Ninja camp is coming up and I’ve decided to try out a new concept for terrains. The base concept is that I’ll have multiple triangular patches of heightmaps, with different orientation and make them blend together seamlessly.
Like this:
This will allow us to make steep surfaces without triangle stretching! It will also allow us to make cliff overhangs! It will not however allow us to make small details that doesn’t match the heightmap concept.
It will also allow us to make planets, floating islands, like this:
However since I’m not an artist I need some help creating fantastic sample terrains. It gotta look good so I can get some backing among my colleagues to fully explore this. There are many pitfalls ahead but I’m hoping to fully explore the feasibility of this terrain angle during this ninja camp. And if it works out hopefully eventually get this into Unity as a proper feature.
I would like two types of meshes:
Detailed mesh of cliff side, riverbed, etc. - key features: steep slope + cliff overhang.
Complete planet mesh. - key feature: round, please keep it roundish, not too steep and without overhangs!
Please stay don’t go above 1 million vertices. Its a tech demo not a streaming world demonstration.
-I’d prefer if you only use 64k, but I don’t want that to be a limiting factor.
The terrain idea sounds cool, looks like you have basically lots of small triangular height maps and then presumably would use subdivision to implement some kind of easy LOD control as you zoom in closer? Can you generate planets with it in the way you can kind of like with fractals, like in Terragen2, or that one space sim that’s been developed for a while where you can be flying out in space and then swoop in through the atmosphere to close-up mountains and eventually rocks/details? That’d be cool.
So is the data stored in like an octree or something so you can position these little mesh patches anywhere in space? So you can make like volumetric land with lots of layers of holes inside it (think slab of swiss cheese), or does it only support a single continuous surface which can undulate and hang-over a bit, like scrunching up a blanket?
Sounds fantastic. It seems the terrain experts on this thread would be very suited to this type of thing. I’m sure they’ll find this thread soon enough.
First let me make this abundantly clear: ninja camp projects are research projects. It means I’ll get a week or two to play with a tech that may or may not prove useful. Right now its just an idea in my head. There are no white papers on this, to my knowledge this particular approach have never been fully explored before. And it especially don’t mean this will actually become a feature in unity! Even though my initial prototype was more successful that I could imagine, I was able to make those screenshot after about 1 day of tinkering, and moving/rotating those handles on the planet view warps the terrain accordingly real time inside Unity.
@KHopcraft: I’ll do my very best not to disapoint you. But first step is to make something awesome! And then I’ll try to add videos.
@Lars: Well as cool as the halo wars terrain is, its still designed for a particular piece of hardware, for a particular terrain size, for a particular performance goal and finally for a particular game genre. That goes against everything I want for Unity! The fact that its designed for a completely flat world is sorta the death blow for me. But it is truly very pretty and all the stuff he says that is not trying to optimize for his particular needs and scale is very to the point.
But I want something that can be streamed endlessly, I want something that can be used for flat worlds, planets, hollow planets, floating isles in space and everything in between! If you absolutely must have that last ounce of performance on a specific platform… well then I guess this is not the solution you’re looking for.
@ImaginaryHuman: I had considered subdivision as my main LOD scheme, as its easily achievable in the short amount of time I have for a ninja camp. I’m not sure it will hold water for a full fledged feature though. And yes going from planet to up close view is one of the things I’m hoping to achieve. Its also why I asked that anyone kind enough to provide me with a planet mesh would not make it too complex. Making a showcase for a heightmap solution on a planetary scale is challenge enough for that particular map. The other map is about showing exactly what kind of power this can give to your normal RPG/FPS kinda game, where you are deep into the canyons staring up at the steep mountain sides.
@HeadClot88: Well one use as ImaginaryHuman mentions is of course procedurally generated planets. But I’m hoping I’ll also manage to introduce proper editing workflows that allows you to edit the terrain directly in the editor in an efficient way.
I took a haven’t looked at Etheria’s solution for planets. That’s so much more than just a planet terrain. Its star maps, atmosphere, procedural generation all tied into one neat package. The triangular patch terrain engine I’m gonna explore during this ninja camp, would let you have overhangs and caverns while preserving Etheria’s orbit to surface transition. And make it easier for players to edit their own planets, but it will not address any of the other features that Etheria has implemented. As such it would be a small adjustment to adjust the pack to take advantage of these terrain features.
Completly agree, thats why you shouldnt bother spending too much time on those cliffy terrains. Mesh modeled rocks are still way to go combined with heightmap terrain. Even if you do implement somehow magically terrain sculpting feature that can be used for cliffs it will still be limited by triangle number, splatmaps and what not, in the end rocks modeled are enough.
@janpec: Well in my book steep slopes, rock slides or massive rock formations, that is the actual terrain! I want to see that LOD in the distance. And not just as mesh decals.
Anyways, you are of course right, its easier as mesh and that’s why this solution will have mesh support. If I have time I’d even like to add a foundation system to the meshes. Both to ensure there are no gaps and to cut a hole in the terrain underneath it. That way cutting a hole in the terrain is as easy as providing a cave entrance and applying it with the foundation feature.
Ask any artist for an epic landscape and odds are he’ll produce overhangs, tiny paths on practically vertical mountain sides and the like… that really should be supported!
I would even appreciate it it could be an efficient implementation of a “Restricted Quadtree triangulated terrain” in short RQT.
It seems you’re going in that direction and that seems great. Definitely a need for that, for our usage the triangulation of the current Terrain is just to poor.
Well this has the usual height map downfall of dealing with quads instead of triangles… (no truly organic shapes) but the overall concept can be reduced to work on triangles as well, you just have to split/traverse them a bit differently. But it goes beyond what I hope to accomplish in two week.
My primary focus will actually be the workflow. This is a rather complex setup, going for quads like everyone else would be a lot easier. My primary concern would be that it might be too difficult to use. But I just think its time someone actually took a real shot at this. If I can make a cool terrain editor out of it, I’m sure we’ll be able to optimize it.
Awesome RnD man, are you gonna change the vegetation/detail mesh painting too? since you’re gonna make a new terrain engine in Unity. So maybe in the future we will be able to use the vegetation/detail painting in custom mesh too.
Quick update: While it worked like a charm workflow was simply horrible, by default point density would be exactly in the wrong places. And the way to move point density was clumsy and too restricting.
Also I realized that a vector field terrain doesn’t have to be a flat world, its more an optimized mesh field than anything else, very powerful for the designer and infinitely flexible for the creative. So by the end of today I will be making round planets with vector fields!
But its still the same cry out - I really need a cool mesh terrain that will help me present this stuff proper.
Now this is awesome. I got a feeling that I could do some really awesome stuff with F. One of the nice features of Vector Field terrain is that you can actually do exact placement of vertices, so I can preserve the detail on those platou edges and then “compensate” by having fewer vertices on the flat segments. It has a nice mix of vertical and flat giving a very high total surface. As well as some solid steep slopes that I can carve a few holes into.
nice that you will a look into vector fields…
and “f” is a good choice i think, as it has pretty steep slopes which would produce terribly stretched textures on heightmap based terrains…
good luck for your work!
