Background mountains

[Delta1]

I’ve seen a few games that have a mountain background, how is this done?

i don’t mean using the landscaping tool or WM, I mean an image to show way distant mountains as a backdrop?

Also are there any good free mountain models, there doesn’t seem to be much on turbosquid in an fbx format?

[mittense]

A bunch of the marketplace environments have what I generally refer to as landscape “vista” meshes, which are just low-poly background meshes that you can place around the edges of your primary landscape to extend its perceived distance. I’m currently using some temp meshes from a marketplace package until I can make some actual landscape-fitting ones for this dataset, but here’s an example (first to show how ugly it is, second to show how little it matters in the core of the level) below.

The general idea – for me at least – is to refine my actual landscape dataset a bit, and then create a tiling “skirt” in world machine that I export as a mesh and adjust in maya to get it appropriately low-poly. And also create static diffuse (not albedo, just diffuse) and normal maps instead of the more expensive material for the core landscape.

[Delta1]

@mittense

A bunch of the marketplace environments have what I generally refer to as landscape “vista” meshes, which are just low-poly background meshes that you can place around the edges of your primary landscape to extend its perceived distance. I’m currently using some temp meshes from a marketplace package until I can make some actual landscape-fitting ones for this dataset, but here’s an example (first to show how ugly it is, second to show how little it matters in the core of the level) below.

The general idea – for me at least – is to refine my actual landscape dataset a bit, and then create a tiling “skirt” in world machine that I export as a mesh and adjust in maya to get it appropriately low-poly. And also create static diffuse (not albedo, just diffuse) and normal maps instead of the more expensive material for the core landscape.

Thanks for that mittense, for my map it would really make a big difference, but I can’t seem to find anything free on the marketplace that I could use, is there any that you’ve come across or recommend?

I’d really appreciate your help!

[mittense]

@Delta1

I’d really appreciate your help!

I’ll look around my content library later to see if I have any of my old ones – or at least public domain assets. If I can find them, I’ll toss them here: GitHub - trentpolack/joymachine-public: All sorts of random publicly-available information, assets, scripts, and more as we (Joy Machine) work on our projects.

[MarkcusD]

The free auto landscape mat plugin has some. Look in the community content section.

[Delta1]

@mittense

I’ll look around my content library later to see if I have any of my old ones – or at least public domain assets. If I can find them, I’ll toss them here: GitHub - trentpolack/joymachine-public: All sorts of random publicly-available information, assets, scripts, and more as we (Joy Machine) work on our projects.

Id really appreciate that, many thanks!

[Delta1]

@MarkcusD

The free auto landscape mat plugin has some. Look in the community content section.

Thanks for the tip

[Delta1]

@MarkcusD

The free auto landscape mat plugin has some. Look in the community content section.

Did you mean the map with the snowy mountains that you navigate on a hanglider, because I can’t seem to find it or its been removed?

[Delta1]

@mittense

I’ll look around my content library later to see if I have any of my old ones – or at least public domain assets. If I can find them, I’ll toss them here: GitHub - trentpolack/joymachine-public: All sorts of random publicly-available information, assets, scripts, and more as we (Joy Machine) work on our projects.

I take it you didnt find anything?

[mittense]

@Delta1

I take it you didnt find anything?

None of the ones I had could be shared; I just exported a quick mesh based on a (vastly) simplified version of a terrain dataset I’m working on, but I didn’t have time to setup a material nor export all of the layer maps (it takes about 3-4 hours). But this is a fairly simple mesh (24k polys) and its edges are fairly level so you should be able to place them and rotate/scale them to fit with each other without anything too awful looking.

(But, like I said, this was a rush thing, so I apologize if it’s not actually useful): https://www.dropbox.com/s/lak59cu1nk…imple.fbx?dl=0

EDIT: Just baked a normal from the high-poly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u5usvzpb0c…ple_n.tga?dl=0 (world machine normalized the UVs, so [0,1] is the whole mesh).

[Delta1]

@mittense

None of the ones I had could be shared; I just exported a quick mesh based on a (vastly) simplified version of a terrain dataset I’m working on, but I didn’t have time to setup a material nor export all of the layer maps (it takes about 3-4 hours). But this is a fairly simple mesh (24k polys) and its edges are fairly level so you should be able to place them and rotate/scale them to fit with each other without anything too awful looking.

(But, like I said, this was a rush thing, so I apologize if it’s not actually useful): https://www.dropbox.com/s/lak59cu1nk…imple.fbx?dl=0

EDIT: Just baked a normal from the high-poly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u5usvzpb0c…ple_n.tga?dl=0 (world machine normalized the UVs, so [0,1] is the whole mesh).

Hey theres nothing in the first link, I think its been deleted for some reason?

[mittense]

@Delta1

Hey theres nothing in the first link, I think its been deleted for some reason?

I may just be dumb; try this: Dropbox - File Deleted - Simplify your life

[Delta1]

@mittense

I may just be dumb; try this: Dropbox - File Deleted - Simplify your life

Thanks Trent, I’ll give that a shot as soon as I get home, its much appreciated