Setting boundaries on exterior heightmap editing?

[Thalassicus]

I'm guessing the answer is no, but is it possible to constrain landscaping tools to alter only one particular cell in an exterior worldspace (like Tamriel)?

 

It'd be so simple to code in area-bounding constraints to the tool, but I'm assuming there's nothing like that, since the original devs would have no use for such a feature (as the entire Tamriel worldspace is part of one single file for them, with no mod conflict concerns).

[Vagrant0]

Short answer is "no" since any such boundary would cause obvious tears or inconsistencies along the edges of those borders.

 

Although you can select a specific area of a map to alter within the heightmap editor, any changes to the landscape in the heightmap editor will cause EVERY exterior cell of that worldspace to be flagged as being altered. The heightmap editor is only designed to be used as an initial tool for new worldspaces, and can cause significant problems if used with a space which has already been populated with objects.

 

For Tamriel, the only thing you should be using to alter the terrain should be the Landscape Editor. If you are trying to constrain changes to a group of cells, it is usually a good idea to turn on cell borders "press B" and keep most of your changes inside. No matter how good you might be, you will likely end up altering neighboring cells, it's just how it is, so you should try to maintain a buffer of atleast 2 cells between your mod and any other mods which change the nearby landscape.

[Thalassicus]

Yes, I misspoke and meant heightmap editing using the landscape editor; since the landscape editor uses the H key and alters heightmaps of vertices. The B hotkey helps a lot, thanks for that tip! I didn't see the hotkey documented anywhere and I was using large black mask planes to demarcate cell boundaries. The most difficult thing about not having a constraint tool is that the smooth and flatten brushes tend to alter vertexes far beyond the current brush size, limiting their use.

 

As far as a constraint tool goes, it wouldn't cause tears in the landscape. In the simplest implementation, the user could flag vertices as fixed (preventing their alteration) preferably with a brush of variable size. It wouldn't create new vertices, so all existing edges and faces would still connect. Excessive alteration of the z values would have course result in relatively large triangles in the mesh (the same as what's already possible with moving a single vertex's height dramatically), but the mesh would be contiguous.

 

This sort of dynamic vertex fixing would be fantastic for locking changes in place, too, if you're satisfied with an area and don't want to accidentally alter it. It really makes me wish we could script plugins for the CS like Maya or Max! Do you know if there's any way to do this, or is the CS completely closed-source? Most free game editors do tend to be limited in creating extensions, but it was possible to extend the warcraft 3 map editor, and some others I've used.

[Vagrant0]

As far as a constraint tool goes, it wouldn't cause tears in the landscape. In the simplest implementation, the user could flag vertices as fixed (preventing their alteration) preferably with a brush of variable size. It wouldn't create new vertices, so all existing edges and faces would still connect. Excessive alteration of the z values would have course result in relatively large triangles in the mesh (the same as what's already possible with moving a single vertex's height dramatically), but the mesh would be contiguous.

At any rate, what would happen along those boundaries is that instead of having a smoothed transition, you would have a steep one which is almost always something that isn't desired.

 

The landscape tool is designed to be simple and still allow for both large scale and small scale adjustments. The soften and flatten brushes are designed mostly for initial work in an area. If what you want to d cannot be done with these without screwing up other parts of the cell, you can always go through with a 1 radius brush and adjust things point by point. It's tedious, it's time consuming, but it's well worth it. Inclusion of an automatic feature which did this would likely be just as buggy, and would make it harder for people to determine what parts of a landscape have been finalized from those which have not (a big key in situations when you have more than one person working in the same area). Put simply, the landscape editor was designed to be more in line with natural environments (which are not always so rigid) and allow work on one piece to blend into another so as to allow smoother transitions.

[Thalassicus]

Yeah, you're right. In addition to those reasons, since the development was probably done in max and the art department might not have used the CS much or at all, it's easy to overlook features like this when the CS is created.

 

The reason why I was asking is primarily when doing structures that are set down into the terrain, it's necessary to greatly alter the height of the vertices, and this sort of "unnatural" mesh the editor likes to destroy if the Smooth tool is used anywhere near it. As you say though, it's still possible to work with, given enough time.