Level Design Need a Bomb Crater Static Mesh

[Divinehammer]

Does anyone have a static mesh of a crater that they would like to donate to the community. It seems like this would be standard in the packages but it is not, at least I have not found one yet. If we had a skinable crater it would make it a lot easier for us mappers to place these and just make life easier. I have to admit part of this is for selfish reasons and if you just want to email me one that would be great.

 

[DingBat]

Well, you have to be careful here. In my experience, getting the mesh to meld nicely in with surrounding terrain is going to be a bit of a challenge. Not insurmountable, but difficult. Secondly, iirc, vehicles driving over these meshes may behave strangely.

What sort of poly budget were you thinking of allocating to these craters?

I've found the craters that I create using the terrain editor to be acceptable. Not perfect, but certainly easier that creating crater meshes.

 

[Divinehammer]

obviously I dont know the ins and outs here so what I was thinking is that I just wanted a crater that I could adjust the size on like all the other SMeshs and could skin to match whatever I wanted. I was just thinking the standard bowl shape whith dirt on the edges Then it could be lowered into the terrain which has had it visibility removed. I have tried adding additional terrain actors but it causes problems matching up other places or how many really small terrain actors can I make before it bogs down the map? My terrain squares are 312 square at the moment through out the map. Vehicles being stuck in the crater wouldnt be that big of a deal kind or realistic. So i guess I dont reall know what i am asking for Maybe I should just try and make a small terrain where I want the craters and go from there. I guess I was looking for a quick short cut if I could just plop a Smesh and move on that would be cool. Thanks for the reply.

 

[DingBat]

You don't technically need to use a second terrain actor to create craters. Here's the technique I used on RedGodOfWar (I don't claim this is the best method, or that it will satisfy you, btw).

1. Set your terrain brush to the size of the outside radius of the crater
2. Raise the terrain
3. Smooth the terrain until you get the desired look. The crater will look like a large pimple.
4. Set the terrain brush to a smaller radius
5. Lower the terrain.
6. I usually leave the inner part of the crater "sharper" than the outside, however, you will have to make sure that people who get into the crater can get out.
7. Paint the terrain as desired.

It can be finnicky at times to get the craters to look good, but it does work.

Sorry if I'm not getting what you're trying to do.

 

[Divinehammer]

Right that is how I would do it if I had used smaller terrain size see my Terrains squares are 312 x 312 which is really large when you go into an urban environment. My map starts out CA and ends as an infantry battle. I am trying to make these craters in the the infantry part. Which it would be great if I had used 25x25 or something then I could fine tune the terrain all around. making a normal size crater though right now just looks to jagged because not enough vertices are being involved. Can I make something with BSP Terrain mesh?

 

[worluk]

iirc there were some problems using BSP as terrain. some vehicle and collision stuff iirc, or was that for SM underground?
All i certainly know is that its not recomended

 

[DingBat]

Ah, light dawns in DingBat's foggy brain. I see your dilemma now.

Well, what you could try to do is create a second terrain layer with a smaller sector size and use it in the infantry area of your map. Hide the interface between the two terrains somehow.

 

[Divinehammer]

yeah i thought of that after I had over half of the buildings in infantry part all set, so it would take alot of time to reset that FPS are borderline already. Can I do anything with BSP Terrain no one seems to talk about that part of the editor.

 

[[TW]DrGuppy]

The most optimized and easiest way is to make a second TerrainInfo. If you try to do it with a staticmesh you'll never get a good collision model for it. Collision models are just like BSP and can have the same errors. Creating boxes for collision is what you have to do and for a crater that just doesn't work. You could leave collision on a per poly basis but that will make vehicles bounce off it in funky ways and dead bodies fall right through.

If you're worried about FPS already then BSP will just add to your troubles. BSP is for simple shapes, craters aren't really a simple shape.

Trust me/us, go with a second terrain info.

 

[ViViD]

Second terrain layer is probably not wise if your doing a lot of them, covering the whole map, but if it for a particular area it should be fine..

BSP can be done but the biggest problem the ground never matches up in colour to the terrain, makes it look fake.

On a side note, how many terraininfos have people successfully done on one map, so far I only used 3 in conjuction.

 

[[TW]DrGuppy]

I don't mean create a new TerrainInfo for each crater. What you do is create one new TerrainInfo that covers the entire map and then just use the Visibility Tool to remove all the spots where there isn't a crater. What I would do to save time is make the entire terrain invisible and then just make the crater area visible as you go along. Hope that's clear.

 

[DingBat]

Gups knows his stuff. So long as you're eliminating all the extra terrain you're not using, there should be too much of a downside to this strategy. The only hurdle is making the interface between the two terrains look good.

 

[Divinehammer]

I don't mean create a new TerrainInfo for each crater. What you do is create one new TerrainInfo that covers the entire map and then just use the Visibility Tool to remove all the spots where there isn't a crater. What I would do to save time is make the entire terrain invisible and then just make the crater area visible as you go along. Hope that's clear.

Yes I understand what you mean. It would be alot of work though to make one terrain info work for some craters that literally far apart . There would be alot of visibility changes to do. Thanks.

 

[Slyk]

I'm using BSP terrain to shape foxholes/rifle pits and turning them into static mesh.

The steps:

1. Create the hole in the terrain.
2. Set the BSP grid size and overall size
3. Shape the BSP to your liking
4. Texture, select all adjacents, set the 'planer' value and the scale 1, .5, .25 etc
5. Compile with full lighting
6. Convert the shape to a static mesh.
7. Test for shape, odd angles etc.
8. If necessary go back and edit the vertice points (go to step 5)

I used 8x8 rows/columns on a size of 256x256 units. Expanded the outer vertice points as necessary and came up with foxholes/riflepits of about 190 polys. It took three hours to get right but now that the process is known, it will go faster.

 

[Divinehammer]

very interesting how does the lighting and vehicles and bullets reflect off? do you see any drawbacks. This was what I was wanting to use it for I only need like two or three craters in my map so this should work I will give it a shot. Thanks. Do you only use vertice edit on BSP Terrain? How come I dont see many other maps using BSP terrain? Thanks.

 

[Slyk]

I had some player collision issues until I got the angles right for entry/exit. So far it seems that bullets are ok with it, didn't try vehicles yet. Yes, use the vertice edit tool, just like dragging a cube corner etc. The RO team may have some horror stories, I don't know, but it seems to work well enough. More testing needed. Not sure how big a model I would try with it but I am one to push the edge so I imagine I will try some big stuff and see what happens. Lighting is fine. MUCH better than with brushwork-turned static mesh.

 

[ViViD]

Problem with that Guppy your increasing the size of the map (a terrain layer still takes its maximum file space even if it is invisible), and if he used a huge map, they why wouldn't he just trash his terrain and use a more detail 1024x1024 terrain layout.

As I said ok for a small area but does not make sense for artillery craters, which nees fine work around the rimm and doesn't need any verticals like a trench.

So I disagree with this concept if he is using it for a whole map approach.

If he was doing a map full of trenches then i would agree with you


SLYK: did you find with static meshes if you get shot you fall through the floor, some the tripwire tenches do this.

 

[Divinehammer]

Problem with that Guppy your increasing the size of the map (a terrain layer still takes its maximum file space even if it is invisible), and if he used a huge map, they why wouldn't he just trash his terrain and use a more detail 1024x1024 terrain layout.

As I said ok for a small area but does not make sense for artillery craters, which nees fine work around the rimm and doesn't need any verticals like a trench.

So I disagree with this concept if he is using it for a whole map approach.

If he was doing a map full of trenches then i would agree with you


SLYK: did you find with static meshes if you get shot you fall through the floor, some the tripwire tenches do this.

See my top terrain layer is all 312x312 and all I was hoping to do was to make some here and there craters so I was going to make some small highly detaile terrains under my top layer like maybe 32x32 or something then I could make my craters and match edges to the top layer of terrain. I only need to do this in a small area. These craters are just for believability like how did that get damaged? with no crater it is hard to believe. you could use the same idea for localized trenches like at the top of a hill or something. If the whole map was trenches then yes I would suspect that you would need a larch trench terrain or you would just make the top terrain all out of 32x32 or at least just the playable area.

 

[FlashPanHunter]

I'm using BSP terrain to shape foxholes/rifle pits and turning them into static mesh.

The steps:

1. Create the hole in the terrain.
2. Set the BSP grid size and overall size
3. Shape the BSP to your liking
4. Texture, select all adjacents, set the 'planer' value and the scale 1, .5, .25 etc
5. Compile with full lighting
6. Convert the shape to a static mesh.
7. Test for shape, odd angles etc.
8. If necessary go back and edit the vertice points (go to step 5)

I used 8x8 rows/columns on a size of 256x256 units. Expanded the outer vertice points as necessary and came up with foxholes/riflepits of about 190 polys. It took three hours to get right but now that the process is known, it will go faster.

Good lord, do you not have a modeling program or do you simply prefer to do it this way? That process sounds like a nightmare, I would really think about trying that kind of stuff in 3ds.


Regarding the topic, I would recommend against using small little terrains, it's a real pain, not worth the effort imo. Static mesh would be a much easier method, just contour a plane into the shape of a crater, and use some fitting texture. Collision on the mesh could be done ina couple of different ways. First, if the mesh is relatively simple, less that 100 tris or so, a duplicate of the crater mesh, but have it be enclosed (as opposed to being a sheet), import it, convert it to a brush, set it as the mesh's collision, and voila, player's wont fall through it and vehicles will not bounce off and do other bizare things. If the mesh has more polies that this, this method will create a pretty complex colision model which will slow things down, so you'll need to model a more simplified collision to match the crater, trying to keep the number of brushes to a minimum. Let me know if this is unclear or you want to do this and need a hand.

Regarding bsp terrain, like everyone has said, don't do it!!

 

[Slyk]

Don't have a model making program, don't care to add that to my list of "need to learn" now as I don't have enough time for mapping. The method works, but I have fallen through the bottom, sadly. I did not get beyond sculpting and coverting and havn't touched it in days to go further. I didn't try using a sheet but what's a couple more hours?

I'm still learning a lot about the editor and what is and isn't possible. The method may seem tedious but that was from a first-time try perspective and doing it this way allows me to fit the exact hole I want to fill. Replication is easy and so is changing the shape and texture for variety.