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<TITLE>Spécification du plugin de maillage des patchs dans 3dsmax</TITLE>
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<P LANG="en-GB" ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-bottom: 1.27cm"><FONT SIZE=5 STYLE="font-size: 20pt"><B>The
tile banks used in NeL landscape.</B></FONT></P>
<H1 LANG="en-GB" CLASS="western">1.Tile bank</H1>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">A NeL tile bank is a
binary file in which is stored bitmap filenames that are used to map
the landscape.</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Here is an overview of the
tile bank:</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><IMG SRC="img/tile_bank_html_70d0f5c5.png" NAME="Graphic1" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=573 HEIGHT=484 BORDER=0></P>
<H1 LANG="en-GB" CLASS="western">2.Tileset</H1>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">A tile bank is composed by
several tileset. A tileset is a kind of material (like grass, wood,
rock).</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">This material is divided
in small textures (128x128), large textures (256x256) and transition
textures (128x128 alpha).</P>
<H2 LANG="en-GB" CLASS="western">2.1.Small and large textures</H2>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">A tile in the NeL
landscape is a bitmap with a size of 128x128. A patch can have 2x2
tiles, 4x4 tiles, 8x8 tiles and 16x16 tiles. But to have bitmaps with
a better quality, we can use larges textures (256x256) as 4 tiles.</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">In the painter plugin, you
can choose to paint 128x128 bitmaps or 256x256 bitmaps. The pixel
ratio stays the same.</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">All the textures have two
channels: diffuse and additive. We use a bitmap for diffuse and
another one for additive.</P>
<H2 LANG="en-GB" CLASS="western">2.2.Transition textures</H2>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Transition textures are
used to make smooth tileset changes. To do this, we have a set of 48
transition textures. With this set, we can make all transition we
want with some diversity (two type of transitions are randomly
choosen to increase diversity).</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Transition textures are
bitmaps of 128x128 pixel with a third channel: an alpha channel. This
channel is a grayscale bitmap. It is used to make the transition like
this:</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><IMG SRC="img/tile_bank_html_m2b842ebd.png" NAME="Graphic2" ALIGN=LEFT WIDTH=614 HEIGHT=389 BORDER=0><BR CLEAR=LEFT><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Here is the transitions
set:</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><IMG SRC="img/tile_bank_html_7f255931.jpg" NAME="G1: transitionset%20full" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=421 HEIGHT=554 BORDER=0></P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">This is the 48 alpha
bitmaps you need to build your bank.</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Orange pixels are
alpha=255 and black pixels are alpha=0.</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">In fact, you only need to
draw 12 alpha bitmaps to fill this bank. The others are computed with
a rotation. Here is the 12 alpha bitmaps you really need:</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><IMG SRC="img/tile_bank_html_m637dd59a.jpg" NAME="G2: transitionset%20without%20rotation" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=419 HEIGHT=554 BORDER=0></P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">The batchload function of
tile_edit.exe load all the alpha transitions in one shot. To use the
batchload function, the alpha bitmaps must have a name like
wood_alpha00.tga, wood_alpha01.tga. The number of a transition tile
is given by its position in the previous set. The first (left, top)
is number 00, and so on, first to the right then to the bottom.</P>
<H2 LANG="en-GB" CLASS="western">2.3.Bitmap check</H2>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">To avoid blinear
discontinuity using tiles, tile_edit.exe performe some checks to be
sure bilinear filtering will work.</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><BR>
</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Each time you add a bitmap
in tile_edit.exe, by drag and drop or with the “add” or
“replace” functions, the program checks the tile pixels.
The tiles must follow whose rules:</P>
<OL>
<LI><P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">128x128 bitmaps must
have the same top and bottom pixel row.</P>
<LI><P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">128x128 bitmaps must
have the same left and right pixel column.</P>
<LI><P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">256x256 bitmaps must
have two times the 128x128 pixel row at top and bottom.</P>
<LI><P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">256x256 bitmaps must
have two times the 128x128 pixel column at left and right.</P>
<LI><P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Two transitions with
the same kind of border must have same pixel border. For exemple,
check the transition n°0 right border and transition n°1
left border. They have the same type. So, the right pixel column of
transition n°0 must be the same than the left pixel column of
transition n°1.</P>
</OL>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm"><IMG SRC="img/tile_bank_html_3160d7fa.gif" ALIGN=LEFT><BR>
</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
<P LANG="en-GB" STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">You can see in the above
picture a 128x128 bitmap with its U and V pixel borders and a 256x256
bitmap with the double U and V pixel border.</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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</P>
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