TXTBlend tiled terrain texture blending tool

arras · Post by **arras** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:21 pm

What it does:
it takes two textures and blend them together using 14 possible combinations. Textures created are intended to be used as terrain tiles on places where two different terrain types (textures) meet to make smooth transition between.

Blended textures will be stored as individual files. Use some 2D graphic editing tool to modify or put them together in to one texture file.

It was coded using Irrlicht GUI which I found bit cumbersome so interface is not the greatest but it does what it is supossed to do.

Download TXTBlend at: http://members.lycos.co.uk/arras1/download/TXTBlend.exe -0.3 Mb
or at download section of my site.

You need Irrlicht.dll version 1.2 in order to run it. I was not including it in zip file to save data. If you for some reason don't nave Irrlicht.dll v.1.2 you may download it at my site.

Please report bugs, gramar shortcomings (my english is not the best) or ideas howe to make it better.

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 12:13 am

Very cool!
Now if I can figure out how to use these tiles...

arras · Post by **arras** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 12:35 am

Use it with my Tiled Terrain Scene Node

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 1:48 am

Yeah, but I'm not quite sure how to specify where tiles go. Any pointers?

arras · Post by **arras** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:53 am

Well basicly its up to you to decide. You may look at TlTerrain demo source code for some ideas. Especialy at somefunctions.h

The way I did it is firsth to assign material type to terrain coordinates, for example grass/stone than test each terrain tile and decide which texture tile to use based on what combinations od grass/stone are present at terrain tile corners.

If there is grass at lower left corner and rest is stone use tile[n].
If there is stone on lower left and lower right and stone on the rest use tile[m] and so on.

Each texture tile is represented by its texture UV coordinates which can be attached to terrain tiles.

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 3:21 am

Will do

Thanks Arras

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:15 pm

nice work arras the interface looks nice I didn't have a chance to test it fully but it ran and looked good.

why not update to 1.3 though for all your projects?

I'll probably make great use of this if it does what I think it does.

what you really need to do is make terrain editor that does texture splatting and incorporates your tiled terrain.

I can't remember but it seems like spintz tiled terrain was better no?
I mean with better culling and what not idk it's been so long now.
maybe you should have a look if you actually consider this idea.

Halan · Post by **Halan** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 12:42 pm

i would like to see the sourcecode of this application

greets,
halan

arras · Post by **arras** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:06 pm

Halan >> It is awailable on my page now.

Midnight >> thanks

I have just reworked TlTerrain when Irrlicht 1.3 came out and right now I am upgrading all + making some minor changes.

Main changes are:

-it keeps Irrlicht like structure IMeshBuffer->IMesh->ISceneNode with hope to be much more irrlicht compatible.

-whole terrain is split in to sectors. This alone give HUGE boos to speed. More than double fps. I am not sure why, but if buffer rendered is under certain number of polygoons than Irrlicht can render it much fasther.

-each sector is culled and rendered individualy lowering number of polygoons rendered by more than half. Gives another boost of speed.

-option to make terrain round rather than square in shape. Few pollygoons saved and few fps added.

-added static version of TlTerrain. Works like normal Irrlicht terrain node but it is tile based. Means you can apply texture per tile rather per whole terrain. Also keeps getHeight and getIntersectionWithLine functions as well as possibility to modify tiles on run time.

On my computer I get 250 fps while old demo have run on 100 fps.

I will also upgrade TXTBlend when having some free time.

TileTerrain editor ...well I am not planing to make one soon since personaly I dont have use for one and it would be lot of work especialy to make good working interface.

I was not using Spintz tiled terrain so I don't know howe exactly it is working. But from looking at its documentation it is using ITerrainSceneNode as base for each tile and it is static.

Of course I welcome any good ideas of improving it.
Right now I see some space to improve it in incorporating some kind of LOD. I already have some idea of texture LOD and was thinking a lot about tile LOD and even had some kind working but problem is howe to appy texture ower diferent LOD tiles.

dawasw · Post by **dawasw** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 6:07 pm

Will it also be avaible for 1.2 ?

Just asking

arras · Post by **arras** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:10 pm

If you mean Tiled Terrain than diference between 1.2 and 1.3 there is no change in code if I recall so it should work fine under both. If you mean TXTBlend ...it is compiled under 1.2.