[SOLVED] Porting a terrain from another engine... best practice?

[matthew.clifton]

Hi all,

 

Our project prototype was made in another engine, so we have a heightmap for our terrain. I was wondering what would be the best method of reproducing this with Unigine?

 

After looking through this forum, I have seen 'World Machine' mentioned time and time again, so we are looking into this. My main concern arises with the Base Textures. In our previous engine, all this texturing was done by hand (painting using the terrain engine). What would be the best way of creating the base textures for Unigine? Can I feed our detail textures into World Machine and produce a similar result as the hand painted version?

 

Any help with regards to best practice would greatly received.

 

Best Regards,

Matt.

polyPusher.

[ulf.schroeter]

In our previous engine, all this texturing was done by hand (painting using the terrain engine). What would be the best way of creating the base textures for Unigine? Can I feed our detail textures into World Machine and produce a similar result as the hand painted version?

 

Hi Matt, best way of terrain height/diffuse/mask texture creation depends primarily on your specific requirements. WorldMachine is a great tool for procedural, large terrain data and texture creation, but is not always the best approach.

 

In your case of an already existing terrain you should try to export heightmap and color/detail mask textures and detail material textures (e.g. grass/stone/gravel,...) to standard image formats supported by Unigine for import. Most problematic part will be proper conversion of terrain detail material blending mask as this depends on the applied concepts both of your previous engine and Unigine.

 

You should have a detailed look into terrain documentation and all the subsections for understanding Unigine import data format and concepts.

[manguste]

Exhaustive answer :D As a result, what you need for the Unigine terrain is:

1. Height map for vertex data.
   
2. Diffuse for unique color for the terrain.
   
3. Detail materials for high-res materials from close-by.
   
4. One mask to rule them all! controls where grass grows and where stone is rendered across the terrain. It can be the most problematic part for you. In WM you can generate a mask, should not be a problem.