Terrain texturing techniques
polycounter lvl 11
I'm using a few techniques to create a good looking terrain in the UDK game engine and i would like to hear some insights on my workflow based on your experience, guys. 
My process is:
For example: if i have a cliff texture, i have diffuse, normal, macro and detail maps. My macro map is usually just some rock noise for cliffs and rocks, and the detail one, is just some noise.
However, i have no idea on how to create good macro/detail maps for textures like grass, sand and others. Do you guys have any tips? Also, how do you guys make grass look good, instead of plain and unnatural?
My process is:
- Creating the terrain in World Machine and exporting it's height and splat maps
- Assigning different diffuse and normal textures for each splat map layer
- Assigning a macro texture for long-distance detail for each splat map layer
- Assining a detail texture for near-distance detail for each splat map layer
For example: if i have a cliff texture, i have diffuse, normal, macro and detail maps. My macro map is usually just some rock noise for cliffs and rocks, and the detail one, is just some noise.
However, i have no idea on how to create good macro/detail maps for textures like grass, sand and others. Do you guys have any tips? Also, how do you guys make grass look good, instead of plain and unnatural?
Replies
Best way to make grass is planes. They'll cover up the floor so you don't have to worry about details on the grass.
Cliff and harder or flatter surfaces make sense to have detail. Detail for sand for example is just smaller noise. And for sand especially, having little dots pop in the spec map like sand and snow have. You know, that little bright shit when light hits it.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TerrainAdvancedTextures.html
That has a lot of good techniques for making large scale terrains without seeing a lot of repetition. A really nice one from that link is taking the same texture and multiplying it with a rotated, scaled version of itself. It adds a lot and hides the tiling better than most other methods I've tried.
A lot of your terrain should be covered and broken up with assets like rocks, grass, trees, and hills. Not to mention wrecks, bones, etc. Play some games that have terrains that you like and see how some of it is handled. Take a page from Skyrims book on making great lo poly rocks too, they're fantastic and super efficient.
Looking forward to any progress shots on what you've worked on.
Do you guys have any other tips for terrain texturing? How do you create your textures? Do you use cgtextures as base?
Then grab the normal, ao, cavity or what ever else you need, and for albedo you could either poly paint it in zbrush and then touch it up in photoshop or just do it all in photoshop, blending some photos or hand paint and the maps that you exported out of zbrush
Are terrain textures such as tillable grass dirt etc expected to be made by baking geometry/colour from zbrush or is it ok to use a texture from cg textures for example? or is some other method/combination used?
Would you expect that to be shown for an environment artists portfolio?
Thanks guys
Depends on what's needed. Here rogelio posted some nice flats from The Last of Us, explaining his workflow. Basically, whatever gets the best results with the least amount of work.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Category:EnvironmentTexturing
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/TexturingTutorials
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Category:EnvironmentTerrain
It was on the page that was my second link, I'm surprised you didn't find it.
The right kind of detail maps and normal maps will depend on the shader you've designed for your terrain. Check out the "Terrain Advanced Textures" link for some UE3 ideas.
Choco's "How to make terrains for games" is a great in-depth tutorial series.
"Welcome to Celeryland!" is another great resource.
Lots of good stuff on there.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TerrainAdvancedTextures.html#Detail%20Textures:%20Adding%20near-distance%20detail
Usually I try not to be a dick, because I know how frustrating it is to be stuck behind a problem. But I really hate spoon-feeding because it never works, the OP doesn't learn to think for themselves, they just want more.
Sorry. Maybe someone else can help you.
It does not go the extra mile by explaining if a detail map looks better if it's a closeup grass texture, or a more generic, top-down grass texture. Based on those samples, i could just throw around different textures in grayscale for all my details, but i wanted some more in-depth approach to the material, instead of just having to trial&error the results.
The artists who wrote that page didn't have someone showing them how to do it, they just tried different approaches until they found something that worked well.
This is an excellent skill to have, and is pretty much required in this industry. There's always something new to figure out, and no resources out there that exactly fit the problem I'm trying to solve.
Try a detailed closeup of your grass texture. Try the same texture as your larger grass layer. Try a generic grass texture. Try something that isn't grayscale. Try a 256x256. Try a 64x64.
Messing around with different approaches is not a waste of time. It's how people learn how to get better at solving problems.
Post your attempts, and ask for critique.