Darwinia-inspired landscape

[CadeF]

Hi-quality render, not yet
Lighting not at it's best, I've only spent maybe an hour or so on it.
Antialiasing - I'll get around to that later

Currently working on: Clouds
Which would be best
-Darwinia's clouds
-Darwinia's clouds without the grid mesh
-Layers of noise
-Realtime noise (like a plasma field)
-Something else, specify

[CadeF]

I need a sky texture.

Darwinia has a grid texture, then 3 layers of scrolling texture blended together. I'm also going to use 3 layers of texture blended together (additive blend), but I have no good texture to use.

So, anyone got a Darwinia-like sky texture? Not the grid, the clouds. I tried using random noise, it doesn't have the same look. Something like white tetris blocks on a black background, is what I want.

Todo: (In this order)
Clouds
Water
Fractal trees
Whatever comes up next

[CadeF]

Low-quality jpg. I'll post some high quality pics later, after I get water & trees fully implemented. Water is currently sort-of implemented. Trees, not yet. I know, the screenshot is in desperate need of anti-aliasing. Next time

Also, if I could have a bit more feedback, that would be nice.

Todo (in order):
Water
Trees

[xander]

An opinion:

First off, the sky looks really good. The problem I have with it is that it just -- ends. Perhaps it could fade out (like "fog of war" effect -- at it is more distant, it is darker, until it fades to black in the distance) or extend farther. At it is, it looks a little odd.

xander

[aoanla]

So far, it's lovely, apart from the sky problem that xander refers to. If the sky faded, or was mirrored in the edges of the volume, it'd look really nice.

Also, although it's not a Darwinia-feature, perhaps height-coding the landscape colouration (so that at a certain altitude the green goes to, say, stone grey, then white) might make the landscape more interesting. That, or randomly dithering the colours of each poly around a central value. (This may be a lesser feature with the water and trees functioning, as that'll be a nice bit of additional variety.)

[jaysc]

How are you making all the land like that?

[xander]

Also, although it's not a Darwinia-feature, perhaps height-coding the landscape colouration (so that at a certain altitude the green goes to, say, stone grey, then white) might make the landscape more interesting. That, or randomly dithering the colours of each poly around a central value. (This may be a lesser feature with the water and trees functioning, as that'll be a nice bit of additional variety.)

Actually, that is a Darwinia feature. Look at the terrain texture images... they are squares that look about like this:

Code: Select all

low, flat        low, steep
+-----------------+
|                                  |
|                                  |
|                                  |
|                                  |
|                                  |
|                                  |
|                                  |
|                                  |
+-----------------+
high, flat       high, steep


If you create only horizontal bands of color, then the colors will be related to height. If you create vertical bands of color, then the colors will be assigned by steepness. It is by creating non-banded color schemes that Darwinia creates interesting landscapes. From my own mod (which will be released after the Mac 1.3 patch is out):
http://wendryn.com/darwinia/insurrectio ... ery001.bmp
http://wendryn.com/darwinia/insurrectio ... ery002.bmp
-- Notice how the green fades to brown and white at higher elevations, but that vertical walls are brown or grey

http://wendryn.com/darwinia/insurrectio ... ion002.bmp
-- here, the lowlands are very dark, and highlands are lighter; this level uses a terrain texture that is just a gradiant from top to bottom, light to dark

xander

[aoanla]

Also, although it's not a Darwinia-feature, perhaps height-coding the landscape colouration (so that at a certain altitude the green goes to, say, stone grey, then white) might make the landscape more interesting. That, or randomly dithering the colours of each poly around a central value. (This may be a lesser feature with the water and trees functioning, as that'll be a nice bit of additional variety.)

Actually, that is a Darwinia feature.

So it is. Obviously I am particularly unobservant today (I did notice that CadeF's landscape didn't look quite as nice as Darwinia, but I just assumed it was the lighting)

[CadeF]

Coming up next, the intresting landscape textures
Thanks to xander, I now have a very good idea what to do. Texture read off a texture where X is 1-YNormal, scince if the YNormal is 0 the land is 100% steep (if that makes sense0 and where the YNormal is 1, the land is flat upwards on the Y-Axis. And Y, will be 1-HeightmapValue as the heightmapvalue is not in screenspace, it is in texturespace so all it's values are 0-1. I've got to go to school, I'll make it and post a screenshot when I get back in a few hours.

[CadeF]

Simpler than I thought, already finished (and to think I only go to school in 30 mins from now)

Feedback?

[xander]

Very nice. The sky looks better now, too.

xander

[KF]

Just a random Q, who made the "sky" for darwinia cos that sky kicks ass xD

[CadeF]

Thanks

What should I add next? Trees?

Who made Darwinia's sky, I think it is randomly generated (mine is)

I'm not loading tiles, I'm reading stuff off a heightmap. If anyone has a heightmap they would like me to use, post it here as the one I am using is not very detailed. It is mostly flat land with a few mountains.

[aoanla]

That is much improved.

Trees seem like a nice idea (you could even extend from Darwinia's foliage by including bushes etc as well, which shouldn't be a difficult modification of the original fractal process).

After that, the only other major stuff as seen in Darwinia is buildings. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't add other procedurally generated features...

[CadeF]