[Nel] Landscapes without 3DSMax

[Cyril 'Hulud' Corvazier]

Hi Paul,

> 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?

The NeL 3d library has several user level.

Using the user interface (all u_headers.h in the 3d lib) of the library, you
can only
load and display a landscape. This level is used by the game developper to
abstract
the game engine from the technology implementation.

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.

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...
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.

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

>
> Paul
>
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