multi detail texture terrain question

Hi,

I searched the forums and saw some tricks how to make a terrain using multiple detail maps/textures through a blendmap. What I am wondering is though, could I still use my main terrain texture when I use a trick like that? Or does a blendmap terrain only support detail textures?

e.g. see here for the blendmap trick -> http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=322901&page=1

tia as always

in my little editor you can find some multitexturing solutions including a compatible texture editor for ffes/shaders. it is good to keep a main texture on the 1st skin to be visible in mirror views like water. so I use 1st skin as 24 bit main skin, and the others are 32 bit tiled textures, blending is on their alpha. and the main texture also can be blended in, to lower the visual effect of repeated tiled textures. the latest auto texturing shader is not released but works simply by sampling height and slope.

Hi Sivan,

Blending on the alpha is a smart idea. Is their a shader code of such on the forums (a simple one would suffice)? I already have the terrain and detailmaps ready and want to use paint shop pro for precise tile placement.

ps: are you making a game too? You can make something pretty with a terrain like that , just saying.

-edit, going to try the standard mtl_terraintex and see if that works out.

in MapBuilder2, free/extra users can use the terraintex fixed function effect, which uses blending based on tile maps alpha channel, while commercial and pro users can use a shader with nearly similar blending rules (a bit better).

I modified the terraintex ffe to work with mirror views like water by putting a 24b texture to the 1st skin (that appears in the mirror view). the shader also has a 24b base texture on the 1st skin, but it is also used to blend in a bit to hide the repetitiveness of tiled textures.

in theory in a shader you can define texture sizes and tiling independently... but easier to use similar ones. you can take my textures for free from my editor package. they are 512x512. but there are many free sources, or you can make them from photos too.

moreover, try to use L3DT or a similar terrain generator to create more realistic terrains than handmade ones, what you can modify afterwards to the needs of your game. I used it for the example terrains, and I simply smoothed out in my editor the middle regions of the terrain where I wanted to put some buildings for my RTS game test level.

, oh thats good to know, will keep that in mind
, thanks but no thanks, I am a photographer and want to hone my skills some more (I have a new terrain now that one looks alot better than my old one ).

, thanks for the tip