How to make terrain?

[Skw]

I just wonder how to make terrain, like cliffs, rivers, mountains and grass.

Everybody keeps telling me "Use terrain editor", and I do, but I don't get it. It's damn hard to use.

UED3 has much easier terrain editor.

My questions are:

Is there any good programs to create nice-looking cliffs ect. stuff as easy as in Sandbox 2 (editor for Crysis)? Like painting all shapes to the ground and walls with a terrain-brush.

And how Epic made all those beautiful cliffs ect. to Unreal 1?

There MUST be some kind easier terrain editor. If there's not, Smirftsch should make one.

Thanks!

[Buster]

There's a simple little 'standalone' terrain editor for Unreal 1 called TerraEdit. It's not as fancy as the ones found in later versions of Unreal, but at least it works.

http://www.oldunreal.com/tools/TerraEdit-10-29-98.zip

There's a tutorial for it, too.

http://www.members.shaw.ca/sb_unreal/terrain%20guide.zip

Some of the instructions and hints are also helpful when importing .t3d stuff. Hope this helps abit.

[Skw]

Thank you! Very nice tool. It works fine, though I don't know how to make bridge-typed cliffs with a hole center of it (like bridges do, ships go trough the "hole").

Another question came up. How to make caves?

[Turboman.]

You can create caves and other complex brushes by simply vertex editing the default ones, but you must be sure the edited brush is tesselated (meaning built out of triangular surfaces), ued2 comes with a nice vertex edit tool though.
Secondly you can always try to extrude parts with the 2d shape editor, or intersect parts of a level that way.

Epic's method of creating terrain has been with a mix of ued and external programs though, some parts were created with simple ued tools like the 2d shape editor while others were more sophisticated 3d studio or lightwave modelling.

Terraedit is quite a nice tool for starters, but i quite object against its use for more complex stuff, its very crude and limited to the x and y axis and the amount of generated bsp errors are tremendous.

[Buster]

To make the 'bridge' hole is quite simple. Make the bridge, and then make the hole. Subtract the hole from the bridge.



As for the cave. You can use a terrain editor for it. TerraEdit would do the job quite well. Make the bottom half of the cave, and then make the top half (mirror image kind of thing). Then just flip the top around and stack the 2 halves. Carefully surround the whole thing, and make a prefab of the cave. Now it's just a matter of subtracting the cave.

Doing it this way will take abit of planning, so the 2 halves join up seemlessly. But the end result would look great. Just make sure to texture it well, otherwise the effect will be lost.

And have fun with it, eh.

[Age]

How to make that rock-bridge that is in thesunspire?
And the tower?

[GreatEmerald]

What do you mean? The bridge is just a cube with a wood texture?

[Buster]

Grab the 'Unrealed Reference' at http://www.oldunreal.com/editing/ued-reference.zip !!

In the "Unrealed' - 'UT City' section there's an 'outdoor terrain' tutorial for UEd 2. It pretty darn good.

[Age]

What do you mean? The bridge is just a cube with a wood texture?

Not that wood-bridge, i meant rock-bridge, the whole way to suspire.

[Buster]

Open the map in the editor and take a look. As with most things, there are several ways to make it. By putting together a bunch of added brushes to make a 'prefab' of the bridge. By starting with a solid block and subtracting brushes, as if you are sculpting a block of marble. Etc etc etc. Or making sections of it, one at a time, and then putting them together. The best thing to do is DO IT. Try things out. Take a look at the map, and other maps too. Practise, practise, practise.

You have to give it a go yourself, because what's left is somebody giving you a long and complicated, step by step instructions for making THEIR bridge. Not the one you want. Unless you're willing to forward sketches of exactly what you want, and somebody has the time. But then will it be just your map? Nope. I don't know what else to tell you. Read the tutorials, take a look at other maps, try different things out, and get it done.

[GreatEmerald]

Oh, THAT bridge. I call it a walkway. Well, if I were you, I would use the 2D Shape Editor. The walkway is absolutely 2D if you would look at it from above, and with the 2D Shape Editor you can simply draw what you want.