So, I found this really cool place on Google Earth, and started mapping it. I want to make a cool rally map using it's roads and making some new ones. I'm adding a few pics for show, and give your opinion if you can. The area is 9462 x 9462 m in real life, and I imported the height map as 4096 (using a 2048 height map, and setting each pixel as 2 x 2 m), hence the quite 1/2 scale. Problem 1: Textures are looking quite strange. Am I doing something wrong? Problem 2: I have no idea on what to do next. Anyone knows any good in-depth tutorial for BeamNG mapping? Btw, sorry if I'm doing anything wrong, it's my first time posting > o <
It looks like a simple terrain material mistake. All of your material textures are the same. the detail and macro textures need to be different from the diffuse texture (which looks correctly setup) As you can see from this example, I have simply borrowed most of my materials and textures from Utah and added my own diffuse map. I edited the tiling (Size) to fit my needs, but its all essentially the same materials from the official content. Take a look at the terrain/material.cs for one of the official maps for more materials to use.
Ewanc, thanks for the help! )))) When I add the texture on the terrain, the texture looses detail (texture appears to worsen the resolution when applied as diffuse on terrain). I tried to fix it by adding it again as detail texture and making the distance big, I really don't know how to force the diffuse texture to be at full resolution when applied. Is there anything I should do, apart from painting the terrain later? I will need to change the color/transparency of other materials like rock and grass, to match the terrain diffuse right?
Glad to help and try not to dwell too much on what the bare terrain looks like, its what you add to it that makes it look realistic. The resolution of the diffuse texture should match the terrain size as closely as possible and you wont get better than 1m/pixel from USGS sources. Unfortunately, at that resolution its going to be grainy like you are experiencing. You could try resizing/remaking the overlay at 8192x8192 resolution to get it sharper. You should to avoid doing too much with the diffuse map by its self and its better to think of it as the color of the terrain, and then add fine details with the macro and detail/bump maps. Even with a 1024mx1024m map you wont get enough detail from a 8192x8192 pixel image to use it by its self, you will still need a detail map to render stuff like blades of grass, pebbles in gravel and sticks and leaves in a forest. The detail and macro textures are designed to tile at 5-10 meters so they are small size and still add nice details. You assign them to the different terrain paint types. You can still use your diffuse texture in each terrain type to retain the color, that's what I did for Pikes Peak. My map is very similar with 1.8m/pixel for the diffuse map, so the detail maps come in very handy.
At maximum #21 zoom, the Google Earth maps have ~10 pixels/meter now (I used #19, about 2p/m maybe), but as you said, that ain't all what matters for realism. There's the baseTexSize option in the object editor when the terrain is selected It bumps the diffuse texture to a maximum of 4096x4096. It looks better now. Pikes Peak tho, by far, is one of the best looking maps ever XD that's an amazing job, and the roads work perfectly too. Deleting the diffuse map on grass/rock textures forces them to take color from the original diffuse in the terrain texture, I think that's what you meant right? I'm also following some tutorials for road making, like this:
Woops, actually: I just now noticed when saving my map that when I use the grass texture without a diffuse map, it takes the under texture as base color, but later it turns black I need to add the same diffuse texture as the map for each terrain paint I'm using then :O It's looking good now:
Geezus KRIST, I just NOW realized that there's a save button on top of the decal bar... BUT it isn't working either... When I save, close and reopen my level, it resets all decals :C
FYI I gave up on this map. It was REALLY cool to play rally on it, but thanks to the HORRIBLE programming on BeamNG and it's mapping features, I lost everything. I'll try mapping stuff again later. And thanks to Ewanc for helping me out a lot, he's the best I'm not giving up due to his guidance and enlightenment.
