Irrlicht Engine

Hello,

I'm currently working on a project where the user could just raise/low the vertices he wants in the ground.

I would like an easier way than using a tiling method, because I think that tiling method would be for infinite, and really repetitive terrain, then I know my idea, loading an XML file telling at which position there's a modified Y vertice.

How can I create a blank terrain in fast time, where I won't need any heightmap to load ?

If I can do that with a hillPlaneMesh, how can I multiply the triangles ?
I think I'll need triangles separated from 10 units in X and Z coordinates...

I'd like something large, I love the paging idea, is there a way to display only triangles that the camera is near ? Or should I use a custom paging system ?

Thanks for your help.

I think it would be worthwhile defining your project a little more clearly but the problem with using a hillplanemesh would be that there is no level of detail applied and you will end up with a very heavy mesh perhaps several if your going to page your tiles.

You could create a custom terrain node, I have derived a couple myself from the standard terrain node this would provide you with a level of detail terrain and sourcing the height of the verticies could be achieved pretty easily if you look at the terrain nodes loadHeightMap() function the modifications would be pretty simple. My IrrlichtWrapper project has a tiled terrain node that might be of some use as an example, the loadStructure is an example of dynamically changing terrain height although it would need improvement to update normals and apply smoothing too.

It achieves its terrain tiling by dynamically loading a terrain patch with new height data and moving the tiles about in the distance with the aid of a ZoneManagement object also included in the package. The more tricky part I found was matching up the level of detail of the patches in adjacent tiles to avoid cracks appearing, this took some time to solve.

Anyway hopefully there is something to think about in there.

Regards,