Subject: Re: [Nel] Landscapes without 3DSMax

From: "Paul Siegel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 08:43:24 -0500

> Using the 3d lib at lowlevel (all the others header files) allow you to
> quilckly create patches and landscape zones. It is really simple to
> export some bezier quad patches from Blender
> (does blender have bezier patches ?) into a .zone file using a small
> plugin. Simple C++ classes are provided to "Builb" the ".zone" c++
> objects. Then serialisation is used to save them
> in binary files.

Ok, this will be my first project.  Besides Blender, I'm also looking at
OpenFX (www.openfx.org).  Unfortunately, I'm a coder not a graphic artist.
I can't say I'm too learned on how to create bezier patches using either
program, so I'm going to have to do a bit of research before I even start
this.  If there are any artists out there with some input (especially
something like "Blender doesn't support bezier patches") I'd love to hear
from you.  Hopefully it shouldn't take too long to make either a file
translator or some kind of export plugin for one of the apps, once I learn
how to make the content using one of the aforementioned apps.

> The hardest part is the patch painter that allow you to paint tiles,
vertex
> color and displacement map over the landscape zone patches. At
> nevrax, this is done by the artists using a 3dsmax plugin
> (nel_patch_paint). If you can't use 3dsmax, you can perhaps
> generate the painting or rewrite a little ingame zone painter or why
> not, a blender painter plugin...

Right, this will be phase 2.  I was sort of expecting this to be the hard
part.

> You have to know that the painter algorithm that put tiles over the
> landscape is not trivial at all.  If you are short on time, a good
> solution is to generate painting, as most of the heightfield
> landscapes do.

Can you elaborate on this?  Are you talking about coming up with some kind
of algorithm to color the geometries instead of using textures?  I don't
follow.

> The postprocess to weld the zones together and compute the lighting will
> stay the same as far as you generate ".zone" files.

Right, I'm assuming that once the .zone files are generated, I can follow
the process used with 3DS Max.

Thanks for the feedback Cyril.  It's nice to see how much input the official
team has on this list.

Paul