Terragen terrain and decimator tool

[numaQ]

Hi all,

I try to decimate a terrain to have 1000 polys. This terrain was made in terragen, saved in lwo format then imported in blender.

When i use the decimator tool, i see in wireframe mode there’s less polys.
So this part is fine.
But if i press tab to go in edit mode vertices seems to not be reduced.
If I try to UV map the decimated terrain, looks like there’s too much faces (and it freezes blender)

If I save the decimated terrain, then reopen it, it’s wrong (too much faces and vertices).

I’m using 2.37a

So, who can tell me how to have less polys, less vertices, less faces and how to save the final mesh ???

[mataii]

yes… the decimate tool is so weird some times… or maybe all the times that I’ve used it

what I used to do is to enter in edit mode and select with Lkey all the faces, then invert the selection and go to vertex select mode and erase all the vertex… that way I get the decimated mesh without isolated vertex

Mata

[fakeplastic]

Just a quick question, are you hitting apply after dragging the decimator?

Because it will show less polys in object mode, but it is only a preview. You have to hit apply for it to actually decimate the mesh.

And if you have don this, then my suggestion to reduce the mesh is to increase the limit (under mesh tools in edit mode) and then remove doubles (with all vertices selected). Any vertices that are within that limit will get merged together and that will reduce your mesh. However, it will not try to keep the same general shape of the mesh like the decimator.

<<EDIT>>
And if your using a newer vesion than 2.37 and have the decimator as a modifier in the stack, then you have to apply that one as well to get it to actually modify the mesh.

[numaQ]

Ooops ! I didn’t press “apply”

[goldentaiji]

Hmm, how are you going about exporting and uvmapping the exported terragen terrain in blender? Or is there a link… How’s it look?

I thought I’d just ask. Hehe, cause I’m lazy in creating land maps, and this may prove useful in the future. And terragen has jaw dropping generation of various lands.

Jason Lin

[marko]

Wow this Terragen is cool stuff i just downloaded it but i cant save it to .lwo or any other file that blender can inport,i can only save in .tgw.I tryed to change the end by renameing but that didnet work,so how do you save it in diffrent file??
My version of Terragen is v0.9!!!

[numaQ]

To marko:

Generate you terrain then export it. In the landscape window press export. You can choose RAW, vistapro or LightWave.

Terragen v0.9 is the good one.

[numaQ]

To goldentaiji:

Just go to http://oor.free.fr/blender
You can download a 3 Mb (exe file) of my terragen terrain test in the goodies section.

[marko]

Thanks numaQ that helped alot.But how many polys i should use so that blender dosent lag.I just made one for testing but it was alot of polys so it laged like crazy and am not talcking about blender engine i mean the entire blender program haha.

[goldentaiji]

Hey cool. It looks pretty good, but how did you map the textues? Was it directly from the terragen file?

It looked like this on my computer with a ATI RADEON ALL IN WONDER 8500. Yeah kinda old.

The textures you had weren’t blotchy right? Definitely interesting, lol, give us some hints on how you went about it. Probably simple, but I can’t test anything out until the 22nd (last day of finals). I’ll play around with it.

Ohh have a look at Ter2Blend too. I read about it back then, but it might make this whole process easier.

Jason Lin

[Drewu]

I would just use an ortho camera to take a render of the terrain in terragen from on high and use that to texture it. Keeps all of the shadows.

[numaQ]

Dreawu

I would just use an ortho camera to take a render of the terrain in
terragen from on high and use that to texture it. Keeps all of the shadows.

You’re right, this is the method i’ve used to get the terrain texture.
I’ve applied some filters in Gimp too.
The sky is an UVmapped sphere.
Bushes are halo planes (using alpha textures).