Adding Terrain Textures

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Hi All, I have been moding maps in ro1 for 3 years and just started to make an all Tank map but im having trouble adding terrain textures, I have imported all the textures in the correct size etc and they appear ok in the browser, I have read all the posts I can find and found a nice tutorial on how to do it on youtube
Unreal Development Kit Terrain Basics Tutorial - UDK Tutorial - YouTube
Followed it to the letter but when I hit the "add from selected" arrow in the layer properties it dose nothing.

Am I overlooking something?
I have them all in separate named package in the Unpublished folder do I have to import them into the main game folders?
Im Stuck!

Newbe to ue3 not cirtain how the game file system works.

[BOH-rekrut]

Originally Posted by {SHD}Tryfan

Hi All, I have been moding maps in ro1 for 3 years and just started to make an all Tank map but im having trouble adding terrain textures, I have imported all the textures in the correct size etc and they appear ok in the browser, I have read all the posts I can find and found a nice tutorial on how to do it on youtube
Unreal Development Kit Terrain Basics Tutorial - UDK Tutorial - YouTube
Followed it to the letter but when I hit the "add from selected" arrow in the layer properties it dose nothing.

Am I overlooking something?
I have them all in separate named package in the Unpublished folder do I have to import them into the main game folders?
Im Stuck!

Newbe to ue3 not cirtain how the game file system works.

do you created the materials from your custom textures ?

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Originally Posted by BOH-rekrut

do you created the materials from your custom textures ?

Yes, I have them in there own package

[BOH-rekrut]

try out to save them under the mapname and apply the materials to the terrain again

[Six_Ten]

Originally Posted by {SHD}Tryfan

Yes, I have them in there own package

Read what Rekrut asked you again carefully.

You should have:

Textures
... that are part of
Terrain Materials
... that are part of
Terrain Layer Setup
... which go on the terrain.

Do you have each of those? If so and your terrain is still untextured, try refreshing the terrain layer cache.

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Yes I have, and refreshed the cache.

I imported the Textures and they show in the browser ok I then created a package to hold them draged and droped them in, opened it created Terrain Layer setup added Terain matirials then tried to add the texture in properties this is where it fails.
I followed the instructions in the Youtube vid to the letter, I also made sure they were loaded as well.

Unreal Development Kit Terrain Basics Tutorial - UDK Tutorial - YouTube[/URL]


If I copy a texture strait out of a standard map Terrain Matirials Properties and paste it in to the matirials properties works fine, which makes me think It cant find the file so maybe I have not got the package in the right place

[Six_Ten]

If it were me here's how I would go:

I don't drag and drop.

First set up your package, for example I would create a folder called

Props_Tryfan

and in it create a folder called

Terrain

Import your textures and create your Terrain Materials and Terrain Layer Setups into that folder. Save. If you can't save something is wrong. For now don't try to use existing textures, just create a .tga of a red and black checkerboard or something simple and import that just for testing. You can change it later.

Make sure the Terrain Material is good, double check that it properly references the textures you imported. Save again.

Make sure that the Terrain Layer Setup properly references your Terrain Material. Save.

Check both the Terrain Tool AND the Terrain Properties window.

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Thanks Six, Will give it a go.
Had already thought about doing somthing similar after looking at another youtube vid which offers a more detailed discripton of how to import,load and use Textures

[Six_Ten]

Any luck yet?

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Not tried yet works getting in the way lol, will be taking a look later.

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Ok Thats it guys! I have just spent the last 4 hours PI****ng around with this and thats it! I give up. Thanks for the help Six and Rekurt Im going to leave the RO2 modding to you guys.

If you fancy a project? I was working on a Ro2 version of Orel from Ost (Tanks Only) I think it would be a good map to draw in some of the Tankers back to RO

What I had in mind was to leave the spawns and Caps the same but as there is no exiting Tanks to call arty I was going to put some Random Arty in so that over the course of the map time duration it would gradualy take out the bridges and also drop on the cap zones and ridges from time to time to make it similar to ost gameplay.
Tank numbers per side was going to be high on initial spawn to cater for players who like to lone Tank,with respawn set at about 90%

What do you think?

[Yoshiro]

I suggest uploading what you have and letting the community mappers and/or Swag from Tripwire have a poke at it to see if they can identify what went wrong so you can continue!

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Hi Yoshiro, Thanks for the comment but I had only built the hightmap and terrain, placed a few Static Meshes lighting and sky etc nothing else. Could not get the Terrain textures to work at all so as I said I gave up and deleted it all! sorry

Maybe when I have cooled down a bit I may give it another shot.

Regards
Tryfan

[Six_Ten]

Originally Posted by {SHD}Tryfan

Ok Thats it guys! I have just spent the last 4 hours PI****ng around with this and thats it! I give up. Thanks for the help Six and Rekurt Im going to leave the RO2 modding to you guys.

Not going to accept that. Keep at it and get over that hill man. If you think any of us (well, speaking for myself anyway) it sometimes does take hours just to figure out a simple problem in this stuff. That goes with the job. Take a break, do something else to clear your mind, then brew some coffee and tackle it again.

You don't really think that any of the custom maps just sprang easily out of our computers do you? Go read the Beta Map Releases threads: look at the first post date, then read all the stuff that had to happen just to get to the stage they're in now. Notice that there aren't yet any threads in the Final Release Maps thread? Why do you think that is?

Originally Posted by {SHD}Tryfan

If you fancy a project? I was working on a Ro2 version of Orel from Ost (Tanks Only) I think it would be a good map to draw in some of the Tankers back to RO

What I had in mind was to leave the spawns and Caps the same but as there is no exiting Tanks to call arty I was going to put some Random Arty in so that over the course of the map time duration it would gradualy take out the bridges and also drop on the cap zones and ridges from time to time to make it similar to ost gameplay.

Tank numbers per side was going to be high on initial spawn to cater for players who like to lone Tank,with respawn set at about 90%

What do you think?

Tank commanders can call arty from inside the tank. Get back to work on your map. It took me three hours to get it (and I still can't figure out how to set the timing I want on it) but I managed to get arty called from tanks. When you get your terrain textures figured out, and get some tanks on your map, I'll help you set up the arty.

See the attachment for an example of what it can do.

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Thank Six, If we can call arty from Tanks that will make life a bit easier.

Ok, I have had a good nights sleep got my coffe and had a smoke!

I started again from scratch, used UT3 converter and imported the map with all the Static Meshes and volumes etc and it looks good. I have got to sort the textures yet, look at Converting the buildings to Static Meshes and scaling, but before that I want to sort the terrain.
Question, Is there a way to extract the terrain from RO1? I have had a good look but not found a way yet. The converter extracts the myLevel file but it dose not import into the editor as far as I can see. Trying to build the terrain from scratch is going to be a nightmare!
I have exported the Hightmap texture and going to convert it for import (Q, will a windows BMP be ok at 1024x1024)? But not cirtain if this is the right way to approach it or how to impliment.

I have still not quite got my head around the packages and linking structure yet but im getting there!

[Six_Ten]

Just got back from seeing Dark Knight Rises so it will be half an hour before I get my head fully back into the SDK, but I'll try to answer these for you then its back to Kursk for me...

Originally Posted by {SHD}Tryfan

I started again from scratch, used UT3 converter and imported the map with all the Static Meshes and volumes etc and it looks good. I have got to sort the textures yet, look at Converting the buildings to Static Meshes and scaling, but before that I want to sort the terrain.

Ro 1 meter = 60.352 uu (I think)
RO2 1 meter = 50 uu

So remember to scale RO stuff by .8285 that's for static meshes, terrain, shaders, everything.

Originally Posted by {SHD}Tryfan

Question, Is there a way to extract the terrain from RO1?
I have exported the Hightmap texture and going to convert it for import (Q, will a windows BMP be ok at 1024x1024)?

You are correct to export the heightmap, but don't scale it up to 1024, use its native resolution. It was originally 512. Stick with that.

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Thanks for taking time to help me on this Six its appreciated, hows Kursk coming along?

Ok, Got the terrain in and got the texture on it at last! imported the textures and starting to get them in the map and applied.

Now I cant save the map or packages it give me an error saying " Packages are linked to external package links will be broken when in game".
What have I done?
Map and packages are in MyDocuments/myGames/ro2/Unpublished.
I have not used any RO2 content yet so Im stuck as to why.

I have a "package 1" with sub Packages, Matirial and Textures. Map shows as a seporate package as are the Static Meshes should I have the matirials and texture files etc attached to the map package?

Q. Do you know of a quick way to rescale everything?

[Six_Ten]

Originally Posted by {SHD}Tryfan

Thanks for taking time to help me on this Six its appreciated, hows Kursk coming along?

You're welcome. Its a lot of fun once you get the hang of it and I still get stuck so its nice when others take time to help. Kursk is good; I'm trying a new method of modeling forests so I don't have to use 6000 tree models. Trying to cut the number of draw calls nd polys rendered in scene.

Originally Posted by {SHD}Tryfan

Ok, Got the terrain in and got the texture on it at last! imported the textures and starting to get them in the map and applied.

Now I cant save the map or packages it give me an error saying " Packages are linked to external package links will be broken when in game".

What have I done?

Map and packages are in MyDocuments/myGames/ro2/Unpublished.
I have not used any RO2 content yet so Im stuck as to why.

I have a "package 1" with sub Packages, Matirial and Textures. Map shows as a seporate package as are the Static Meshes should I have the matirials and texture files etc attached to the map package?

Glad to hear you got the terrain and textures in. Took long enough, didn't it?

The error youre seeing is that somwhere in one of the materials or something is a material or texture or something from a different package.

The only way I know to solve that is to go through every thing you've got in your package (start with terrain, mine often are there). I don't use Package1 or Package0; its better to name it something simple and specific like Props_Tryfan or to add a folder inside your map file called Terrain or Meshes or Shaders or whatever.

Try this: go to where your materials are in the asset browser, right click for the context menu, click move or rename or Create a Copy, and move them all one by one into your Props_Tryfan file. Start with the lowest level stuff like textures, then materials, then the stuff they're usually put into like meshes and Terrain Layers.

One more thing that I can't stress enough: SAVE COPIES OF EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU TRY ANYTHING NEW. Since you can't save til you find the externally referenced files, just take your time and hunt down the stuff that's outside.

[Srinidhalaya]

I'm trying a new method of modeling forests so I don't have to use 6000 tree models.

Combine mesh (multiple trees into 1 draw call)
and Max Draw distance

This should reduce your draw calls. If its stock mesh's, they can't be combined yet, but Swag is working on it.

[{SHD}Tryfan]

Have not been able to find out where the problem is so I decided to delete all materials and textures and start again.

Meshes are here:

C:\Users\Dad\Documents\My Games\RedOrchestra2\ROGame\Unpublished\CookedPC\Ma ps

Map is here:

C:\Users\Dad\Documents\My Games\RedOrchestra2\ROGame\Unpublished\CookedPC\Ma ps

If I create a new package It directs me to save it in the same place as the map link above. Should I be saving it somewhere else so the editor dose not see them as external?


I have no problem linking textures to material and applying them in the map

The meshes are loaded fine and I have no problem with them or textures except the terrain texture, it causes the problem. I have tried 2 or 3 different ways to apply it and I get it into the map OK, but then it gives me the External Package link warning when I try to save.

Should I be putting the terrain material directly into the map package?

All textures are fully imported and loaded as are the packages.

Would creating a Shared Folder and putting the textures in there be a better idea? I have not tried that one yet.

If this was the RO1 Editor it would be on a server by now lol.