Baking maps and High Resolution

RanBK · Post by **RanBK** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 1:50 pm

As Irrlicht does not support tiling and blending when using .3ds files, I was forced to bake the terrain into a single diffuse map.

The largest map that Max will me bake is 4096x4096. Even this produces a high loss of detail when viewing the terrain up close.

Is there any other method of exporting the terrain to a map whilst maintaining the image quality?

Final file size is not important...

jingquan · Post by **jingquan** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 1:05 pm

Yes, .3ds does support textures tiling. You can do it using modelling software, which all of them have this feature. You probably want to do it his way. Maybe you missed setting a UV map?

Having a large textures consumes too much memory. Another way is to have a few smaller terrain up to smaller pieces, each with textures mapped at 1024x1024, then join these terrains together.

Blending can be done with shaders.

RanBK · Post by **RanBK** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:34 pm

Yes, .3ds does support textures tiling. You can do it using modelling software, which all of them have this feature. You probably want to do it his way. Maybe you missed setting a UV map?

I created the terrain in Max and I added planer UVW mapping. The issue is in Irrlicht, it won't render terrains with composite textures.

You can see it here for yourself:

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... 356#139356

Having a large textures consumes too much memory. Another way is to have a few smaller terrain up to smaller pieces, each with textures mapped at 1024x1024, then join these terrains together.

I don't want to bake, its too much work. There is no reason, other than the lack of export/import tools, that a composite textured mesh cannot be rendered in real-time.

I'm not concerned about memory, GPU/CPU consumption at this point, I've got enough hardware to deal with anything I'm producing in Max.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 6:55 pm

irrlicht has about three vertex formats supported, which means not all of max's models may import properly in irrlicht.

you may have to partner with a core irrlicht developer and see if most of max's textured cg-fied models could be imported into irrlicht.

FuzzYspo0N · Post by **FuzzYspo0N** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 6:35 am

By the way the 4096x4096 has nothing to do with max or irrlicht, its the largest supported texture size hardware can support on the gpu,

As for the textures, i wud suggest texture tiling, by breaking ur mesh up into 1024x1024 or less, and mapping the baked textures. this isnt pretty in terms of memory usage and file size but if u want an instant solution, thats what u get.

im assuming for ur terrain u might be using advanced lighting or something u are trying to bake, so what is your avrage frame time rendered on max??
Im busy ATM rendering a large format texture baked map for my game, and its an average of 1 min per frame, tell me u want to make that realtime? If u want max quality real time, u have to go for shaders.

Thats my 2 cents

RanBK · Post by **RanBK** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 9:33 am

By the way the 4096x4096 has nothing to do with max or irrlicht, its the largest supported texture size hardware can support on the gpu,

I was thinking that would be the case.

As for the textures, i wud suggest texture tiling, by breaking ur mesh up into 1024x1024 or less, and mapping the baked textures. this isnt pretty in terms of memory usage and file size but if u want an instant solution, thats what u get.

The problem is that there appears to be no way of automating the process. These basic challanges have been around for the last 8 years and no-one has even thought to address them.

Its not like it cannot be done.

im assuming for ur terrain u might be using advanced lighting or something u are trying to bake, so what is your avrage frame time rendered on max??

Im busy ATM rendering a large format texture baked map for my game, and its an average of 1 min per frame, tell me u want to make that realtime? If u want max quality real time, u have to go for shaders.

I have a monster of a machine and I use memory pages to allocate as much memory as I need. I can render even the most complex scenes in a matter of seconds. With certain effects and plug-ins and very high detail, it will grind my machine to a halt. That said, I'm not developing CGI for hollywood movies.

When developing for games, I cut the number of faces down drastically, to around 20,000. There are no issues rendering this in real time, I can do it in other engines.

The only issue is that most engines don't know how to blend a texture using heighmaps and then apply that to a planer UVW map.

So, its not really a performance issue, its a format issue.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 9:56 am

You can use a custom scene node in Irrlicht in order to encapsulate your post-processing of the mesh loaded and any other information necessary to do so. This will lead to an automatic handling of this stuff once you have made the necessary transformation code once.

FuzzYspo0N · Post by **FuzzYspo0N** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 7:12 am

The problem is that there appears to be no way of automating the process. These basic challanges have been around for the last 8 years and no-one has even thought to address them.

wrong, lol. if u are using primitive techniques yes, but using shaders they do a huge lot of this online. i would link it but just google, i found a lot.

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:11 am

terrains have big problems, they show lots of maginification and minification artifacts, even with mipmapping turned-on. They pop, shimmer and do-whatever-it-likes when improperly implemented.

the ones you see on high-quality games have special code written to handle artifacts, though. you'll have to code it, the solution is not rendering a large 4K-by-4K heightmap.

jingquan · Post by **jingquan** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 1:57 am

I've got a question about baking maps too. I would like to add prerendered textures like dirt or radiosity maps to my mesh, probably a .3ds, using UV mapping. However, I don't want to UV map my mesh as the textures would be a lot less crisp.

I have tried creating light and dirtmaps using other programs and loading them but they turn out to be mapped differently (I used cubic mapping).

Is there a way to assign UV mapped textures onto my custom mapped mesh?

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:28 am

jingquan wrote:I've got a question about baking maps too. I would like to add prerendered textures like dirt or radiosity maps to my mesh, probably a .3ds, using UV mapping. However, I don't want to UV map my mesh as the textures would be a lot less crisp.

well, that's a tough question to answer, unless i see a sample image of what you have made. crispiness is a factor of two variables, mesh and textures.

i'm sure you already know bumpmapping and steep parallax. that's probably what you really want, though.

i'm still leery about baking diffuse values, it's almost impossible to implement diffuse values for moving lights. and this goes same for phong/blinn shading as well.

jingquan wrote: I have tried creating light and dirtmaps using other programs and loading them but they turn out to be mapped differently (I used cubic mapping).

i would recommend rendermonkey for testing stuff like that, it will map a texture directly onto the mesh if it has uv coords in the vertex. there's no other way you can do it w/o uv-mapping.

in rendermonkey/fxcomposer, i can set textures and have it set inside the fragment shader, it's easy testing in that environment.

jingquan wrote: Is there a way to assign UV mapped textures onto my custom mapped mesh?

what do you mean by custom mapped?

jingquan · Post by **jingquan** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 1:38 pm

what do you mean by custom mapped?

Sorry, I meant cubic mapped.

I'm looking to use prerendered textures to increase the realism of my scene. Since I resize the texture coords for each object in my modelling software, I'm not sure how can I create a dirtmap for example to fit on my pillar.

Thanks.