Map Beautifing thread

[mtarini]

In this thread I plan to accumulate ideas and results on efforts in making the map look better, or more fit to the TLD scenario.
AW and Thorgrim did a good job on the map (including icons) already. Here we try to understand if/how it be improved.

I'll use this to show results, and poll opinions suggestions and contributions.
This is just an attempt: if everything reaches a point where it is recognized as an improvement and AW likes it too, I'll submit results to him for inclusion in the module.


In general, I would like the map to be a mixture of realism and illustrative techniques. In other words, a mixture of the typical Tolkien paper map style and the satellite view of google maps.

There's a few things on their way already, but I can think of a few additional ones:

- Color schema. It is inherited from the native, and it is suboptimal IMO. Many colors seem too saturated, especially grass. Rivers and seas would probably look better if they were tad darker, and, again, less saturated.

- General scale perception: trees, mountains, rivers, stuff seem to hint on a scale which is a lot smaller than Middle Earth, as if the map depicted a region as big as a City district. It would be better if it looked larger. This is again a consequence of inheritance from the native mod, where, for example, a single mountain covers a good percentage of the map, and the scale of the map is such that a single path on a mountain is large enough to be walked down.

- Mountains is a particular subcase of the previous problem. In TLD, we need mountain chains, not isolated big blobs of rock, that the system is designed for.


Here I'll start with the last one: mountains.

Ready? go!

argonath model by lost angel/textured by triglav. --sticking this here so I dont forget to credit.
saruman hand by mtarini

[mtarini]

So, mountains.

Screenshots of the current version, compared to a similar zone in the typical LOTR map.



To repeat myself, it is not like I want the two images to match.
 Rather, I want the two to be perceived as differently styled representations of the same thing.

In this sense, currently, mountains look too organic, like "blobs of rocks". There are peaks here and there, no doubt a result of a careful modelling, but their number and density is not nearly high enough, and they are not separated enough (they merge too much). I would like to see rows of peaks, separated by valleys.

Looking at how the map is tessellated with triangles, what I want to try is this: make individual peaks (separated mountains) composed by as few as 6 map triangles; basically to model each individual peak as a six sided pyramid. That would give more or less the right number and density of peaks IMO.

True that each peak taken separately would probably look horrible and too simple. I hope that the overall result doesn't suck too much.
I'll see what we get.

[BlackSamurai]

the forests need to look like a forest not trees over the place and u spelt the title wrong

[mtarini]

Yeah, how to depict the forset properly is another problem. Only, it is one that I have no great idea on how to imporve.

Smaller, more dense 3D trees could be a step forward.
Or maybe a "tree wall": a flat prism that featured tree trunks at its sides and tree tops at its top.
Probably not possible to do decently. Or use just a map color and pattern, no 3D icon?
Dunno really. Suggestions?

and u spelt the title wrong

oops. Thanks.

[Scion]

About the forest, it will kindof look weird with only a forest texture, as the player will gallop over it, not through it. I believe that by duplicating the tree 3D model and use rather five trees than one might make a denser forest. If one is dedicated enough, one might even make tree parties (you know like towns, only that they are trees). As I guess the problem is the lack of density. Maybe the map is more beautifyable in the upcoming version though..

[mtarini]

Scion: you are right. But, tree parties are probably unnecessary. However the current trees are done (they are not parties), they can probably be replaced with something more fitting (a set of denser and smaller trees). Hopefully, it is a standard form of modding (did not look it up yet). I am not sure about how good the result will look like.



A small update on the progress on mountains.

I've seen that it takes FOREVER to manually edit all the peaks in the editor, up and down, as I wanted to do.

So I did it automatically with a little program, creating a pattern of "peaks" over one contiguos regions which is marked as mountains.
This is bound to look totally repetitive, but I'll fix this later by adding some randomness.

Making it automatically feels a lot safer for me, beacuse I can progressively refine and re-run the algorithm to improve the results, instead of re-editing everything manually everytime I want to change something, like making all mountains a little taller or shorter.

So I did it. But, I am sorry to say that so far the results, well, SUCK beyond words. Look for yourself.




Ok, it is an obviously repetitive pattern, but this could be addressed and it is not what worries me. Point is, the shading is gone! All mountains are the same gray, no shadows. This is why I had to show a wireframe: without wireframe, not even the shape of that thing is visible in the image.  Also, mountains as simple pyramids kinda suck too.

((This "no shading" artifact is well known in CG, it is due to the fact that gouraud shading (or phong) is used without enough vertices. Said differently, normals are computed per vertex, but the normals of both the peak vertices and the valley vertices are pointing straight up, so no shading. I should have known.))

To solve both problems, I should use larger and fewest mountains, so that each one has more vertices. I don't like this very much because the number and density of peaks turned out to be quite ok IMO. To get an improvement, I would need mountains twice as large, more or less 1/4 of the number of peaks.
Or, tasselate the map a little more locally, using more and smaller triangles, just for the mountains. Or, give up.


A side note: I took care not to change the altitude of any point that is accessible by the player. So it is all just in the way it looks. None of this affects gameplay.

[mtarini]

Still on it.
I am trying to adopt this subdivision schema in each separated peak.

.

It is the cheapest schema (in terms of # of added triangles) that I can think that would still do the trick. Just 12 additional triangles  (and 6 vertices) per peak. A few thousands triangles for the entire map, probably. Well, the haradrim elephant icon alone is heavier than that.

That should put the shading back.
Also, it would give me the possibility to shape the mountains, making the top parts of the peaks less steep than the lower part (peaks shaped a little bit like an upside-down "U").
Also, by putting random noise, this schema it would also give me the possibility to differentiate more the shape of each peak.
Hey, the top parts could be even made white to top a few peaks with snow!

Some stoopid bug in my code is preventing me to see if this is any good. I'll go on working on this later, or tomorrow.

Meanwhile, let me know any suggestion or comment.

PS: now that I think about it, I hope that M&B will accept the subdivided map when it is ready!
Differently from the standard map, or any I've seen so far, THIS one would have some vertices with 7 or 8 triangles (the "valleys"), and some with 5 (the added vertices). All the other maps are "regular", i.e. they have 6 tris around each vert. Hope M&B internal data structures can cope with this. Does anyone know? If that turns out not to be the case, this is all useless.

[Khergit Kabob]

Can you make the hotspots for some of the harder-to-enter cities a little bigger?  Some of those cities you have to really zoom in close to find the right spot to click on with the mouse to actually enter the city.

[mtarini]

City entry box: as far as I got that, the entry spot is just a fixed interval around the point that defines the city. Said differently, the model of the city (its icon) has the origin in its "door" spot, which is just a point. So, we can move the spot but its size is hard wired in M&B code. But that just what I think. someone more expert should confirm this.


On the mountains: I just subdivided the thing. M&B accepts taht! *phew!* And it does look better:



The shading is back, as expected. The shape of each peak in the planned upside down "U".

Next thing to do: add some randomness to break the regularity of the pattern.
It really looks wierd with all the peaks at the same height and size.

Meanwhile, feel free to post what you think about that.
I am a little puzzled by the look of this.
Edit: I am also unsure about the heights and the slopes (how steep they should be). Sure, it will be randomized a little, but I wonder about the average values.

[mtarini]

Hey, this has been sticked! Nice, thank you! This can be useful.

[bryce]

There is (or was) a pretty hard and fast limit to the number of map icons (trees) previously. So, I am not sure you can do much therem but new testures would help a ton.

The mountains can be made crinkly using the stretch tool in the map editor. They should also probably be much higher. Overall, the map is just too flat, whereas in any real terrain the whole of any valley would be sloped everywhere in the valley.

It also needs lots of little bumps ad crinkles and ridges for the planes areas as well, to give detail....

[mtarini]

There is (or was) a pretty hard and fast limit to the number of map icons (trees) previously. So, I am not sure you can do much therem but new testures would help a ton.

I think there is a 256 limit on the global number of different icons. Is that this limit you are referring to?
Beside, are trees just a "party icon" as, say, the cities? It seems that they are considered just part of the terrain. For each map triangle of "forest" (that is, with an associated numeric ID corresponding to "forest") M&B will spawn an istance of one of the few 3D models of a tree available. Are you saying that the number of such triangles (and associated models) is severely limited?

Also I didn't find these 3D models of trees yet, nor any file dictatig how this kind of automatic "map" models are to be linked to specific triangle IDs. I hope that a new model can be made and substituted to the one represenitng the tree. The new model we would need would be a mesh represenging a small group of trees instead. Hope this is moddable. Each group of, say, three trees would count like a single tree in this way agaist any limit the game can have, correct?

The mountains can be made crinkly using the stretch tool in the map editor.

Hum. I am missing something here. I don't see how you can add much detail without increasing the number of triangles (same for the plains)...
I am not sure that the editor lets you increase -- or change at all -- the tasselation (the number of traingles) locally, that is, in a specific place of the map only.
Maybe you are referring to mountains extending over quite a few (dozens and dozens) of map traingles, like in the original? After all, these are the kind of mountains that the map system is designed for.

They should also probably be much higher. Overall, the map is just too flat, whereas in any real terrain the whole of any valley would be sloped everywhere in the valley.

Ok, I'll see to make the mountains higher.

As for the general flatness, it is a matter of scale I think. The map of, say, Europe is more or less flat. It has some local part which is more spiky and wrinkly then others (the Alps, for example), but the general altitude of France and is the same as Poland and as anywhere else. Alps are just local small wrinkles in the surface of europe. On the contrary, the map of the district of Varese (a small city in the Italian alps) presents quite different glabal altitudes in different parts. The south half could be quite a bit lower, on average, than the north half, for example.




Meanwhile, observing the original Tolkien map (second post, above), I think I've seen that I got the slopes totally wrong! It should be steeper at the top, near the peaks, and more gentle at the bottom, near the small "valleys" saparating the peaks.  Not the other way around as I did. Upside down pointy "V"s, not "U"s.  I applied this and it does look better:



I like it a lot more this way too.

It is still too regular, because no randomization yet, but we are getting closer.

Now need to do some real work and it is late already.
Tomorrow I'll give a try at randomizing it, and making them, an average, higher, as bryce says.

[BlackSamurai]

nice and minas t. city icon's dissappered

[bryce]

There is (I believe) a 'too many trees' crash if you have lots of forested areas in native. It may have ben fixed in .808, but I am pretty sure it was an issue before then.

The stretching will not create new triangles, but drag vertices around.

The mountains you have made look a little better maybe, but are worse in some ways - they are too homogenous. Stretching at the base of the mountains to make crinkles will make things look a million times better. I  have done a little bit of that for BE but I cannot easily show it to you. As for triangles, don't worry - a whole map is just a few thousand  There are icons on the map that have nearly as many polygons. So, put as much detail in as you cans tand to put in.

The scale thing is true, but at the scale the mountains are at there should be way more height variation. I don't blame AW too much because it's a big pain in the butt, but it would make things look a lot more interesting. The native map is just terrible, and most of the other mods' maps I have seen are not much better.

If you are really serious about it, I would make my own trees and then just remove the forested areas on the map and replace them with grasslands or plains. Then add in the tree icons in module_parties.

Keep in mind that the icons can't be very big or else it will look stupid, though, due to the poor clipping that occurs.

[mtarini]

nice and minas t. city icon's dissappered

no prob, that's just a quick preview made with the semi-official M&B map editor, which I use as a preview tool only because it is a lot faster to load than the full game.
In the real game, all the icons should be in their place.