[Nel] Landscapes without 3DSMax +

Tue, 18 Dec 2001 09:49:45 -0500

My apologies, I accidentally sent this first to nel-admin.  Guess the
+reply-to of the digest isn't set up to go to the correct place.  Here it is
+again, I hope nobody gets this twice:
+
+Thank you everyone for the links.    I'm afraid though that these terrain
+building packages generate height fields, and as you may or may not be
+aware, NeL uses bezier patches, not height fields to generate its terrain.
+Therefore, I've finally settled on the most basic thing I could find, namely
+sPatch.  (http://www.geocities.com/getspatch/index.html).  It is little more
+than a bezier patch editor, but currently that's all I need.  There appears
+to be a more feature rich package based on sPatch called hamaPatch
+(http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Ginza/6625/soft10.html), but currently all
+documentation on this is in Japanese and I don't speak the language.
+Perhaps my work can some day be moved to hamaPatch, but for the moment I'm
+sticking with sPatch.  Which means we should be able to generate the zone
+files with sPatch, but will need a seperate piece of software to paint the
+textures (since sPatch doesn't support any kind of texturing).  But I'll
+burn that bridge when I get to it.  ;)
+
+Fortunately, sPatch has good documentation on creating export plugins, and
+I'm well on my way to successfully making one.  I have a couple questions
+though for anyone on this list whi is familiar with the 3D code.
+
+1.  How much information of the CPatchInfo object must be filled in to have
+a viable object?  sPatch gives me a 4x4 array of vertexes which I can use to
+populate the vertices, tangents, and interiors of the CPatchInfo object.
+However, I am still a bit unclear what much of the data in the CPatchInfo
+object is, especially the BindEdges (4 CBindInfo structs).  Are these filled
+in when welding the zones together, or are they something I will need to
+fill in upon generating a single zone?
+
+2.  Once I manage to export a .zone file, what's the quickest, dirtiest way
+to test it?  Will I need to build an entire app just to load the .zone, or
+is there some way I can easily hack it into the Snowballs client just to see
+if it indeed exported a valid file?
+
+Thanks again everyone for all the help.  This is a great project, and I'm
+having lots of fun playing with it.
+
+Paul
+
+> And more:
+> http://terraform.sourceforge.net/
+> http://ftp.arl.army.mil/brlcad/
+> http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/
+>
+> Saturday, December 15, 2001, 1:02:07 PM, you wrote:
+>
+> ME> Tony Hoyt schrieb:
+>
+> >> Paul Siegel wrote:
+> >> >
+> >> > Hi everyone -
+> >> >
+> >> > I'm wondering if there's a way to build landscapes without 3D Studio
+> Max.
+> >> > That's some pricey software just to do level editing.  Is anything
+> >> > available, or being worked on?  Or am I going to have to learn how to
+> >> > rewrite the max plugins for Blender?
+> >>
+> >>   Blender is my choice as well for a good free alternative 3d editor.
+> >> I'm not sure how you make plug-in's for Blender other then with python
+> >> but if you can do it, I wish you all the best of luck. I think the
+> >> problem with doing a port is that if your not able to see the original
+> >> in action or see what library calls it's makeing, etc.  It's going to
+be
+> >> rough going.  But if your serious about it, I'm willing to give a hand
+> >> although I don't have 3D Studio Max as well.
+>
+> ME> There's also a free landscape modeller at
+> ->> www.geofrac2000.com
+>
+> ME> It was once commercial and its interface is very much like that of
+> 3dsmax.
+> ME> The author discontinued the project and made it available for free,
+but
+> it's
+> ME> still worth a look. You can use standard algorithms (perlin, etc.) for
+> ME> landscape generation, create mountains and craters or just paint with
+> the
+> ME> raise/lower-tool. Realtime 3D-display just like 3dsmax as well.
+>
+> >>
+> >>
+> >>   Tony
+> >>
+>
+> ME> -Markus-
+>
+>
+> ME> _______________________________________________
+> ME> Nel mailing list
+> ME> Nel@nevrax.org
+> ME> http://www.nevrax.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/nel
+>
+>
+>
+> --
+> Dim Segebart                         mailto:zager@teleaction.de
+
+
+