- you get a near seamless range of varying terrain.
- adding a water plane can give a very natural coastline or rocky water-way.
- can add realism to landscapes with its natural varience.
- Group your tile set when you are done in the TE with it.
- Don't hesitate to experiement with stretching the set once grouped. On the X, Y and Z planes. Often times stretching these sets can create a whole new feel to an image.
- Use the same set more than once in a scene if needed. Duplicating and moving a set to the distance, and slightly tilting the farthest end upwords can give the illusion of the same ground pattern going on into your haze.
- Try Water planes and Cloud planes just above the base of the tile sets. Can make some cool landscape effects.
- Thinning the tile set on the Y plane, using a nice rugged fractal, can make a nice dirt road or the like. With still nice realism. Opposed to the ground plane.
- Don't forget to save the sets in your Create Menu. The Mountain library is a good spot ;-)
I hope this is clear and easy to understand. If you find anything unclear, please drop me a line and let me know.
I am going to deal with generating terrains in the Terrain Editor to make nice, seamless ranges made up of multiple terrains. There are several benefits to using this method.
The above sample image's ground was made using the tile terrain feature. It contains 3 groups of 9 tiled terrain sets. The fractal used in this image was Zorch. There is a near endless possiblity of fractals to exhaust. All unique, some realistic, some strange.
Step #1
Before I start nearly all my Bryce scenes, I rotate my view so that my view is looking stright on rather than at an angle as the default is. This is up to you if you want to do this of course. I just find it easier when things move in striaght lines on the X, Z planes. My settings are seen in Fig.1 below (highlighted areas). I am using the Directors veiw.
fig. 1
Step #2
OK, let's get started.First thing to do, of course is create a terrain from the Create Menu. Then take it into the Terrain Editor (TE) by clicking
.Once in the TE, change the terrain resolution from 128 to 256(fine) or 512(superfine) on the Grid options
. **NOTE: after you have your full tile set, you can increase the resolution for a better look. Higher res. can make the fractal creation a slow process. This obviously also depends on your systems speed. If you can get away with higer resolutions, go for it.**
Now you want to click the arrow to get to the Fractal Menu. (fig. 2)
fig. 2
You can see quite a few terrain types here. As well as some settings at the bottom (we'll deal with those after we choose a terrain type.) You can choose anything you want here. MudCracks is very cool looking, as well as a few others. I am going to use Cauliflower Hills for this tutorial. Select the type you want. Then click the sphere next to the word Fractal and BAM! You have a new terrain.
Since this is the first stage, you can continue to click the sphere to generate different styles of the terrain type you have choosen. Just make sure that you have all the random settings selected (fig. 3).
fig. 3
Once you are happy with your starting terrain's look click the Check Mark to leave the TE, returning to the Bryce scene window.
Step #3
OK. Now in your scene, with your new terrain selected, you want to duplicate the terrain. Just hit CTRL+D. The duplicate is now selected. We are going to do a 9 terrain tile in this tutorial. But with this feature, you have to do each terrain one at a time.
We need to position the terrain. The easiest way to get this new terrain positioned is to hold SHIFT, and push the UP ARROW key on your keyboard 8 times. That will just about line up the terrains.
**The Arrow keys work in obvious directions (up=North, down=South, right=East, left=west).**
Step #4
OK, with the duplicated terrain moved into place, back to the TE .
Here is where the repeditive steps come into play.
The KEY step in the Fractal Menu. We want to CHECK TILE NORTH. This is because we moved our duplicate terrain north in the Bryce world. This will UNCHECK all the RANDOM settings. This is telling Bryce to go to its next terrain segment North of the last generated terrain. (fig. 4)
fig. 4
With the NORTH checked. simply click the sphere next to the Fractal menu (JUST ONCE!). This will generate a new terrain. One that is seamless with the first one we created where they meet. Gettin' the idea?? Good.
Click the Check mark and go back to the Bryce main screen. You will see now that the duplicate looks to line up more to the original terrain.
Now it is just a matter of repeating steps 3 and 4 one more time. This will give you 3 tiles in a row. (Duplicate second terrain this time. Move 8 SHIFT+Up Arrow spaces. Back to . Since we are still moving North for the 3rd tile, no need to change the direction setting.)
Step #5
You should now have 3 terrains tiled. It's all about repeating steps here.
With your next terrain, you are going to want to duplicate #3 and move it to the EAST. So Shift+RIGHT ARROW x8. When you go back to the TE for this terrain. You want to select TILE EAST. Click the sphere next to Fractal to generate the east terrain, etc.
See the image below, this is the general pattern I use when making tiled sets. Obviously if you want more than 9, just make the proper adjustments.
fig. 5
Step #6- Final touch ups
I selected all terrains, moved them to the center of my view and rendered. It's looking like Fig 6 below.
fig. 6
You can see, that there are small seams in the terrain tiles. This takes some steady hands and a good eye, but correcting them becomes a breeze after a time or 2. Rotating your scene so you are on top of the terrains is a great help with this (I find "Top View" is too high up to see the seams well.) I usually also delete my ground plane when I align these. The blue of the atmosphere will show you the open seams clearly. It also helps avoid selecting the plane when selecting terrains.
What I find to be an easy way to line these up is move them in rows. I select rows 2 and 3 together and move them towards Row 1 slightly. Rendering along the way. From there move just row 3 toward 2. Then move the top and middle row down, etc. You get the idea. (fig. 7)
fig. 7
This can take a while of tweaking. Sometimes you will find some areas that just wont seem to match up perfectly. Thats why there is a thing called Post work. Or you can always hide these areas with rocks, trees, dead bodies(!) or other items. But after you do these a couple times, you will become a pro.
Tips and Options
Have fun, let me know if you have any issues, problems, etc. I will see what I can do to help. Below are a couple images I did with the set I made while putting together this Tutorial.
Thanks for stopping by...
-Bruce
#1. Added water plane just above the tile set. Added mountains in the back. #2. I tilted the tile set into the water plane here to get the break up.
All images ©2000-2003 Bruce Holderbaum/ HSI Graphics. May not be reposted on the www without my permission.