Is there a way to turn off the terrain LOD so I can see the whole terrain ? I'm guessing it's not yet possible , but just thought I would ask.

If you are talking about losing the scene when zooming in editor, just play with the fog setting sliders till you get what you are looking for.

@3com , yes that will be it. Thanks , been a long day. Will play with fog sliders

nope , not the fog settings, FOV maybe , will figure it out.

It is a bit tricky, but it works, I myself have that issue with my spaceship map, and Preben talk me about changing fog settings and it works for me. You would have to play with both fog sliders, there is a position that is the correct one to get all the map visibility, even if you go far away from your map/editor, obviously it has a limit.

That square is the terrain at the moment

Dave

@3com-thanks, Ive been playing with my heightmap tool and importing from ggc, to see what happens in ggmax and hills etc fade in and out but want too see terrain overview all at a glance. Will keep playing with sliders etc.no luck so far. I found fov by chance now can't recall where I saw it. Frustrating. If I can't get back to sleep, I will get up and try again. I'm planning a heightmap import for Max and doing some pre testing.

Best not to do anything major with terrain at the moment, you'll end up frustrated, the terrain that's in max at the moment isn't the final terrain, it's pretty much placeholder and they're still working on it.

No not doing anything drastic at the moment, just gathering / analysing the metadata that make up the terrain. It's just for my own purposes and are merely tests. When the terrain is final and stable I might do some more serious app coding for myself. Playtime at the moment.

@ BOTR

play with 57-100 values here and it does the trick, anyway, there happens something odd, it works fine till you minimize/Maximized GGMax, when back you had to lose the whole terrain, the solution I've found is to get closest to the terrain before minimizing GGMax.
I was playing with some value on setup.ini (will play with others when having some left time) in order to remove that terrain dark shadow without success.



hth

@3Com- thanks for the useful info/tips. I will have a try. I also have been playing around with setup/visuals parameter values to see what affect they have on the terrain. No change at the moment that I can see, probably something hard coded into the engine that can't get got at, not sure what params are enabled in MAX. It all really is just experimentation at the moment. I noticed that no .dat files get created when saving a blank level fpm i.e. terrain is unmodified. As soon as the terrain is sculptured, then .dat files start being created upon saving. I raised the level of the terrain a little then selected the 'level mode' tool and covered the whole terrain at the set height then saved. You get 0-9 x 9-9 level .dat files at different levels. I'm analysing these files in a test project, nothing serious though for now.

Hello everyone,

I want to show a demo relative to an imported terrain created with my favorite modeler Metasequoia 4 Pro.
It took me a few minutes to create that terrain sizing one square kilometer.
It is uv mapped with the very nice textures provided with GG Max.

Uploaded HD video + sound capture available on Movavi Cloud ( secured and anonymous access : 208 Mbytes - 55 seconds)
http://cloud.movavi.com/show/2fciZoYOxnlv3LAI5yVkQRsq9rdHMeXD
Thank for watching.

I thought the view distance in editor was set in stone, but sounds like there may be an option to adjust it. It really should be a bit higher by default though. When making a terrain I like to zoom out quite a lot to get an overall picture when starting a map. Once I'm happy with it from high up, only then do I zoom in and make more adjustments.
I wasn't aware you could import your own terrains from other packages either at this stage. Not that I use any, apart from Blender possibly.

I've also noticed maps get gigantic in size quite quickly with pretty much just the terrain (can't be objects, as I only placed a few trees and grass down in one part of the map). So I imagine the terrain itself is taking a lot of memory up at present.

Or maybe they are diverting other processes into memory, I assume they are testing something, or this is temporary.
Or perhaps they are testing compiled shaders, if these files contain many bytes in the header, these bytes become memory residents, and the ram consumption skyrockets. Who knows?

1st initials tests with my early GGMax terrain editor show it works. The original map I dug an 'ole. and then modified the data to fill it in.
not going too far with this until they get the terrain side updated so I can see what's going on.

@Bored of the Rings. Maybe they should ask you to work on it officially Or at least see what is possible. I have to say that it's pretty common in many engines these days and Max would certainly get a little stick if there is no option at all for height maps at all these days. On the other hand if it had the feature, consider it a box ticked
@3com I'm sure the map sizes are a temporary thing. If not, then I hate to think what a fully populated map with lots of entities, sound effects, music and scripts would take up. Even a full GG map fully baked would not take up anywhere near 3 gig for the map alone. I think the maps at present must include media and everything as well, unlike GG where it is mostly just the info to place said media etc. Even so, for the map above 3 gig is ott. I don't think shaders or code will be the culprit, code is normally pretty small compared to media.

This is from another engine. Project size is 5.6 gig, but when made into a standalone is closer to 1.6. Each house has an interior, the map is gigantic in comparison and way more detailed and impressive than my simple map above. Not that I really wish to compare Max WIP with a well established engine. But even compared with GG the map size is quite a massive leap atm. Just keeping an eye on Max and making some suggestions here and there about anything I see as a potential problem if not addressed. I'm used to GG maps being in the MB level, they only really stray higher with baking or the because of the media included.

I think so too. About heightmaps, BOTR has the right tool, just a matter of implementing it in GGMax.


Yes, too early for any serious pro.
At the moment nothing is final in GGMax, and you can end up redoing the same project at least once more.