terrain

[Master chief]

OK here my problem i have created a image to be used with AM's terrain maker and it will successfully load in and build the terrain but when i try and view surfaces AM crashes. i have uploaded the picture listed below

 

my ultimate goal is to have a map that a army or two of robots Can fly , drive.... what ever , so it has to be pretty big but i was sure that my computer should be able to handle that since the cp count shouldn't have been that big

 

 

land.bmp

[photoman]

When creating terrain in A:M you have to be wary of patch count. Its not like other programs that can cerate a 10 million poly terrain. The best way to make terrain is to create use a low res heightmap (256x256) (Use AM Terraform here: http://www.tachyonburst.com/software/amterraform/). Then use the highres (2k+) heightmap for displacement.

 

I once made a 500k patch terrain in A:M, it took ran at 5spf (Seconds PER frame) in wireframe mode, 30 spf in shaded!

See thread here: Super High Patch Terrain

A:M can render high patch counts pretty fast but it takes it a while to "Compute patch visibility"

 

It also depends on how you texture it and the use of fog and other atmospheric effects that add the realism and depth.

 

Photoman

[HomeSlice]

In addition to what photoman said, terrains seem to work best if the grid splines are no closer than 100cm apart. I would recommend making them 500cm - 1000 cm apart. Then manually add resolution in specific areas where the camera gets close to the terrain or where characters are walking/standing.