How to make terrains / outdoor areas in UnrealEd?

[UnrealWarrior]

I'm trying to make an outdoor area in one of my maps, I've tried to use the terrain brush, but it's either too difficult to use to make a mountain-ish walls/floor or ends up breaking the entire level.

Some of the maps that are included in UT like DM-ArcaneTemple definitely uses some third-party software to make a terrain like that. but this is just my opinion...
So, any ideas or suggestions to make a good outdoor areas?


Thank you!

[Tydusis]

There was a package of tools I liked using back in the day, I think they were called Tarquin's brush pack or something? You could make randomly generated terrain and tunnels with it. You could then move/delete vertices if you wanted to simplify/adjust

[Aspide]

I'm no expert at making terrain but what I do is using the terrain brush for terrain that has a sky at the top and tessellated cubes for caves or extra terrain, you could open other peoples maps and check how it was done, the majority always use tessellated cubes and the terrain brush but some people take it a step further and make the terrain in a separate application and then import the terrain in the editor, don't know how that's done....

[makemeunreal]

I made a tutorial describing a really easy method you can achieve good result with.
Here's a direct link to that tutorial:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3cflpl53kff4a ... A.pdf?dl=1

Nota bene: If you select all surfaces, and tesselate them, the whole cave/canyon brush can be edited to your liking. Slanted edges etc. It's gonna look more natural. You can also give it "elevation".

[UnrealWarrior]

@Tydusis : It's called Tarquin Builder Brushes. Here's a website that hosts those packages: http://hellkeeper.net/files.php

@Aspide : I've tried to use terrain builder that comes with UnrealEd + Tesselated cubes. 7/10 would cause HOM on my maps, or misaligned textures...Or maybe I'm just making complex brushes.

@makemeunreal : Wow. A simple, straight-to-the-point tutorial! I'll definitely try it out! Thank you!

Thanks for the help guys! I really apperciate it

[jmartin]

I find the terrain editor to be rather easy to use as long as all vertices are snapped to the grid and do not deviate from their original X - Y coordinates.

Otherwise it tends to cause drop-outs (BSP errors, black or empty triangles).

The cemetery in "DM-The Warriors" for example, I tried to do it free hand (un-aligned to the grid) and ended up with a lot of drop outs, so I just remade the whole thing snapped to the grid and it works perfectly.

HOWEVER...

The larger and more complex the terrain (in my experience) the more susceptible it is to errors.

There's a hole in DM-Kor for example that I missed and to this day is still in there.

Your results may vary. Good luck.

[papercoffee]

Tessellated cubes are your friends ...you can build your whole map with them.

[Swanky]

As said, tesselated cubes put together and then merged into one big, complicated brush can get the work done quite admirably. It's just A LOT of work to hand edit all the vertices and iron out all cuts. Thankfully UEd 2.x has added align to wall functionality so at least aligning textures isn't that much of an issue anymore.
The bigger issue usually is how UE calculates geometry cuts on big surfaces or complex brushes and can lead to either HOMs or disappearing surfaces depending on viewing angle, especially if those surfaces are cut by other brushes even if those are semisolids which theoretically shouldn't do more cuts.

Aside from that, I know a few people did work with Blender doing their terrain but I can't tell how to do it as I do not have experience with it. If I remember correctly, AS-FoT-Chronoshift uses this method for its cave section (but Rev did delete all brushes from the map before releasing it).

You can check both DOM-FoT-Xenora and DM-TMC-Narean as maps with complex terrain brushes done with the tesselated cube method.

[Aspide]

It takes time to master tessellated cubes but when you do you can make any kind of terrain. You just have to be careful to not make shapes that are too complicated or you are going to have a lot of HOM or invisible walls. Also like Swanky said UEd 2.x can align to wall but if you don't have that editor you can rotate the terrain brush until the surfaces that you want to align are facing up or down and then align to the floor.

[Swanky]

It takes time to master tessellated cubes but when you do you can make any kind of terrain. You just have to be careful to not make shapes that are too complicated or you are going to have a lot of HOM or invisible walls. Also like Swanky said UEd 2.x can align to wall but if you don't have that editor you can rotate the terrain brush until the surfaces that you want to align are facing up or down and then align to the floor.

HOMs and invisible walls are mostly problematic due to BSP cuts, not necessarily due to complexity. The main terrain brush in Narrean has 2250 polygons and it's pretty much free of anything.

[Deepu]

What about this?

[Swanky]

It's generally possible. Lots of ppv though so could tank performance.
Might want to use additive tesselated cubes for it.

[Terraniux]

Here watch this. I made a video a couple of years ago . It uses BSP Terrain and the tessellated vertex technique (second part starts around 11:00).


Hope it helps

[SzGergo]

Someone also made a nice plugin for SketchUp more than a decade ago, called HSKP2UNR
I used that a lot.
Practically i lets you export T3D brushes from Sketchup.
Guess now you need to somehow download some old legacy version of Sketchup, because in the meantime that crap became everything you don't need: some cloud bullshit with subscription and such
(oh, and keeping the vertices on discrate grid coordinates is always strongly advised)

[[NBK]DxTrEm3Fx]

As said, tesselated cubes put together and then merged into one big, complicated brush can get the work done quite admirably. It's just A LOT of work to hand edit all the vertices and iron out all cuts. Thankfully UEd 2.x has added align to wall functionality so at least aligning textures isn't that much of an issue anymore.
The bigger issue usually is how UE calculates geometry cuts on big surfaces or complex brushes and can lead to either HOMs or disappearing surfaces depending on viewing angle, especially if those surfaces are cut by other brushes even if those are semisolids which theoretically shouldn't do more cuts.

Aside from that, I know a few people did work with Blender doing their terrain but I can't tell how to do it as I do not have experience with it. If I remember correctly, AS-FoT-Chronoshift uses this method for its cave section (but Rev did delete all brushes from the map before releasing it).

You can check both DOM-FoT-Xenora and DM-TMC-Narean as maps with complex terrain brushes done with the tesselated cube method.

Hello Swanky,
I've downloaded your DM-TMC-Narean off of Unreal Archives Right now I'm missing a file called SGTech1.Walls. I have the SGTech1.utx file not sure what the issue is with.Walls? I would assume that is a wall texture in the SGTech1.utx file?