I am a neewbie with the editor.
I am creating a supercross map and would like to have a volcano or mountain in the background. I want it to be approximately the same size as the mountains that are in the base world map.
I've use "terrain shaping" tool, and the best I can do is: place à hill, shape it with triggers, but the maximum height seems to be limited, so I place this hill, then place another one on top of it and so on...
Is there a better way of using this tool ? Am I missing something ?
By the way, I have a few ideas for how to create lava, I've seen some good tutorial about it (see below) but the guy is using primes from the xbla DLCs.
Do you know a few items that have flat surfaces and have strong brightness in the PC editor ?
Here is the tutorial by G BIGgEIGHT:
Thanks !
Edit : Made a mistake posting in user created tracks... could a moderator move this post to level editor please ?? sorry for the mistake !
Your doing it correctly,but to get height,go into the settings,and where it says ' height' ,' flatten' etc, you need to choose the one on the right hand side..
Then,when your apex is on the green arrow,just use your right stick to move it up...
Hope i explained this so you undertand it.
Im on xbox, n not PC, but the method is the same...
For some reason when I first tried the "flatten" setting, I found the edges were too sharp, but using the correct scale (wide vs. high), it looks more like what I want to do !
So I guess my question is answered !
If anyone knows of objects that are very bright ... i'm still interested
I've been playing with the terrain shapping tool trying to have a better understanding of how it works and what it's limitations are...
I've come to a point where I believe what I want to do (volcano / mountainous background) can't be achieved.
I'm going to explain why and I would like to know if there is something I misunderstood or if you have the same problems, so any feedback is appreciated !
Might be neewbie questions though....
Just a reminder: I am working on a supercross track.
1) terrain shapping complexity
It seems the terrain shapping is a very complex 'object' and the complexity meter fills very fast, so I assume it cannot be used to mod the whole background terrain.
Or at least on the track I am building since there is a great background depth (and i'd like to keep this depth, not limiting the max view distance too much)
So I think it is not possible to have a global volcanic background, at best only one good looking volcano, but in this case it really stands out of the rest and doesn't really fit with the rest
2) Effects 'range' (or view distance)
I'm using fire effects (light disabled) and point lights to give a 'live volcano' visual effect.
I found out that if placing fire too far from the driving line, they are not visible when playing the track.
Same thing with point lights.
So I ended up placing my volcano really close to the driving line, and the result is not very good.
3) effects 'clipping' when not in the camera view
It seems effects that are near the edge of the camera view gets deactivated
I had the case with fire effects (with smoke):
The effects goes 'on' when close enough, the I have a jump and the camera doesn't see the fire for maybe half a second, then comes back.
The fire seems to start again and do soes the smoke, this doesn't look good and moreover there is smoke from the first time the camera viewed this fire. I end up having morse code style smoke signals....
If there is something I am missing for these 3 problems, please let me know
For the moment I've given up the volcano idea and will go for a more reasonable background decoration.
1: The terrain shaper can create a lot , but creating whole mountains from nothing is too much for the tool, as you can only raise/lower a limited area, you'd need a lot of complexity, I'd advise to use one of the existing hills as background. I'd easier to dig terrain away from existing mountains, then to add a lot of new terrain.
2: Lights have limited range, and we don't have "glowing" primes, so we are limited in distance by that.
3: Particle effects have to basicly reload if they are out of camera view for a bit.
My advise is to mainly focus on the track + driveline and background with the remaining complexity. Complex backgrounds can slow down performance as well, as I learned the hard way in my tracks.
A terrain shape can be stretched by moving the right-stick up/down or right/left, and right/left-trigger to scale the whole terrain. But this is with the Xbox 360 controller, I have no idea about mouse & keyboard way, but I think there should be a blue, red and green line to pull lengthways, sideways, and height.
You CAN raise the terrain so high you want, just be sure that you have the terrain option to "flatten" instead "normal" in the properties.
As for the lava, make two water layers like the guy in the video did, and no, there is no such bright object in the editor except the primes. Try to use fire, and maybe point lights, but remember they put down the performance very much! Try to hide the background, reduce the draw distance and make the volcano nearer to the line helps a bit.
Plus, as TeriXeri said, try to put more effort in the driveline, because they decide if the track is fun, challenging, or frustrating. When you did the basic foreground decoration and the main part, the driving line, then you can add the background & details.
You can raise large squares of terrain like pillars but what I meant was, you need a whole lot of them, and then I suppose put a lot of hill/rock/ramp or inverted holes/ditches above it to smooth it out
Generally I do terrain shaping with the mouse, to select the stretch (green/red arrows) and amount (blue arrow, can be negative so holes are hills), usually I max the amount on true flat areas I want to flatten. The Red Circle option is rotation of the terrain tool.
In some cases it's easier to cover large parts of terrain with cliff pieces instead of actual terrain, they don't seem to add a whole lot of complexity either.
As for lava, you can do a lot of tricks with colored water + enviroment lighting and/or camera exposure/color/filter, combined with lights. Not sure what lava effect you want, but I recently made a lava track and can explain more details if you want this type of effect :
TeriXeri, your first post confirms what I suspected about terrain shapping/light/particles.
You both suggest I should put more effort on the driving line than on the background, I do agree !
In fact here is how I built my track:
1) driving line
2) consistent theme for track obstacles
3) consistent theme for close background and foreground decoration
4) World lightning, sun, clouds ....
5) track lightning
6) Background deco (which I found myself stuck with the volcano problems....)
As you can see, background deco is the last step, and it a bit frustrating to be stuck at this point, but this allows me to learn !
What I'm going to do is give up the volcano/lava idea for this particuliar track. I think a more conventional background will do (wooden houses / tables / cars ...)
Thanks for the terrain tool tips Blastergamer. In fact I use the Xbox controller in track editor even though it's the pc version.... So I get what you're explaining
(keyboard / mouse might be more efficient but I like to lay back, relax and take my time, so xbox controller is fine)
Hopefully, the controller skills learned now will be useful for trials fusion track editor ^_^
Thank you for the lava tips too, btw your track looks amazing TeriXeri,I will have a go at it later
I still have work to do on this track, hope I'll be able to release it soon