Hi, Here is a tutorial for the proper way to make a terrain in Beam-NG. They will look more realistic and believable than the ones made in the torque3D Terrain editor editor so enjoy! Introduction: in this tutorial I am going to show you the best (or at least the proper) method for creating a terrain in Beam-NG. I will guide you through all the stages including using L3DT. Before I begin you must have the following software installed on your PC: L3DT: http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/downloads/standard.php Beam-NG https://sites.fastspring.com/beamng/instant/alpha when you have that done, you are ready to begin! This is the sort of thing we will be making: step 1: Generating a heightmap Ok, so the first thing you need to do to make terrain is generate a heightmap. This is effectively a black and white image that tells the game where to put what and at which height. Making this would be very difficult but luckily we have L3DT to help us out. When you open L3DT you will be greeted by this screen: what you want to do is press the little button shaped like a white page with a green plus in the top left of the window. Clicking this open the L3DT wizard window, this is what we use to generate our heightmaps. I will lead you through this by numbering each step in accordance to the window. 1. Select the first option on the list (designable map recommended). This should load for a second then present us with a window saying "height-field size" in blue at the top. 2. This is the window that will decide the size of our new terrain. It is important to remember at this time that bigger is not always better not only due to the time it would take to finish, but also because it might lag the game etc. Start with something small, i chose these settings: At the bottom you may have noticed the world size indicator, as you can see mine says 14.7 sq km . This is the size of the map that L3DT will generate for us. press next to move on to stage three when your happy with your size. 3. this step is irrelevant to this terrain creation method so just press next again to move onto step four 4. This is the window where you basicly design the basic shape of your terrain. You can make further adaptations when it's imported to beam-NG but getting the essential shape now is essential if you want the map to feel realistic. It should look like this before you adjust it: As a rule of thumb its best to raise the average altitude (first slider) just a little, and lower the altitude range (second slider) to about 1/3rd of the way up it's bar (L3DT tends to go crazy with steep mountains otherwise). This should make you a nice mixture of flat and hilly terrain with more land than see and no crazy cliffs. You can play about with this depending on what you have in mind, bare in mind this is not final though. It can be easily changed in the future. 5. this should bring up a window with 7 check boxes. Make sure none but the first (design map) are selected then press continue. Now, if you have followed me well you should have something like this (every one is a different pattern) This is a super super basic drawing of your terrain. The blue represents sea the darker is deeper, the green is the land. I have circled a button at the top of that image in red, this is the edit tool. It is important to keep the player on your map, this can be done by cliffs (looks odd), blockers like trees and buildings, or the best and easiest method, making the map an island. For my terrain, I have green hitting the edges of the map which means it's not an island. Press the edit tool (highlighted red on the above image) and select the lake check box. slide the slider a little way up then make sure your terrain has water all around by "painting" in sea all around the green land. For those of you who are confused, here is a quick pic of how the edit tool should look when correctly set up: I drew water all around my terrain and added a little lake. now it looks like this: Don't worry if it looks blocky, but avoid lines with more than about 7 blocks in a row or you will get un-natural looking sections. When your happy with the map press the calc button (7 to the left of the edit button on the top bar) and check the box named heightfield then press next. Wait for that to load, this could take a while and you will get weird flashy images while it does it's stuff. Just leave it for a minute or so and you will get something like this: The dark bits are low and the white bits are high. This is what Beam-NG will use to make the hills and mountains in your map. Make a folder on your desktop called "My_map" or whatever it is you want to call your map. Right click the image and select export from the drop down menu. The filetype should be PNG the name "heightmap" and the destination (press the three little dots on a button) is in the folder you jut created. Congratulations! you now have a basic terrain, you just have to get it in-game. To keep this tutorial easy for you to follow I have uploaded a heightmap below that I will be working on for the rest of the tutorial. I advise downloading it and following my steps with it in place of yours so certain parts are easier. Please don't upload any finished maps using this heightmap or we may get a load of maps that are all the same! This map is a small cove with a high cliff and a lagoon. It's very nice when finished ;P Step 2: Importing to Beam-NG and making a sky and ocean. Go to this destination on your pc AppData\Local\BeamNG\BeamNG-DRIVE-0.3\levels and create a folder called cove_island. When your done, download the above image and place it inside. Go back to this location; AppData\Local\BeamNG\BeamNG-DRIVE-0.3\levels and enter the folder called dry_rock_island, copy the folder called art and paste it into your cove_island folder. Then copy the art folder from small_island and paste it into your cove_island folder aswell. when prompted select "merge files" and "replace all". Finally go to the folder called industrial and repeat the same process of copying the art folder and pasting it in your cove_island folder. once again, when prompted select "merge files" and "replace all". Your cove island folder should now look like this: The art folders contain all the textures and objects used in the current beamng maps, in the future you can make your own objects in blender or 3DS max but it is to long to fit into this already massive tutorial. minus the cove_island folder( press the little dash in the top corner to close it XD), and Run BeamNG. select the map named Grid, Pure. When it has loaded exit full-screen mode by pressing alt + enter and then open the world editor by pressing f11. Go to the top left and select file > new level. Don't be alarmed! that weird grey sea thing is totally normal. go back to the file tab and this time select import terrain heightmap. The terrain heightmap is what we made earlier in L3DT and what you downloaded from this page a few minutes ago. I will run through everything you can see right now below: Red: The name (not of the terrain as displayed on the menu but of the hills ect you areabout to add, just leave it as TheTerrain at the moment) Blue: The number of metres the game puts per pixel, leave it at 1 also. black: The height of your map, the higher the number the more hilly and steep it will make it. Adjust it to 100 if your going to use the heightmap I gave you. Purple: Were you select the heightmap, press it, then select levels>small_cove>height.PNG When you've done all that you will have successfully imported it into game, only problem is you can't see it right? well the issue is this weird grey sea thing is covering it up. go to the scene tree on the left and select and delete the thing called ground plane, I've done and image below for you: the grey see thing will go and you will be left with something like this. Press ctrl + 1 for a free flying view. move using wasd and look by dragging with right click. I advise you save the level now. Go to file, press save as and navigate to the small_cove folder you made. save the map as smallcove now that's out the way, press f11 ans watch as your gavril d-15 gracefully plumets to the ground and hits your orange cliffs. You now officially have the terrain in-game! well done. now lets add a sky and some sea. In the scene tree on the right (same place where we deleted the ground plane) you will notice at the top there is a tab with the options "scene" and "library". select "library" then on the new list of tabs below select level, on the folders below this tab select environment (if your stuck at what i mean there look at the next image and i have added some arrows to explain). This is all the things you can add to the world (excluding meshes like trees roads and buildings). lets start by adding some sky. select scatter sky from the list and press yes to the little warning message that appears, when the settings box opens, change the brightness from 25 to 40 then press ok. You should now look like this: next thing to do is add an ocean, select water plane from the environment list and when prompted name it ocean. Move it up and down by clicking and dragging the blue arrow till it looks realistic, I have chosen to go here: Make sure the ocean has the settings density: 1000 viscosity: 0.001 or it will act as though it's not there! So you now have, a very very basic terrain ready to play in beam-NG, save the level (make sure that you navigate to your small_cove folder before saving or the save may corrupt ) or the and the press f-11 to close the world editor. As you can see, you can drive about this terrain and crash into the sea etc. But in order to look anything like a terrain it needs to be textured. Now we are going to very quickly name the map to help us find it in the future. Press f1 and select the option called thelevelinfo on the right hand tab. scroll down to the bottom and change level name to small cove and level description to something nice it should look like this: Step 3: Texturing the map So in order to texture the map we need textures. Luckily when you copied all those art folders into you small_cove folder you got all beam-NG's default textures aswell. Open world edit mode by pressing f11 then open terrain editor by pressing f3. In the right hand tab, you will see a button saying add layer and probably a layer already there with an orange preview. Select "new layer and you will be confronted by something like this: If for you, the box titled "terrain materials" on the left hand side of that window is empty continue reading this, if it is full like on the screenshot (unlikely) skip to the row of stars further down. OK, to set up a new texture press the little button I have circled in red on the above image. This will make texture called new material which is just blank. change the name of the texture to "Grass" and then press edit on the diffuse box, when prompted to load an image navigate to your small_cove folder which you made in the levels folder for beam-NG and open the art folder. once opened select the folder named terrain and open that. So just to be clear that's: levels > small_cove > art > terrain Select the image called "Overlay_Grass-01" and it should appear in the little square next to the word diffuse. change the size to 150 when you are done repeat this processes with all of the following: (Slot type: image | additional settings) Grass Diffuse: Overlay_Grass-01 | Size: 150 (you just did this one ;P) Macro: Macro_grass | Size: 60 Distance: 360 strength: 0.5 Detail: Grass-01-D | Size: 3 distance: 30 strength: 1 Normal: Grass-01-N| Parallax scale: 0 Grass 2 Diffuse: Overlay_Grass-02 | Size: 500 Macro: -no texture(just leave it)- | Size: 200 Distance: 500 strength: 0.7 Detail: Grass-02-D | Size: 5 distance: 100 strength: 1 Normal: grass-02-n | Parallax scale: 0 Rock Diffuse: Overlay_02 | Size: 20 Macro: -no texture- | Size: 200 Distance: 500 strength: 0.7 Detail: Rock-05-D | Size: 7 distance: 200 strength: 0.5 Normal: Rock-05-N | Parallax scale: 0 Beach sand Diffuse: Overlay_Sand-01 | Size: 500 Macro: -no texture- | Size: 200 Distance: 500 strength: 0.7 Detail: Sand-01-D | Size: 5 distance: 50 strength: 1 Normal: Sand-01-N | Parallax scale: 0 Ensure you got all your texture images from the art folder in your small_cove file or it might mess up later on. That was pretty tricky to explain so if you have any issues contact me via pm or post a comment and il try to help you figure it out. If you were successful, close the new layer window and you should have something like this on the right hand side of your screen: No comes the fun and super easy part. earlier on we made the sea, go back to it by pressing f1 then looking in the right hand tab and selecting ocean (or whatever you called it). find the number that I have circled below (it vary's depending on where you put the sea in your map. Copy it (be careful not to miss any minus signs) and then press f3 to return to the texturing tab select the texture named grass that you made earlier and press the auto-paint button just below the large square preview of the texture. Make the "height min" the number you just copied from your ocean and the height max 10000. Then make slope min 0 and slope max 30 press generate. Here's a screen of mine just before i pressed generate. This will put a grass texture on some areas of your map. Next select grass 2 and press autogenerate but this time change the min slope to 30 and the max slope to 33, ensure the min height remains at your copied value and the max height at 10000. This will add a layer of lighter grass on slightly steeper hills, it will bridge the gap between grass and rock and make it look more natrual. When that's done select Rock, press autogenerate but this time make the min slope 33 and the max 90. ensure the min height remains at your copied value and the max height at 10000. Finally select beach-sand and press autogenerate, This is a little different though. Make max height your copied value (the one you took from the ocean tab) and min height -100000 set max slope to 90 and min slope to 0. Press generate and your map is now fully textured and actually looks like a map! save it now before the game crashes! Step 4: adding roads and objects This is the really fun part. Now you get to make all the little details and the crazy jumps that make the map feel awesome. First we will add a road layout, the key is to make the map feel as big as possible by making roads 1. not visible from each other when close. This makes the player feel as though they are no where near where they used to be even they are 5 foot from the spawn. Trees and building act as good blockers. 2. looping. dead ends are never good unless they lead to a feature such as a cliff or a beach. Try to make stuff connected as possible 3. Varying road surfaces. yes it sounds stupid but having all asphault makes people think the island is already explored. use some dirt aswell So let's lay some roads down. Press this button and change the default road width to 8,i have put an arrow to both below quick note: dont worry about the underwater sqaure, you can't see it when you driving so the player wont see it The tool-bar that the road laying button is on has most of the tools we will use in this section on and to save me using a screenshot each time i will just refer to it as the toolbar, the options bar on the left when you select an item from the toolbar will be called the options bar Ok, so select the road editor tool like i have in the above image and click where you want to start your road, keep clicking untill you get the shape you want and you will get an orange road where you have gone, leave them orange for the time being as they're easier to spot, lay a few more roads going to some various places, i chose to do mine like this as i plan to have a broken bridge across the entrance to the harbour: Don't worry if the roads are on an angle, we will flatten them out later, some of mine are at practically vertical! Try to avoid making roads that are continually cornering, people like to go fast aswell as turn so make a few straights like I have If you plan to make some roads a diffrent texture of i.e a dirt track, end your current road by double clicking and start a new one where you want the dirt road to come off. This way you can texture whole roads at a time and not end up with all asphault or all dirt. On the right hand tab you will see a list of all the roads you have created, i have 5. Select one of your choice then press the material button i have circled on the above image. Check the box that says roads and paths and make sure every other box in the lower section is unchecked. cycle through the diffrent options in the top tab (mapped, unmapped and all(this is not really all the textures so be careful) You will notice the asphault roads and paths in the mapped section and the dirt ones in the unmapped section. something like this: select one that's appropriate for your road and press select. your road will now be the texture colour that you selected. complete this for all the roads until it looks like a good mix of asphault and dirt. So we have the roads all textured but not drivable because they're at weird angles and all up vertical cliffs. fear not! on the tool-bar select the terrain editor (or just press f2). In the options panel at the left you will see an array of various functions for editing the appearance of your map. were going to be using the level tool and the smooth tool for the time being. to begin with, select the level tool (or press 7) and then adjust the brush size by holding control and scrolling the mouse wheel. it aught to be about this big in releation to your road (click to expand if you can't see it) when you have the size right just work around the whole map following you roads whilst holding left click. when you zoom in to have a closer look it should look something like this around your roads: when you have done all the roads with the levelling tool (don't worry if it looks really strange on some sections, we will smooth it then hide any nasty parts with rocks), use a mixture of the smooth tool the smooth tool (or press 4) and the smooth slope tool (press 5) and you can remove those weird jagged edges around your road. leave some smaller ones though and try to keep the road as flat as possible. -----> This is quite a long and boring job, just get it over and done with and the best part is soon. When your done doing that, make any changes you want to the textures by pressing f3 and then using the brush tool to paint them on. I chose to add a few more beaches as I thought my map was lacking them a bit. this is my final textured map: SAVE!!!!!!! So now we have the final texturing done, it';s time to add some objects. This is really really good fun as it brings the map to life but there's a few techniques you can use. Say you wanted to make some palms on your beach, Placing each pine by hand would be difficult + would look surprisingly un-natural so to plant vegetation we use a tool called Forest. Step 5 : adding objects and vegetation In this step i will show you how to use the forest tool, how to place and scale objects, and also the basics of how to make stuff look real. I'm not going to tell you were to put every object or else every map would look identical so I'll just provide a picture of my finished map at the end . Select the button shaped like a leaf on the tool-bar (or press f8) and you will be presented with the forest editor tab. This would be a very easy processes but sadly for some reason Beam-NG seams to forget what you put in which brush (you will understand that in a minute XD) and a result this can be quite long-winded to get started. You will see in the left hand tab, you have open a window called brushes. There's no need to ever change this to meshes unless your using custom objects as by putting the art folders into our small_cove folder earlier we transported across all the brushes made by the Beam-NG devs for their maps. Infront of each brush you will see a little arrow, press it and it will expand to show you the contents of that brush. The problem is, despite the fact it knows what should be there, it has forgotten where the 3d model is so you will have to click the little drop down menu (like me on the picture below) and select the model that matches whatever brush you selected. I am doing exactly that in the picture below so you can understand better When the forest brush is matched up with it's model you will be able to apply that model to the ground. Be wary of the fact that scrolling the mouswheel increases/decreases size and ctrl + scroll increases/decreases pressure applied by the brush (number of models put down) if the pressure is accidently set to 0 nothing will be put down. for realistic trees i would set it to around 30-40 and higher if your trying to hide something behind trees. Work through matching up the models to the brushes and try to keep the tree types varied as in if your making a palm beach don't just use palm_f or it look man-made. Here is an example of some palm trees on a beach i have placed in my map, notice how they get smaller as they go back and become mixed with oak saplings as they reach grass. Don't worry about placing individual items like houses or bridges yet, that can be done later. To summarise, here are 5 basic rules that it's good to sick to when adding trees, rocks and undergrowth to your terrain: 1. Don't go mad with trees, you will lag and also the map will feel dark and enclosed. Using fields with lush undergrowth surrounded by trees is much better and looks more realistic 2. Rocks are really important. If you have a steep cliff or road, laying rocks on the sides can smooth it up, use them to direct the player through offroad or dirt roads. Finally they are useful for disguising abrupt changes in texture. 3. Having visible textures will look pretty bad when you add undergrowth so i advise trying to mask or at least disguise any huge open spaces with rocks or trees from the roads as that is where users will spend 90% of their time! 4. Always place trees realisticly, having a tree coming out the side of a vertical cliff will look stupid as will having a palm tree in the middle of an oak wood (there are some exceptions). Try to match tree type to texture's if your feeling confused, palm goes on sand or low lying grass, oak on medium level terrain and you can stick dead trees on really steep or high stuff! 5. Always try to make an area a feature. If you have a dirt road that just goes to a bunch of trees, no-one will ever go down it. Take the player to a car park to drift or a rock-crawling section disguised as a rockfall (that way they think they're baddas for crawling it XD). Essentially, all roads must lead somewhere and the player must keep discovering new things for a long time. When your done laying forest, which does take a long time, you can start laying individual objects to finish it up. one of my individual objects is a broken bridge crossing the harbour mouth. I will guide you through the placing process now. Fist, press f1, this will bring you to the object editor on the tool-bar. On the window to the left of tyour screen swap to the tab named library, go to the sub tab "meshes" Like this: once yours looks the same as that^ select levels (i have drawn an arrow to it above) and then select "small_cove", then "art", then "Shapes." You will now have list of the diffrent categories of object you can place. I'm going to place a bridge so I will look in the buildings category. When i have found the bridge i will select it's name and click twice on it. The bridge will now appear in the middle of the screen but probably be in completely the wrong place. To move it select the move tool from the options bar, this will allow you to move it up down left and right, pressing one of the arrows will allow you to move it only in that direction. select anyware on the screen and drag it into position. The same applies to using both the scale and rotate tool. Repeat this as neccesary to build a town or place any form of mesh on the map. That's about it! I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and if you have any further questions i'll try to answer them as fast as i can. I will continually be updating this to include new parts aswell
This creates pretty great height maps: http://www.geocontrol2.com/e_index.htm Free for use for 30 days. Save them as a 16bit TIFF, then convert to a 16bit PNG in photoshop or similar.
and still, after reading stuff like: "no one will create a tutorial just for you, use the wiki" on former requests for tutorials of other people in this forum, while the wiki contains only basic informations but lacks alot of details and rules you have to obbey on steps like importing stuff from other applications to make things actually work in the end for example, this is highly appreciated! so Thank You for Your time and energy to create this and sharing Your knowledge with the less proficient fellas like me! <3
haha thanks I just added a bunch more. I'm finishing of the terrain now sao i can finish the tutorial with examples ect
Hi, big thanks for this guide. By myself i wouldnt create one, cause the wiki wasnt that helpful. Your one is much better and now i can try it too. One question: Can this plates be used as street roads? In my town i got streets for tanks (they wont break down like newer roads) and those ones (on pics) should be like this. My road i want to add: EDIT: When i want to add the heightmap, i get a message i should look into console (cant import). I think "minus the folder" is the reason, cuz i dont know what you mean^^
This is great, I wanted to make maps for this game when I bought it, but I tought it was too hard. But now, in only 1 hour, I have created a small map, with some hills and roads. It has got some quirks though, the roads are a bit too bumpy (low polycount?, smoothing doesn't seem to help...), and the grip isn't like in other maps (maybe it's adjustable somewhere?). but still, i can make a map now. Thanks a million
Great tutorial! But still my TER file wont show up in my map folder, and when I try notepad ++, to try codeing it in the right place, this shows up any help?
Do you know how one would get the different surface effects of the different materials available ? like sand, mud, asphalt. till now i did not find a way to achieve that. how is the mud on the industrial map made for example in which you sink into, im aware that a water block is causing the drag and bouncy but what causes the car to clip throu the visable terrain, also how you get beach sand to be grippy and tire killing as beach sand on small island. couldnt figure it out. . / edit: answered in another thread, hopefully i understood it as much as i think
thanks ive been working hard on this and even have a small town thing in it. do you think you could do rivers sometime in the near future? many thanks, -1jdog1
Rivers look pretty bad in tourque 3d atm, il show you how though. as for the diffrent terrain types, il find out and It
