Hello again. I am wondering if this is normal or not.

I have built my world and every time I load it in the world editor there are these strange lines that appear in the actual heightmap. I use the Soften tool each time and it looks fine. Save, and then when I load the world again the lines are back.

I am wondering if this is normal, intentional or if this is a bug? Will these lines show up when I "build" and test?

Here is an image example of what I get (no textures included):

(Orange triangles show some of the lines in the map. As you turn the view, other lines become more prominent.)
http://www.avigraphic.com/images/ss/lines.jpg

(Different angle/image with out the orange triangles. Here you can see a LOT more lines in the actual heightmap)
http://www.avigraphic.com/images/ss/lines1.jpg

(same orange arrows in this one as well. Just a closer look from another view)
http://www.avigraphic.com/images/ss/lines2.jpg

Peace,
Sarrene'

(Thumbnail view of what I see)

please try testing it in the game, I think it should be ok.

Okay, will do. I just hate to keep "softening" the terrain and lose some of the detail.

My coder is on vacation, but will be back this week, so once he is back we will do a through test on both large scale maps and small ones. I will let you know what happens.

Thank you so much for such a speedy reply. You never cease to amaze me with all the work you do.

Peace,
Sarrene'

That is the material that makes the lines. paint it over with the brush

because the heightmap is splitted into blocks, so material is getting messed up.

noticed when I imported heightmaps from grome(quite large) and I had the exact same problem.

There are no materials on those images that you see. That is ONLY the heightmap and no materials added yet.

Now, if i use the Soften tool on the terrain, it will remove the lines. If you view up close to the lines, you will actually see the lines sticking up out of the ground spanning across the terrain. When I use the smooth (Soften) tool up close, you can see the grid lines actual smooth out. The slower you set the brush at, the slower you (I) can see the lines go down till they are eliminated.

Again with no textures at all what so ever have been applied to the terrain.

I have added some textures and colour brush to one area of my world, and oddly enough, the behavior is the same.

This also appears the same with a new map on either of my machines. One has esenthel with out any textures imported yet, and one I have all my textures imported (Thank you again For the dds fix boss <hugs>)


Peace,
Sarrene'

EDIT: I did not import this heightmap. I created it 100% in esenthel world editor.

you havent by any chance changed grid resolution 32 to 64 or 64-32-64 again? that also have tended to do this.

Nope, I had not. I did on my original heightmap, however I did start over again fresh with this map when I was finishing up on my dds textures.

Our old map we had, I did change from 32 to 64 and I did see this much more prominent. However, even on my old 32 map (prior to changing it) I still noticed this a bit. This is something my coder and I have discussed over the last several months.

So I started over again when I finished the new textures and decided to perfect the terrain. (This also gave me a chance to make the terrain a bit cleaner and better looking over all- I'm a bit of a perfectionist) This is still noticeable as you can see. The new map was not changed over from 32 to 64.

Peace,
Sarrene'

Hello,

You don't need to wait for your programmer to come back, you can just paint some material on the map (so it won't disappear), and select Play Game inside the World Editor.
Please check there if there are still white borders.

In the Edit mode (not Game) the border normals can be sometimes calculated incorrectly due to asynchronous area loading.

Okay boss, i will do that now. I will post up images once i get that done.

Peace and Thank you,
Sarrene'

Okay, here is how things went for me:
1) painted the land. As I did i noticed the grid lines in the heightmap disappear.
2) saved the new map and exited.
3) reloaded world. Lines were back.
4) hit play. Restrictive movement (as nothing else was done) But it appears, so far, that the grid lines are not present in play mode.
5) reload map: lines are visible in editor once more.

I will go ahead and keep testing this out and see if these lines do end up appearing in the play mode. I will also keep this updated and let you know if there are any issues or if everything is fine.

Peace and thank you so much boss,
Sarrene'

Turn off grid display

It is not the actual grid itself, what I was showing is in the heightmap. You can see the same thing with the grid turned off....

As you can see from the two screen shots, turning off the grid does not change the actual heightfield itself, nor the lines in it. This was the very first thing I checked months ago when I first noticed it.

With grid turned off:
http://triadmain.com/pics/lines-01.jpg

With grid turned on:
http://triadmain.com/pics/lines-02.jpg

But thanks for the idea, perhaps it might help someone else out that is having the grid show through. However, for me, this is not the case.

On a side note, I will have to get some more images up soon, I have started texturing the terrain a bit more and actualy added in a test character. Once I start "running across the land" i can see the groves in the ground where the strange grid is. I will get those images up tonight or in the morning as soon as I can. Seems though only a few show up. So it is not as bad as it is displayed in the World Editor.

Peace,
Sarrene'

It is the editor and how it displays the block. I haven't noticed it while running the game though. Display wire frame and you can see how the ths happens in the editor.