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| MaxDmg |
 Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 29 Nov 2008
Posts: 10
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This exporter would be great, as I have been a user of Grome for some
time and we have manage to get terrain from Grome into UDK as large
as 1024 and stable. We had to export as Raw and use the G16 tools
to get it converted to a 16Bit BMP format. Only problem 1 tool can
support 1024 and NO height control. While the other supports 512 and
you CAN control the height. Having and exporter that allows you to
save a 64x64 up to a Custom size with contol over the height value
would be EXTREMELY helpful.
Now getting the textures exported and re-imported into UDK is another
story. Having a way to Make this step less painful would be outstanding
as well.
Max |
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| Zykomaniac |
| Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 7:02 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Posts: 18
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I am just curious
Any update regarding this exporter? Any spesific features?
Last edited by Zykomaniac on Thu Feb 04, 2010 5:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| ALicu |
| Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 1330
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Hi, first version should be ready at the beginning of the next week. Here is a list of the exporter features:
Heightmaps:
- Outputted as bmp g16 format (as produced by G16ed).
- Size: power of two + 1 (just keep the same size as Grome zones, which in most cases are of power of two tiles, so they are power of two + 1 in height values).
- Scaling: user can input the vertical scaling (and bias) globally to be used (with quick options for for 0 -> max unsigned short and min signed short -> max signed short ranges). For this the min and max height will be computed for the entire scene (swapped, unswapped, selected, unselected zones).
Alpha masks:
- g16 format (as heightmaps)
- power of two + 1
- option to automatically scale these to be the size of the heightmaps (that's the way UDK wants them).
Tile textures:
- save as tga
- option to rotate by 90 (clockwise or anticlockwise?) some of the vertical tile textures? Maybe Jo can indicate more info here. From his tutorial it seems that some vertical texture needs to be rotated so I can add this option in the exporter.
In the end you will have all the data prepared for UDK import. UDK layers and materials remains to be made in UnreadEd.
Regards,
Adrian |
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| joskj |
| Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 11
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This is greate news Adrian, i'm realy looking forward to it.
When it comes to the rotation of the texture it seems i have to read my own tutorial again  , as i have completly forgotten why i did that (been a bitt busy lately working on a "making a simple VR application from scratch with hmd/wand tracking, physics, stereo, opengl, a scenegraph and all other sort of neat stuff" tutorial for our VR labb, and yes, i realy need to start coming up with shorter names for these things).
Anyway, i don't have sdk and grome right here, but i suspect the rotation might have been some "magic stuff" i did to get better terrain materials in udk based on the terrain material part of the udk manual.
However, it shouldnt realy be needed, as one can just as easy rotate the texture during texture reads in the shader you make in the udk material editor (if its turns out its actually realy needed).
Jo |
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| Zykomaniac |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 5:25 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Posts: 18
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Wow, thats great Adrian! : )
Just for safety make the texture exporting able to rotate by 90.
From what I see joskj your rotation of texture is to get the textures on the mountain sides to align properly, else the one mountain will have horizontonal texture and the other vertical. at least from what I am experiencing in UDK.
You havent considered working with the streaming of terrains tutorial? That would be a awesome addition to the first one. ^^
I really enjoyed your first tutorial. : )
By the way, are you from Norway as well? |
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| ALicu |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 7:34 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 1330
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Hi Everybody,
Is the 90 rotation clockwise or anti-clockwise (I can add both options)? Anyway I will try to follow your tutorial using UDK myself to test the exporter results.
Also, can the tiles textures be any other format than tga? I suspect that Unreal also support DDS and some may want to use this format instead (due to compression, smaller loading times etc).
Regards,
Adrian |
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| Zykomaniac |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 8:08 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Posts: 18
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I use Clockwise.
Texture Formats
BMP
TGA
PSD
DDS
.Float??
.PCX??
?? = Havent tested but is listed as possible to import as texture. |
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| joskj |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 8:18 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 11
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Ahh, good catch Zykomaniac, your absolutely correct, the rotation was to get the alignment to be correct when texturing as in the grome tutorial video on procedural texturing. I pretty sure i used clockwise rotation here (as i probably would have mentioned it if i did anti-clockwise). However, it will depend on how you do it in Grome i guess.
When it comes to texture formats, the follwing are supported (according to the udk manual):
•.bmp
•.pcx
•.tga
•.float
•.psd
However, I'm pretty sure UDK convert a texture into DirectX Texture Compression on import, and after that you dont realy need the "original" texture any more.
And finally, yes, I'm from Norway to  |
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| Zykomaniac |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 8:31 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Posts: 18
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Just to catch on regarding anti-clock and clockwise, as you said it will depend how you do it on Grome, if you rotate anti-clockwise, you need to export anti-clockwise, if you flip it 180 around, you need to export 180 turn around aswell.
But you mentioned you could rotate the texture from 1 material accordingly in udk to reduce amount of materials is true aswell. or rather, make two terrain layer materials use the same texture material, then make 1 of the terrain layers materials rotate itself 90 degrees/-90. which actually reduces cluttering of materials in UDK.
And yeah UDK converts the texture on import so in the end they are all the same format, else I'd bet there would have been info of what format it was in UDK. 
UDK manual isnt complete regarding formats then, because you can import DDS as well ^^
 was on your homepage yesterday you see joskj ; P |
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| ALicu |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 9:34 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 1330
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| I see, I will make option to export to either tga, bmp or dds then (for tile textures, while heightmaps and masks are always 16bit bmp). I will also scale the masks to be the size of heightmaps at export (if not already so in Grome). Thanks for all the info guys. |
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| Zykomaniac |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 12:43 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Posts: 18
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Only problem I am having actually, which may be a game breaker when thinking about terrain level streaming joskj, is that even though you create zones in grome which stiches is that when exported and converted is that the terrains got different edge offsets, the more edge variation the more it offsets the height at several points. Although max a couple of units, easy to fix, but takes some time if you got large terrains.
I dont know if its Grome, G16ED or UDK which is messing them up : | |
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| ALicu |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 1330
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| Maybe is from the scaling issue Jo was talking about some posts above. What Grome exporter are you using? Depending on the options you may have different scaling per terrain zone so the heights are normalized per zone rather than per entire scene min and maximum. |
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| Zykomaniac |
| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Posts: 18
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Every Zone is exported with the same settings
Heightmap raw 20 unit per pixel export only selected zones
every zone is exported as 257 |
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| ALicu |
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:58 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 1330
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| Yes, but what exporter are you using? Raw from Text Exporter or from the General Large Data Exporter? They are treating scaling differently. Also, do you export all the zones at once or select one -> export etc? |
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| Zykomaniac |
| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 30 Jan 2010
Posts: 18
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general export, I only export one at the time, exporting all together would result in a 40000x something image : P
I dont understand the text exporter so I dont use it, raw = txt? : p |
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