me to believe that the issue is with the walkmesh, and not with the boundary values associated with the tileset. I had previously read that +14000 was an issue, but no mention of a negative value was given. I think that was per tile, not per area, as 14 tiles at 1k height each was fine last I tried it.

 

Anyway, I gave it a break and went back to working on flowers and leaves for a while. I did purple prairie clover, helenium, and blanket flowers, as well as leaves for lanced echinacea, blanket flower, prairie clover, and fuzzy leaf rudbeckia.

 

I think tomorrow, given time between errands, I might go back to the tileset and try to work out that walkmesh issue. I might also scale all the badlands heights by 50% to make them easier to work with, even if less impressive. If that fails, I'll spend a few more hours working out some plants. I still have many grass types to work on, as well as the specific pines and spruce models for the granite core tileset.

 

I'll try to get some pics up tomorrow of the badlands tilesets, even though they are not fully formed. All I have right now is general tile contour as well as the finished smooth texures. Speaking of, I found a method of making nicely contoured textures especially for banded stone, that I will have to share tomorrow.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

After modifying the z values of the badlands tiles, I'm finding that any value at or below -3000 on a tile will cause issues. Any which way I draw the walk mesh, any value below that causes placed objects to move to an error point of 0,0 in the toolset, or a crazy Z value in game. I'll just have to remember that when doing walkable chasms in cavern settings when I rebuild the underdark later. Learning something new every day.

 

Just got back from a long walk and a hearty breakfast, and thinking today might not be the best day to work on computer related stuff. Cleaning the house and making it at least as clean (empty) as my tent was the last two weeks seems more important, presently.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Here's the textures I plant to tidy up and use for the badlands set. Might be handy for use in caves too.

 

 

So after thinking I had this all figured out with the walkmesh, I find that most of my lower walkmesh parts are having issues still. I can walk on the parts fine, but if I stop on certain slopes, or move my camera around without walking while standing still, the z-position issue happens. Then I have to walk all the way back up to a raised point in level 3 before it fixes itself, and then I can walk back down just fine again. Never seen anything like it.

 

I will just assume this is a walkmesh complexity issue and ignore it, as the walkmesh will be entirely different when finished anyway. So imagine this with weathered cracks and cuts all along the faces and you can see where I am going with this.

 

The yellow table on the bottom can grow grass, and I assume people will make use of that and put building tiles down there. Since it will also do rivers before I am done, it will be like two tilesets in one, and the 4 badlands risers will be like the boundary between one zone and another within the area. To make an area entirely yellow table, you first have to strip all four layers away, but that is not a big deal. Not much more annoying than making mostly raised areas with the raise/lower tool.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Mad Poet]

               

Ahh color... how I've missed you.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Black hills looks more colourful than the white hills (aka white mountains) of new hampshire/maine.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I've been looking at a lot of pictures of the badlands area and I see a lot of pictures of the same place, taken from almost exactly the same position (pretty much intentional by the park service). The odd thing is that some of the pictures have banding, others have cracks, and some are as textureless and antique white as old pottery.


I think it depends on the eye of the viewer, the interests of the viewer, and more importantly for media like here, what camera they took the shot with. When I was there in person, my camera was able to pick up colors I could not see with my eye, even though I have my camera programmed to take pictures the way I see them. The blue wash out there tends to skew the picture to white, and the intense light, even at only 3k feet above sea level, removes a lot of texture. I would imagine that even the white chalk cliffs of England would have visible layers at some scale using the correct camera. When I looked at the more white portions of the upper layers, I see an ugly mix of pink and gray, somewhat like dried out dental putty. I see cracks and shadows clearly. but through my camera, I see definite banding, buried pebbles, and can pick out exactly what was originally there, and what fell from higher layers.


The same happens in the "black" hills. At a distance, some still say they see black. I see a definite blue, and in computer color terms, I can tell you what a close approximation of blue and green values it takes to create that color I see at any given time. My eyes also pick out the distinct green varieties for ponderosa pine, black hills spruce, cottonwood, scrub oak, and aspen, even at 60 miles per hour through a dirty car window. I can tell you if we just passed a native spruce, or an imported one seeded from someones yard, and I can distinguish between three birch species by leaf at 45 miles an hour. I have no idea why. Maybe my internal camera takes better pictures of anything in the green range?


Looking up pictures of your White Hills, I find myself really wanting to go there in fall. Badly. I didn't know that even existed. I've always wanted to do the vermont, newhampshire, maine trip, just to get some rubies and sapphires. Now I have more reason. My eyes would like fall best I think. I really like yellow contrasting with dark green mountain pines.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Just look at that area. If this is actually from there, I am definitely going!

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Here's a pic of the pine sawyer beetle that cleans up dead or dying wood in the black hills

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

And here's a few shots of the best lookout point we found this trip, which I had not visited before. It's called Breezy Point if anybody visits, and it's just down the road from Mt. Rushmore.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I seek some audience approval, so that I might stop here and move on:

 

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               

Those appear to be what one would expect when viewing a sandstone desert type hill/cliff edge etc.   Looks like a win to me.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_meaglyn]

               

Those do look nice. Is this planned for the same set or have you branched out into two (or more)?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

These go in the high plains set, which is separate from the granite section of the black hills sets I'm building. If all else fails, they go in a third set separate from the high plains stuff, which I think I described a page or two back. I'm hoping I can bind this set with the granite set via a limestone cliffs expansion sometime in the future, but this won't cross over to the granite set otherwise. The limestone cliffs so far are planned as an intermediate third set, so I can portray something like Spearfish Canyon, with its many sizes of falls, stream-side trails, and other water features. It is too difficult to jam all that into a single tileset and try to represent a fluid transition within a single mapped area, so three sets is so far my minimum for portraying the surface world of the black hills region.

 

That other black hills set I was working on is going to come alive in a few weeks here, with massive texture upgrades, as well as becoming more realistically useful for a game tileset. I've got to stop thinking I am working for National Geographic or something, and try to think more inside a box with this. Regions need to not just look good, but be actually playable. Unless the module author has nothing more planned than to walk an individual through a David Attenborough documentary. Actually... given the number of real world animals we came up with models for during the African Adventures month, that might be a possibility.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Note to self: write that damn modifier list down (right here) in detail as soon as you get up in the morning. Don't lose that combo!!!

 

select inner verts

add edit mesh modifier

switch new modifier to vert selection

unselect verts on original mesh

insert relax modifier before edit mesh modifier (0.5 x 1, keep boundary points)

add noise modifier (scale 100, Z 250) on vert selection

relax modifier (0.5 x 1, keep boundary points) on vert selection

edit mesh modifier (retaining vert selection)

displace modifier (STR 100, Decay 15, Align Z, width 1010, length 1010)

rotate displace modifer about X by -15 degrees

edit mesh modifier (working on entire mesh)

UVW mapping modifier (Planar, Align Y, height 1010, length 1010)

move mapping modifier to Z position -300 (or whatever half of your tile height is)

rotate mapping modifier on X by -45 degrees

smooth modifier set all faces to group 1