ArtifexTerra Terrain Editor [1.2 Beta Release 10.3.14 Pg.16]

[xEvilReeperx]

I seem to be having a problem where the UI elements aren't being updated properly after mousing over them. Here's the result of just moving the mouse from top to bottom in the main menu:



Windows 7, 64 bit
GeForce GTX 550 Ti
i3-2100 @ 3.1 GHZ
4 GB RAM

Artifex 1.0 RC1, downloaded the binaries from your web site

This comes up a few times with similar texture names in Ogre.log:

WARNING: Texture instance 'manualMaskTexture' was defined as manually loaded, but no manual loader was provided. This Resource will be lost if it has to be reloaded.

[Nauk]

Seems to be a problem with Ogre 1.49 which Artifex 1.0 is still using, your hardware and the way the gui lib is storing its textures. I had similar problems with it loosing the texturing on windows resize / device resets, although so far never on the just texture swaps. Trying to fix it by providing manual resource loaders didn't work. So I migrated everything now to Ogre 1.7 and the problem is gone entirely. In short, you have to wait for the next version 1.2 which is in the polishing and testing right now.

[Transporter]

I just tested it, works fine for me. One thing comes to my mind, have you activated the object mode before you try to press the "Use Mesh" button? That is a little glitch it usability in 1.0. Press Ctrl + O to go to object mode and then Use Mesh should do the trick. If that doesn't work my next question would be if you can use one of the meshes that come with Artifex.

Seems to be a problem with Ogre 1.49 which Artifex 1.0 is still using

That explains a lot! Could you update the editor to Ogre 1.8 please?

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08:37:03: Error in material RoadMaterialat line 16 of RoadMaterial.material: Unrecognised command: alpha_to_coverage
08:37:03: Error in material RoadMaterialat line 22 of RoadMaterial.material: Unrecognised command: illumination_stage
08:37:03: Error in material RoadMaterialat line 23 of RoadMaterial.material: Unrecognised command: light_clip_planes
08:37:03: Error in material RoadMaterialat line 24 of RoadMaterial.material: Unrecognised command: light_scissor
08:37:03: Error in material RoadMaterialat line 26 of RoadMaterial.material: Unrecognised command: normalise_normals
08:37:03: Error in material RoadMaterialat line 29 of RoadMaterial.material: Unrecognised command: scene_blend_op
08:37:03: Error in material RoadMaterialat line 31 of RoadMaterial.material: Unrecognised command: transparent_sorting
08:37:59: Mesh: Loading road1.mesh.
08:37:59: OGRE EXCEPTION(7:InternalErrorException): Cannot find serializer implementation for current version [MeshSerializer_v1.8] in MeshSerializer::importMesh at ..\src\OgreMeshSerializer.cpp (line 114)

The material of my meshs are not working in your editor. Btw, there are a lot of material errors:

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08:37:03: Error in material MySky at line 46 of skybox.material: Invalid vertex_program_ref entry - vertex program Ogre/BasicVertexPrograms/AmbientOneTexture has not been defined.
08:37:03: Error in material MySky at line 51 of skybox.material: Invalid fragment_program_ref entry - fragment program Examples/MorningSkyBoxHDRfp has not been defined.
08:37:03: Error in material tree.05.branch3/ALPHA/TEX/tree.05.png/TWOSIDE at line 75 of tree.05.material: Bad receive_shadows attribute, valid parameters are 'on' or 'off'.
08:37:03: WARNING: artifex3d.pointer.mesh is an older format ([MeshSerializer_v1.30]); you should upgrade it as soon as possible using the OgreMeshUpgrade tool.
08:37:03: Can't assign material Troll3D.Pointer.01/TEXFACE/testmap.jpg to SubEntity of Pointer because this Material does not exist. Have you forgotten to define it in a .material script?
08:37:03: Can't assign material Troll3D.Pointer.01/TEXFACE/brush.png to SubEntity of Pointer because this Material does not exist. Have you forgotten to define it in a .material script?
08:37:22: WARNING: axes.mesh is an older format ([MeshSerializer_v1.30]); you should upgrade it as soon as possible using the OgreMeshUpgrade tool.

[Nauk]

I think that should not be a problem, my dev version runs fine with 1.7 now, so 1.8 isn't such a big step. Maybe I'll even do a smaller 1.1x release to address that problem before 1.2. This weekend is already booked for Artifex, lets see how far I come with it.

[xEvilReeperx]

In short, you have to wait for the next version 1.2 which is in the polishing and testing right now.

Any timeline on that? I'm really looking forward to playing with this

[Nauk]

beginning of march somewhen, depending how much spare time I can cut out for Artifex sooner or later.

[Blender+C++]

Hey Nauk , how is it going?
Man im stuck, i really cant live without shadows anymore and i am really willing to keep using Artifex Terrain for my terrains and well, i have downloaded the Sample which comes with a standard(simple) material loader, so what ive done is that i have only switched from the standard material file with only one pass, that Works only with the 8 colour map splatting images to the one which is used by artifex loader folder , the folder that artifex creates with all splatting,normal mapping and the other mapping images,but i had to adapt it cause the material file which is used by artifex loader doesnt come with the .png at the end of the names and some of them dont even come with the real images name so i just fixed it and ive put the .cg and program files into the ogre media folders, so eveyrthing is loading OK without a problem, i am using the ogre terrain and i am loading the artifex .png file and the materials ok, however i cant set up a pssm shadows with that material file, i tried using the terrainmeterial->getmaterialName() but to no avail ,of course since that material file loads custom shaders and stuff ,and i dont know anything about shaders ...hmmm...well i know i need to learn it but i just want to setup shadows for now in order to keep going with my game progress and then when it comes the proper time to learn shaders i will just start it by studying the artifex terrain shaders, and will eventually check the ogre Materials documentation, but i really cant learn it now , i need to proceed to some other important stuff, so i am really counting on you and hoping that you can give me some help regarding that,the shadows work for my character, it casts shadows on himself and they look pretty good ,but on the terrain , it simply doesnt work since the terrain material seems to go way beyond my scope,i am really an easy learner so it wont be a problem in the future but for now i cant think out of the box,i really need your help, and if needed , i can upload the material file and the .cg and program files , and i can also post how i set up the PSSM, in order to provide you more info.....
Man i am really hoping to get some help here, i appreciate you if can take a look at my stuff and maybe help me out with that!!!
i look forward for a reply and thanks in advance,
Romulo Romero

[Nauk]

Hey Nauk , how is it going?
Man im stuck, i really cant live without shadows anymore and i am really willing to keep using Artifex Terrain for my terrains and well, i have downloaded the Sample which comes with a standard(simple) material loader, so what ive done is that i have only switched from the standard material file with only one pass, that Works only with the 8 colour map splatting images to the one which is used by artifex loader folder , the folder that artifex creates with all splatting,normal mapping and the other mapping images,but i had to adapt it cause the material file which is used by artifex loader doesnt come with the .png at the end of the names and some of them dont even come with the real images name so i just fixed it and ive put the .cg and program files into the ogre media folders, so eveyrthing is loading OK without a problem, i am using the ogre terrain and i am loading the artifex .png file and the materials ok, however i cant set up a pssm shadows with that material file, i tried using the terrainmeterial->getmaterialName() but to no avail ,of course since that material file loads custom shaders and stuff ,and i dont know anything about shaders ...hmmm...well i know i need to learn it but i just want to setup shadows for now in order to keep going with my game progress and then when it comes the proper time to learn shaders i will just start it by studying the artifex terrain shaders, and will eventually check the ogre Materials documentation, but i really cant learn it now , i need to proceed to some other important stuff, so i am really counting on you and hoping that you can give me some help regarding that,the shadows work for my character, it casts shadows on himself and they look pretty good ,but on the terrain , it simply doesnt work since the terrain material seems to go way beyond my scope,i am really an easy learner so it wont be a problem in the future but for now i cant think out of the box,i really need your help, and if needed , i can upload the material file and the .cg and program files , and i can also post how i set up the PSSM, in order to provide you more info.....
Man i am really hoping to get some help here, i appreciate you if can take a look at my stuff and maybe help me out with that!!!
i look forward for a reply and thanks in advance,
Romulo Romero

I am afraid I don't have the time to dig into that right now. Keep trying, it will unfold and pay off eventually - that's what I do too

[Blender+C++]

Hi Nauk,
Thanks for replying and sorry for the delay =(, i just started college(computer Science) so i didnt have much time to check threads here, and regarding the problem ...yeah well i will keep trying but i have a tiny change to solve it since i dont know shaders yet but im sure when you get the time , you will get it solved since you are a pretty smart guy but thanks for the attention and pending a possible help, i will keep waiting and trying while i dont get it sorted!
Thanks again brother !!
kind regards,
Romulo Romero

[Nauk]

Finally I have enough to show to reveal the new feature: Multilayer Colourpainting.

So what's this? - Basically most of you should know that from popular 2D painting software. Just to avoid misunderstandings, this happens on top of and additionally to the texture painting and is rendered into only ONE colour layer (aka textureslot) at the end. Right now I am testing it with 8 extra colour layers (more are possible, but imho not really needed) and there is no notable performance hit while painting compared to the old paint mode.

Screen 1: 4 extra colour layers, all enabled, full opacity. - Screen 2: Opacity of Layer 4 set to 37%.

Screen 3: Opacity of Layer 3 set to 42%. - Screen 4: Layer 1 disabled.

The tech behind it is a complete new floating point paint engine (in form of a library), partially GPU driven, designed for Ogre. So this was the reason for the hold up with the new version and it is about to be finished. What can you do with it? Mostly this will enable a whole new dimension of artistic workflow and control over how your terrain is going to look like.

Although you could do all that with 1 layer too, but if you ever worked in a 2D paint program you can imagine the pain trying to do it all in one layer compared to having multiple layers. But the main drive for me to start with it was another unique function of Artifex has since the very beginning: backblending of a baked diffusion map to counter the texture tiling effect:

So once you are done with texture painting, you can use that function and it creates a coloured slightly altered counterfeit of your previous texturing as colour layer and is blended via multiply over your terrain, having several benefits: you get richer colours, your tile effects get reduced tremendously and the whole thing looks more natural. But this used to happen on the same colour layer you had been painting on too.

Now the main problem: if you do that all on one layer and you want to alter something later, like the texturing, you likely end up loosing all your handmade colouring work having to redo it, which is frustrating, tedious and time consuming. Multiple colour layers save you that time since you can comfortably just run "backblending" as often as you want without loosing anything, or just redo your shadows etc... you get the picture

Other uses for colourpainting are for example to pre-colour the ground below water, or to make the sand on humid beaches a bit more saturated so it appears wet, you can visually connect your trees to your ground better by colouring the ground a bit with the colour of your tree, fake SSAO and shadows for FPS cheap reality accents, etc.

Although it is a bit early to say, but I am pondering about releasing the PaintEngine as standalone SDK for Ogre once it has been matured enough.

You can also follow the whole thing on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ArtifexTerra3D

Enjoy

[Jabberwocky]

Nice!
Absolutely, any tools to fight the tiling effect of rendering terrain is a huge bonus. The other applications of the layer painting sound great too.

[Nauk]

Thanks Jabberwocky, glad you like it. That feature seemed to be a bit unrecognized, so I thought I point it out again and thanks for the Kudoses

[Orobu]

Hello, I have a problem working with Artifex Terra. I am unable to load my own meshes into the editor. In the manual it says that we should just place our objects into the model folder, so that's what we did but..

The mesh file (and its material/texture etc) works fine in our Ogre application and in Ogre Meshy. The mesh file comes up in the list of meshes in Artifex Terra (and the log says it loaded the mesh) but when selecting it like with all the other meshes it wont show up in the editor.

Can anyone help with this problem please? Is there anything else we need to do with our meshes to add them properly into Artifex Terra? We really like Artifex Terra and would love to add our own meshes to it

[Nauk]

Hello, thanks for the positive feedback The problem is known, it is because the current version 1.0 of Artifex is still running on Ogre 1.49 and your meshes are likely produced with a much newer Ogre version and OgreXMLConverter. You can try 2 things: either wait for the release of 1.2 or use an older exporter and OgreXMLConverter in the meantime. - But seeing this, maybe I'll toss out an unstable alpha of 1.2 earlier than planned so that problem is solved.

[Orobu]

Thanks for you answer Nauk! Just like you said, our meshes were exported for Ogre 1.8 so that's why they didn't work, exporting for 1.4 made them load in Artifex Terra.

An unstable 1.2 alpha would be nice for our pipeline, but no stress Looking forward to it!

[Orobu]

Here comes another question; We have been trying to load our terrain generated by Artifex Terra into our game but are unable to get it to load properly using the Ogre Terrain loader. The terrain is loaded according to the log but won't render on the screen. This is how it looks:


This screenshot is taken from the compiled demo of the Artifex Terra Ogre Terrain loader. We get the same results when we load the scene into our project, except even the grass won't render. Does this look familiar? If so, what do you think might be the problem? We are using Ogre 1.8.1.

EDIT: We got it working using ETM, but still no luck with Ogre Terrain.

[Nauk]

When you debug into it, does it load the binary or the image based heightmap?

[Orobu]

It loads the binary heightmap.

[Nauk]

going to look into it

[Orobu]

Hello again, here comes another issue I have encountered with Artifex Terra! We switched to Ogre 1.7.4 so we can use the Ogre::Terrain instead of ETM, which works just fine! Except for one thing, our terrain is using 500 Ogre units in X and Z (instead of the default 5000) and 166 in Y (this is because of bullet physics as our main character is 1 meter tall). This is fine using ETM but when loading the terrain with Ogre::Terrain using Artifex Terra loader the texture tiling is too big, like in this screenshot (the window to the right):

In this screenshot we took the demozone from the loader example and scaled it down from 5000 Ogre units to 500 (like we did with our terrain). It is the same scene loaded in two aplication. I presume Artifex Terra is loading it's terrain using ETM? Our application to the right is loading the same scene but using the Ogre::Terrain loader. As you can see the texture tiling appears differently using the Ogre::Terrain loader, looks more low-resolution and generally spattered. This only happens when we scale the terrain from 5000 to 500 (and possibly affects other values as well). It works just fine otherwise.

I suspect it has something to do with texture tiling on the Ogre::Terrain part? It seems to be using the same size for the texture as if the terrain was 5000 Ogre units instead of 500. Perhaps this can be simply changed in Ogre::Terrain as a quick fix? I have looked at various settings for Ogre::Terrain but no luck yet

EDIT: I managed to temporary fix this texture issue by modifiying the "TerrainSplattScale_X/Z" in zonesettings.cfg from 192.0 to 8.0.

[Nauk]

Sorry for the delay Orobu. Good that you could fix it so far and yes the Splattscale is the lever for it, if you adjust your terrain proportions, you have to down / upscale the whole set of numbers proportionally. You can also do that directly in the ArtifexLoaderTerrain.cpp file line 381:

Code: Select all

defaultimp.layerList[i+1].worldSize = mSplattScaleX/2;

Since your terrain units are factor 10 smaller, scaling everything down by x10 should do it.

As for the other issue, I am going to look into Ogre 1.8.x, thanks for bringing this up, on it now

[DancingPenguin]

This might have been mentioned earlier in the thread, so sorry if it is a repost, but I am going out soon.
When I switch to fullscreen, my cursor disappears?
Is this perhaps caused by me using Ogre 1.8?

[Nauk]

Should not be Ogre 1.8 related, but it has been quite a while since i worked with Ogre 1.8, this is what so far worked for me:

InputManager.cpp

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paramList.insert(std::make_pair(std::string("w32_mouse"), std::string("DISCL_FOREGROUND" )));
paramList.insert(std::make_pair(std::string("w32_mouse"), std::string("DISCL_NONEXCLUSIVE")));
// Create inputsystem
mInputSystem = OIS::InputManager::createInputSystem( paramList );

[Orobu]

Here comes yet another issue I found!

When using point lights and Ogre::Terrain lighting does not work properly for us. This is a screenshot from the demozone terrain (untouched) loaded into our application with all lights off except for one point light.


The point light seems to be lighting and entire are (calculated from the paged terrain?) but there is no light on the characters back?

Is this a known problem with a possible quick fix? Will look around myself

[bstone]

The default material generator will only work nicely with a single directional light since that's what makes for an outdoor terrain most of the time. If you want something more fancy, point lights included, you'll have to create your own material generator and most likely use per-light iterations in your material passes. It's not that hard as it sounds.