Making hills (and possibly mountains)

Post by **Nash** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:20 pm

I was playing around with slopes in ZDoom today. I was trying to make natural looking hills... basically a ring of random-looking sectors with different heights.

It however didn't turn out how I thought it would.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make nice looking hills with slopes?

I'm sorry if this doesn't explain it too well, I can't upload images now...

farlowj · Post by **farlowj** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:26 pm

There are a couple of ways to do this...

One way is to make a sector with however many sides you want, but you probably want to keep it low. On each side, make a rectangle sector, and make sure the opposite side to the original sector is parallel. That is very important if you want everything to line up right. Make that on every side. If this doesn't make sense, I'll post an example of what I'm talking about, but you can see this method in my "THe Island" map.

Another way is much more complicated, look for the heightmap topic in the editing section for another way and for a downloadable example. That method is more flexible in some ways, but not all.

Medricel · Post by **Medricel** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 3:33 pm

Also, having sectors with high numbers of sides will more than likely prevent the slopes from matching up properly... My recommendation is to make your sectors 3-sided, since you have A LOT more control over them (Which is one reason why polygons on 3D game models are made up of triangles

)

Post by **Vader** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 5:57 pm

Shinjanji wrote:Also, having sectors with high numbers of sides will more than likely prevent the slopes from matching up properly... My recommendation is to make your sectors 3-sided, since you have A LOT more control over them (Which is one reason why polygons on 3D game models are made up of triangles )

Thats excatly, what I wanted to say!
Use triangular sectors for your slopes, and you won´t have much trouble with them.
I use this method all the time, since Ninja of Doom (I think) posted a tutorial, how to make it properly

Galaxy_Stranger · Post by **Galaxy_Stranger** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:04 pm

DeePsea has like an auto feature that makes a mound and you can make it as large as you want and cap the top or cone it. It's really useful. What I would really like to figure out is how to make a true dome instead of something conical.

Post by **Caligari87** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:18 am

Search the forum for "Natural Slopes." I made a small topic describing how to do it, and it works very well, although it's time-consuming. Actually borrowed the technique from one of CodeImp's demo WADs.

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=4487

Galaxy_Stranger · Post by **Galaxy_Stranger** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:27 am

oooooooooooo - I'll have to check that out!

Post by **Nash** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 1:15 pm

Thanks for the replies.

Yes, one of my biggest problems were making the slopes align properly.

I'll try out that triangular sector tip.

In the meantime, can anyone post any example wads here? =D Thanks a bunch!

Post by **Nash** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 1:33 pm

Caligari, I tried your tutorial and it works MARVELOUSLY. Thanks dude!

I'm wondering though, using your technique, you can only make two "rings" of craters/hills, if you know what I mean.

I mean, if I want to make the crater/hill appear even more smooth, I'd have to have many more layers/rings of sectors.

With your technique, the only way to do it is add a "dummy ring/layer sector" in between the layers...

Uh I hope I'm making sense here.

Basically, what I want to do is make more smoothly-countoured hills/craters (that means more sectors in between the inner/middle sector and the outer sector).

Any ideas how?

Medricel · Post by **Medricel** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 3:45 pm

Another thing you could try is the "Heightmap" thread.