Design Question - Terrain

Troubleshooting terramonkey
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Hello Guys,

First of all sorry about my english since I’m not native but I’ll try to provide the best I can.

After reading the bible and the tutorials regarding JME3 I now have some grasp wih the engine funcionalities however after a search I still haven’t figured out the best way to create my game terrain.
I’m aiming for a static terrain, not a procedual one, but after playing a bit with the terrain bulder inside JME3 I’m not sure it’s the best way to implement a big detailed map since the controls make it hard to give the terrain that detailed look I’m looking for, are there other efficient ways to create a nifty custom terrain?
I’m not convinced creating a terrain in blender would be a good option also due to the lack of efficiency.
This is my biggest problem concerning my terrain implementation and I would like to hear any implementation options you used for creating your own terrains.
If there are any good terrain paging implementations out there I would like to ear about that also.

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Here is a working version of terrain paging I wrote: https://github.com/jayfella/TerrainWorld

I am currently writing a better version of that code that will also work in the scenecomposer. I’m also improving on the tools that you mentioned right now.

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We are currently using external tools to generate our terrain and then use jme to show the final result.
I honestly don’t think any engine based tools can compete with specialized pieces of software when it comes to asset creation. And probably it should not even be the goal.
In blender you theoretically could sculp a terrain out of a single quad and then generate a displacement map for that. Then you could use that as a heightmap for the jme terrain. All theory and nothing tried however…

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Well I use l3dt for creating the heightmap and alphamaps,
then use a custom vertex shader that applies the height to a shape like model centered at the player.

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@jayfella thx I’ll certainly have a look at TerrainWorld soon

@zzuegg could you please specify which external tools you are currently using? I couldn’t find any =O and about sculpting a terrain in blender even if it’s possible I have so little knowledge of blender I don’t think I can build one, at least yet

@EmpirePhoenix I’ll also have a look at l3dt right now and see if it fits my needs

Thank you all for the input

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What sculpting tools are you looking for? The terrain editor has slopes, height/valleys, noise generation, leveling, plateaus, and painting. If there is a particular one you are really looking for, let me know and I can look at adding it in.

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A feature i was missing when i last checked the editor is to limit the coloring to slope values…

A bit offtopic but since you might have missed the thread i made there is a possible serious bug in the LOD index calculations
http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/forum/topic/terrainquad-and-patchsize-the-thread-to-the-way-of-solving-the-issue/

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Slope painting, yea definitely a useful tool and shouldn’t be that difficult to implements.
Replying to your other issue in the thread.

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I know that this tread is kind of old but since I am exploring the TerrainWorld paging solution I am interested in what is happening. Jayfella, you mentioned that you are writing a better version of the TerrainWorld. Is that work abandoned or is it still ongoing?

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It is definitely on my todo list, as well as implementing a better terrain editor. At this precise point in time, though I am putting all my spare time into a jmonkey resource API and website, which will allow people to showcase their plugins/add-ons to the jmonkey engine a lot like steam. As soon as I’m done with that, I’ll be on to terrain.

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Since i am currently rewriting my tessellation based terrain to be ready for public, we could maybe combine our systems. Once you are back on the terrain topic feel free to contact me if you are interested…

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