Terrain Blending Help

[IrocJeff]

I have all the shaders someone made for me a few years back both for the textures itself (dirt/rock) and the blending shaders. I'm going to reuse those to start texturing my new terrain, but, with different textures. Do the blended textures have to be in .TGA format? 

 

Also, here is the shader for one blend and for one of the alpha thingy's. The alpha's range from 0,25,50,75,100.  Is there anything that should be added to this to or to make it better or is this basically it for terrain blending shaders?

{
	qer_editorimage textures/icestationwampa/darkrock_dirt_blend.jpg
	q3map_nonplanar
	q3map_shadeAngle 75
	{
		// Primary
		map textures/icestationwampa/dirt.tga
		rgbGen identity
	}
	{
		// Secondary
		map textures/icestationwampa/darkrock.tga
		blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA
		alphaGen vertex
		rgbGen identity
	}
	{
		map $lightmap
		blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_ZERO
		rgbGen identity
	}
}

textures/icestationwampa/alpha_0

{

qer_editorimage textures/icestationwampa/alpha_0.tga

q3map_alphaMod volume

q3map_alphaMod set 0.0

surfaceparm nodraw

surfaceparm nonsolid

surfaceparm trans

qer_trans 0.7

}

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mrwonko]

Simon OC has a nice tutorial on terrain blending using alpha volumes like you want to, give that a read.

[IrocJeff]

Simon OC has a nice tutorial on terrain blending using alpha volumes like you want to, give that a read.

 

Wish he could dumb it down  a wee bit more. I'll read through it again later tonight and see if it makes more sense.  

[Acrobat]

It's a giant pain. I've used sock's terrain blending in a couple maps. As his shaders currently sit, you get bad tiling effect unless you're indoors and very close up to them.

 

I had to readjust all the shaders to scale up the textures as he has them blending very tinyish. Although they did look nice in the map, I eventually concluded it's mostly not worth it doing the dotproduct shader.

 

Some of Szico's use of this shader is ridiculously awesome though. He applied this technique to horizon blending in Atlantica.

[IrocJeff]

Alright, I'm freaking lost here. I found a post from  summer 15' where I got this to work and can't for the life of me do it this time. Not sure what the heck is going on. I've checked my previous work and nothing is different that I have noticed. I've included all my textures, shaders, shader list, and test map file on my Google Drive. If anyone can take a look at this and see what is wrong I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_HRn54BTmRDUFNvOVlwY0VkSTQ/view?usp=sharing

[ooeJack]

Alright, I'm freaking lost here. I found a post from  summer 15' where I got this to work and can't for the life of me do it this time. Not sure what the heck is going on. I've checked my previous work and nothing is different that I have noticed.

 

ooo This is the fun part. Where you're finding the bugs in your code or have found previous work that you've finished which is working, and are doing the same thing now, but it's NOT working, and you gotta find the differences between the files etc. Good fun

 

Welp.. Good luck with it!!! I don't think I can help much with this apart from some words of encouragement.

 

 

ooeJack

[Acrobat]

You're using sock's tutorial?

 

I'm pretty sure the compiler has to be at least 2.5.16 level to do that dot product shader. The default 1.4 compiler was at least last time I checked lower than the required.

 

I used to have to manually update my compiler to do dot product shader via szico's old tutorial on updating. idk even know if that tutorial is around anymore.

[IrocJeff]

Gave up on his for now. Using what was made for me from jkhub member in 2013 in my jo project. I'm at work and on my phone now but the shader is posted on google drive link.

 

I'm using 1.4 so I'll update the compiler and see if that is it. I've forgotten much of this little stuff since last time.

[IrocJeff]

ooo This is the fun part. Where you're finding the bugs in your code or have found previous work that you've finished which is working, and are doing the same thing now, but it's NOT working, and you gotta find the differences between the files etc. Good fun

 

Welp.. Good luck with it!!! I don't think I can help much with this apart from some words of encouragement.

 

 

ooeJack

 

Well, your luck has worked, sir. Thanks..

 

 

 

I really don't know how I got it to work. After updating the compiler it still would not work. So, I re-added the textures again and then caulked everything in the test map and then re-textured it once again. So, now its working. 

 

Going to start texturing my terrain in my project and will get images up of that this weekend. 

 

Thanks for all the help everybody.

[ooeJack]

Glad to hear it, mate.

 

 

ooeJack