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[Breli]

Hi fellas,

I played around with EasyGen a little bit but wasn't really satisfied with the results I got. If you have already used it, I would like to share some opinions.

Pros: EasyGen is very convenient for creating terrain and saves a lot of time. Terrain blending comes for "free" since EasyGen automatically creates the meta shader definitions. Everything can be changed easily. So: very nice program.

Cons: The examples you'll see in the tutorials are always something like "Surround a couple of structures with nice looking terrain". That's fairly easy to do. But, if you want to add tunnels to the terrain created with easygen you are in trouble. I guess that it is very difficult to align "custom" made structures with the terrain. Additionally, you end up with a lot of brushes for the terrain (hurting FPS). Particularly, you'll have too much brushes in large flat areas and too few in small rough areas. Additionally, the structures in GtkRadiant look like a mess since there are so many brushes. I know that you can import your map in EasyGen and create the terrain around your structures, but that will not work out properly I guess if you have tunnels.

Any opinions about EasyGen? Did somebody use it and has some tipps and tricks to offer?

cheers

breli

[ReD NeCKersoN]

I tried it for about 8 hours one day. The textures were always very small when I opened the map in Radiant. They looked tiled and very crappy. Nothing I tried could fix it. Unless someone can tell me what to do to fix this my EasyGen days are over. Other than that, it seemed pretty easy to make a terrain in a short amount of time.

[Breli]

AFAIK you can scale the textures with "+" and "-" in order to avoid that they look like tilings. I've watched the EasyGen video tutorial and they did it that way. The tutorial is in German so it won't help you very much*. Additionally, you can do it the hard way in Radiant . But that's not what we have been looking for, right ?

My main concern are tunnels and other "custom" things that "interact" with the terrain. It'll be a nightmare to align those to the terrain. Pretty much like altering the rock wall technique ...

*For German speaking mappers take a look at http://www.level-designer.de/. There are lots of good tutorials and tips and tricks concerning mapping.

cheers

Breli

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Seems we've lost some posts here.
Here are the screenshots again of sample terrain I made in a very short amount of time using EasyGen.
With tweaking & some imagination, easy terrains can look much more natural than these shots suggest. The point is that this tool can save mappers a lot of time. I worked on CoyoteBluff for over a year but I only spent about 5 hours total creating both of these test maps.



I won't bother trying to replace all of my lost comments here. I'll just say anyone who is interested should check out this tool.
Some tutorials:
Highly regarded tut here
http://tramdesign.planetwolfenstein.gam ... sygen.html
http://devilztail.netsons.org/snake/wor ... ?page_id=7
http://www.map-craft.com/modules.php?na ... aux&did=91
http://www.map-craft.com/modules.php?na ... ux&did=116
http://www.map-craft.com/modules.php?na ... ux&did=131
http://www.map-craft.com/modules.php?na ... ux&did=137

Search google if that isn't enough.

[=Chico=]

they look nice. I like the desert terrain alot.

[hika]

It is amazing you have made all these tests map in a few hours.
So, can we expect some more maps, in the future ?

And ... too bad we have lost the latest posts here, which are quite technical, indeed.
For the record, I remember Red said that redesigning the revised stock maps with Easygen is quite a hassle, though.

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Yes, you can take an existing map (one of the older stock maps for instance) and copy/paste everything except the terrain brushes into a new map file. Then you can import this into EasyGen & build new terrain around the existing structures. But for me, it looks & feels confusing. Very hard to see what I'm doing. Seems much easier to me to just make a new terrain with EG & add structures to that in Radiant. So don't expect to see fancy new cliffs in the stock map revisions. I think it'd be too much trouble.

And yes, I would like to make a new map but I can't say when that will happen yet.

[ReD NeCKersoN]

For anyone that tries this program, save your work often. There is no autosave feature & EG is prone to crashing while manipulating vertices manually. Also, there is an 'undo' function but no 'redo' function. If you spend 3 hours manipulating verts & hit 'undo' you will lose all of it. Even if you have 'saved' your work many times as you are working.

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Here's some more screenshots of another type of terrain that is possible with EG. I spent quite a bit of time with this level a couple of months ago, but gave up on it to try & focus on more pressing issues. Pretty neat how you can make such different landscapes. Anyway, I thought aspiring mappers would like to see more examples of what this tool can do.






EDIT: Btw, I tried importing Durango into EG again. Making new terrain for existing maps is possible if you don't mind hours of tweaking vertices in Radiant. Once again, I have given up on this idea. It would be faster (for me at least) to make a new map from scratch. But I will definately be using EG whenever I find time to make a brand new level.

[ReD NeCKersoN]

Yes, I'm still playing around with this tool. No, I haven't started a real map yet. I made this in two or three hours Sunday afternoon.



You'll notice that textures get stretched on tall, vertical faces. (Cliff walls for example.) This is the biggest drawback to EG imo. Basically, texturing & terrain blending have to be reworked by hand to get it right... which I didn't do for this simple test map. I also didn't fiddle with the shader script for this, as evidenced by the difference in lighting between the boulders & cliffs even though they use the same texture. The previous set of screenshots I posted in this thread was totally retextured manually & shader rewritten. That's why the textures in those shots look more natural. Time consuming, but well worth it for a releasable product. I'm getting the itch to make a new map guys. I'm crossing my fingers that I can start working fewer hours at my job soon.

[ChainLightnin']

Both, impressive and good news.

[Pardner]

Looks good ReD. Ill try go give EG some time this summer.
that time is quickly approching

[ReD NeCKersoN]

A similar desert theme as posted in this thread earlier. Some texture blending tests here with various models thrown in for atmosphere. New sand texture from Leon. Just thought you might like to see it. Total build time for this small test level was about 1 day.

[Leon]

That nature stuff looks great. I?d play it. :D

[EvilFutsin]

I gotta ask - Red, you ever gonna get those EG test maps through a testing phase some time? Look pretty awesome as they are, ya know.