They look horrible and disgusting ingame, some images:


Any thing that could help i will consider.
Edited by Halonimator on Feb 25, 2015 at 03:09 PM
Edited by Halonimator on Feb 25, 2015 at 07:58 PM

It looks like (a bad texture but also) a bad UV and model. Try adding smoothing groups to the surface plus a new UV.

Remove cubemap.

Yeah I can't imagine a texture like that would actually tile well at all

and also microbumps do not work!

Them jaggys though....

For starters... you're using a texture that has lighting information already in it. Never do that! We have lightmaps and bump maps for a reason, and that is to give the texture real 3d environment lighting based of the conditions in the level. I suggest going to cgtextures.org and finding a good cliff texture. They are all free and will tell you if they tile. You'll probably want to resize them to a power of two though. Second, you'll want to apply a smoothing group to the mesh, along with making sure that the UV's a seamless for the most part to ensure good tiling with your already tiling texture. Lastly I suggest maybe adding some more polygons to round out a few of the egdes and make it look a bit more believable.

That texture looks pretty bad. No offense. clean textures are the way to go. I wouldn't recommend using images from real life.
Edited by MEGASEAN2812 on Feb 25, 2015 at 05:02 PM

But it makes his map look like the FOX engine....

I think, that error doesn't come from the "shader.environment". You have two problems, but nothing difficult. You are using a illuminated texture and that's the first problem, try to search another texture on internet who is not illuminated. When you find it, open your model, and replace the old texture by the new one.
After it, you'll need to smooth all the cliffs. You can also select all the cliffs, and applying a "auto smooth". When the two parts will be finished, you'll have a clean model with a good texture applied on it.

If you want semi nicer textures, you can get Halo 3 texture packs on this site that has clifs and anything else you really need, and they would look more natural in halo and better then the vanilla CE textures

to get rid of those ugly texture-stretch marks in the bottom right and left in your pic:

try making a plane and cutting it up so it's shaped the way you need it to be, then strip-weld it onto the cliff:



you can also divide every vertical strip into its own element to make it easier too
Edited by OrangeJuice on Feb 25, 2015 at 05:20 PM

I did a little tutorial, to help you to improve your cliffs. First of all, they are many methods to get good looking cliffs, I will give you a simple one.

First, that's how you cliffs are looking in 3ds Max.

Now select your model, right clic (convert to editable mesh), and select vertex, and move all of them to get a better result

After you've done, you'll get something like that, better and clean.

Now apply a clean texture in your model.

When it's finished, right clic, and select again (convert to editable mesh), select vertex, and go to "soft selection" and select "Use soft selection", enter the number do you want in "fallof". And now play with it.

When you've done, select polygon and now select your cliffs with it. Now go to "smoothing groups" and select "auto smooth".

And now, you have nice looking cliffs !


Sorry for my english, I'm tired, it's late in France :)

What are you using that gives you detail bump map settings in your tags?

thanks for all the tricks.

to master: im using OS 3.1
Edited by Halonimator on Feb 25, 2015 at 07:38 PM

WHY!?!

That was never included in OS.

From whom did you get your build?
Edited by Masters1337 on Feb 25, 2015 at 07:50 PM

Not bad. My approach is similar - I start with a flat plane, tessellate once or twice (less than you) and then in Editable Poly I use the Slice tool to cut in other directions besides vertical/horizontal. Then, in order to make more organic extrusions, I use Soft Selection to move vertices. If it's too high-poly, I use the optimize modifier, but only in some sections (in order to retain a natural look). Most importantly, I Unwrap UV last, because I don't like being preoccupied by UV's when editing geometry. As far as UV unwrapping goes, apply quick planar maps in sections, then open the Unwrap Editor and weld to get rid of the seams. Also make sure the bottom/top of the cliff lines up with the bottom/top of the texture (like darksoldier pics). Then Relax the parts around your extrusions (careful not to use Relax too much). Smoothing groups come last (because it's easier to spot ugly extrusions without them) but at that point I usually just use Auto-Smooth.

Here's the result:



@darksoldier: Il n'est jamais trop tard pour écrire un post de valeur sur halomaps :^) Et ton anglais est beaucoup mieux que la plupart des gens qui post ici
Edited by stunt_man on Feb 25, 2015 at 08:03 PM

I usually just make my cliffs super boxy then cut the hell out of 'em as needed/connect edges/whatever else to add dem loops. But I keep it at the low poly ugly stage for a long time though 'cause it's much easier to do drastic changes in level design if you don't have a bunch of highpoly cliffs you spent 10hr perfecting to mangle. This way it's also easy to keep edgeflow good and detail level/polygon count consistent throughout map.

Hehe ! thank you ^^ Your French is very good too ! :)

I edited the orginal texture, to make it more darker with less light.

See under the new texture.

Not the best I can do, but if you want to keep this texture, it will maybe help you a bit.

About the shader, try using the same shader as in b30 (cliffs.shader_environment). Just replace the old textures by your own.



I tested the texture myself, and it's much better now, but it's need alot of work. I used the shader "Cliffs.shader_environment" and I replaced the old textures by the new one.




However, we can see the texture is not reliable, so I recommend you to change it by a better texture (who is reliable).


Edited by darksoldier on Feb 26, 2015 at 12:53 PM

or if you want to keep this texture go to gimp > filter > mapping > make seamless.

I have fixed the texture for you ! Not the best texture in the world but the result is good !

From me.
Cheers!

direct-to-greyscale bumpmaps..

you're a liar, i modded by my own!