Skip to 2:00 I demonstrate it, or look at photos. Forza 5 - Alternate way to make terrain - Jello Mold - YouTube It says Forza 5 cause someone asked about me making a video on how to make a caldera like the game has at beginning Blender made molds Place Mold - use align to mesh Remove Blender/Jello Mold Decorate with decals, terrain paint, forest and ground cover Oh, the mesh was 300,000 polys, likely not needed to be that many. Limited to ground terrain chuck size. Which you can make a map .25 and get some fine details but your map will be tiny
I've been thinking about trying something like this. It would be great when you want to add local details rather than import an entire map.
I suspect by full release the world editor will have plenty of assets, large and small to all degrees of details. Each developer map has its own assets but would be great if they all where linked to a larger collection that is accessible to any level created. Start with the smallest grid plain map, and add only what you want. Not need to copy over assets like terrain paints, forest items, DAE/meshs, sounds from other saved maps. Various starter maps would be great for new people too. Different themes. The dev maps already are that basically. But its a job and a half to get their maps stripped down to use the assets to make your own map. Be great if there was create new map > pick theme > instant flat map, with a powerful asset library to aid one designing on it. A random seed generator to use those assets to make maps would be cool.
A resource repository. I've always wondered why that wasn't implemented from the start. It would have saved many headaches. It would become the largest folder in the game, but every map could be made a fraction of its current size. I've actually started my own repository for my maps since I only have a 500 GB SSD. One of the main issues to resolve is what to do when the devs decide to replace an asset with an updated version. If they use the same asset name, every mod that uses it will load the new asset, whether the map creator wants it or not. If a new name is used, every map needs to be edited to use the new asset. A potential solution would be to increment the asset repository. Create a new subfolder for each revision. That way, maps could be updated with a simple find/replace of the /repoNumber/ folder, rather than a dozen (or a hundred) assets names. Repo folders could have a sunset date, when the official version of the game would no longer use or support it. Modders who like an old repo could save a private copy in their user folder. Well, those are my thoughts for tonight.
