next »

[Entar]

(Working Title) Canyon Terrain Editor is a tool designed to allow users to create quality, realistic terrain quickly and intuitively. Basically, someone with very little experience could create a fairly cool terrain for their game in a length of time approximately equal to that which is taken in order to say this abnormally lengthened and convoluted sentence. No joke! Just think what would happen with, say, someone who has time on their hands, or someone who knows what they're doing, or better yet, is experienced in 3D art! Behold: The YouTube videos! If you have any ideas for features, a better name for the editor, or just plain comments and discussion, let me know! Version 1.0: http://entar.slipgateconstruct.com/terrainEditor/CanyonEditor-v1.zip (currently requires Microsoft Redistributable Runtime)

I'll try to post updates here when they come around, but you can also check, and subscribe for updates, at my site: http://entardev.wordpress.com I'm working on this by myself so far, but I'm making good progress. The goal in mind is to make it useful for game development, but I can see it being used for other applications too, I suppose. (This formatting stuff is cool!) Also, if this is posted in the wrong place, feel free to let me know.

[object_0]

Good work, seems like you've got a good start. There are actually a handful of similar editors out there, maybe you can find some feature to set yours apart from the rest.

Here follows a few features worth considering:
 * Terrain texturing, including alpha splatting.
 * Allow painting on the terrain using different brushes.
 * Support for grass using grass density maps (perhaps trees as well).

... and implementation-wise:
 * LOD
 * Resource paging.

I am a little curious, what did you use to implement this? .NET and DirectX?

[Entar]

Here follows a few features worth considering:
 * Terrain texturing, including alpha splatting.
 * Allow painting on the terrain using different brushes.
 * Support for grass using grass density maps (perhaps trees as well).

... and implementation-wise:
 * LOD
 * Resource paging.

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't focused much on texturing yet, but that's probably coming up pretty soon.

I am a little curious, what did you use to implement this? .NET and DirectX?

Actually, I'm using SDL and OpenGL. That way it won't be difficult to port it to Linux or Mac later on.

[nikki]

looks very cool, the video reminded me alot of the simcity 4 terrain editor.

my suggestion would be features like eroding, cliffs, vulcanoes, continental cracks, rainfall/river forming.

i am guessing you can achieve this already if you know what your doing within the editor,  but for an ultra easy terain maker it would be very nice !

[Entar]

my suggestion would be features like eroding, cliffs, vulcanoes, continental cracks, rainfall/river forming.

Tools for automatically adding things, like a river creator or a volcano maker, currently fall fairly low on the priorities list, if I do add them, but I think they may be useful. We'll see.

So. I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to proceed with the development of the editor now, which is good. Texturing is right around the corner, but I have one other big feature change I'm going to work on first. I'm going to make sure it works, or at least make some good progress, before I go making a big deal about it, but I'll hopefully post some updates along the way. Ahem.

[swordofkings128]

man things like this make me want to make the first person shooter I've always wanted to make.......

good job, looks very promising! can't wait for texturing and etc...

[Tycho Brahe]

nice, what kind of format are the models/maps going to be in? are you planning on releasing libraries for their use in games?

anyway, looks really nice, good work!



(also, I'm sure us in technical would like to know about it)

[knight]

shader support would be a nice feature

[Entar]

nice, what kind of format are the models/maps going to be in? are you planning on releasing libraries for their use in games?

So far, in addition to saving and loading its own format, it exports a couple of Quake (1/3) .map formats, .tga heightmaps, and .obj models. I'm open to suggestions for more formats to support.

[Entar]

So I decided to reorganize my undo system somewhat, in part because my method was fairly messy and hard to keep track of, and also because there was a rarely appearing bug. It didn't fix the bug, but it definitely improved the code, and properly implemented redo in the process . However, I did end up finding the bug with a little detective work - it was something fairly simple, and I'm surprised I didn't notice it before . Ah well. Now the work on texturing can finally begin.

[Entar]

New update post on my blog:

Since last week’s update, I have utilized my programming skills in order to bring forth updates and features! Basically, I added some new stuff to the terrain editor. First off, I added tooltips when the user hovers over buttons, so that it’s a little easier to know what buttons you’re selecting. Next, I implemented a brush system which [...]

Continue reading full post

More to come

[Entar]

UPDATE!

After a short period of the code giving me some trouble, I got the editor's texturing capabilities done. Here's a little something I whipped up, to give you a little idea of what it can do. Keep in mind that, after making the textures, this only took a few minutes to make: PICTURE!

Blog post about it on my site: http://entardev.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/terrain-tuesday-5/

Comments, suggestions, and discussion are welcome

shader support would be a nice feature

Can you be a little bit more specific? Do you mean being able to write your own shaders for the editor to display with? That is something I may add.

[knight]

Yeah like allowing the user to load .fx files.

[Entar]

UPDATE!
In addition to some other, smaller tweaks, I've made some pretty significant speed optimizations, which means the user can work with bigger, more detailed terrains without their CPU's dying of heat exhaustion. Also, and perhaps more importantly (you be the judge!), I whipped up a new video, this time including a texture editing demonstration.




Full blog post
Discussion of all kinds, and suggestions are welcome, as always!

Yeah like allowing the user to load .fx files.

I don't see why not. I think I'll have this in some form.

[Entar]

UPDATE!
Added a render path for Vertex Buffer Objects (VBO) if supported, so now basically, you can work with as big a terrain as is reasonable. Also, a while back I added a "brush" functionality that lets you edit the terrain with brush images, for added detail. I've now added the same functionality to the texture editing, for even greater control.

Some of you might appreciate this: I was recently looking at my editor's CPU usage when I noticed that, in certain cases, it was sucking up a horrible amount of memory. The more times I did certain things, the more memory it pulled in. I thought there must be a memory leak, but when I examined the related code, there wasn't one. The code was very straight forward, and it was correct. Then I finally found it: I never put any limitation on the memory taken by the undo/redo stacks . Now you know at least one thing I'll be working on in the coming days.

Full blog post

[deathtotheweird]

Looks cool. I'm not really a fan of the controls in Unity's built in terrain editor, will try this out whenever you release it.

[jotapeh]

Reminds me a lot of err.. darn it, I can't remember the name of it... 3D Landscape program back in the late 90s/early 2000s. Cool stuff.

[Entar]

Reminds me a lot of err.. darn it, I can't remember the name of it... 3D Landscape program back in the late 90s/early 2000s. Cool stuff.

If you remember the name of that editor, let me know - I'd be interested to see it so I can beat the pants off it.

Also, here's a quick screenshot of some new, detailed texturing work with the brushes:

Click to see full-size image

[Entar]

CANYON TERRAIN EDITOR BETA #1

The first beta version of my terrain editor is now available. Have fun with it, make something totally cool, and be sure to bring back some feedback and screenshots of awesome creations. I want to see what you creative folk come up with.

Here is the download link: http://entar.quakedev.com/terrainEditor/CanyonEditor-beta1.zip
Full blog post: http://entardev.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/canyon-terrain-editor-beta-1/

[Entar]

I've been starting up some development on this again, and I'll probably be making another beta release some time in the next few weeks. Before I do, though, I'm looking for more feedback on bugs to fix, features to add, suggestions to consider, etc. So, please give it a try and let me know what kind of experiences you have with it, and what would be really handy to have changed.

Thanks!