Its over… For now.

A video showcasing my final hand-in.

Landscape Generator/editor using Houdini Engine for Unity from Steffen Fureli on Vimeo.

Wrapping up the project

Well, this is going to be a long post, so if you just want the juicy visual part, scroll past the text 😉

To start off I can tell you that the project is almost finished. This is not because the product I am creating is nearly finished, but deadline is just around the corner… This is also the reason I haven’t written much lately.
Since last time I have completely rewritten everything, remade the whole project in other words. The reason for this is that the tool I had created was cluttered with bad design as a result of me learning the software and developing techniques as I went along. The new tool is now faster and has a lot of added functions. In addition to this it also integrates with Unity as a digital asset using Houdini Engine (What is it?) which is a huge thing, and really opens up a lot of possibilities.

A couple of photos on where I am now:

One of the levels created using my tool.

And then from another angle.

This is how it looks while the artist/designer works with the landscape parameters.

Here I will demonstrate how you can use Curves (same as splines) to add geometry on my tool.

First you draw a curve.

Then you connect it to the system, which makes the tool colour the area of the curve green.

The tool then recognize the green, and uses that data to add landmass.

Then from a different angle.

Here I demonstrate a bridge tool I created today since I wanted something to decorate my levels.

The bridge is created after the artist/designer have given it a line to work from.

After that, you can adjust how much the bridge “falls” and other parameters such as: heigh, width, how many planks etc.

The same bridge as the one above, just altered some of the parameters.

Here I demonstrate how I can create curves to make tunnels in the landscape. These can be resized to fit their purpose.

The same area as above, but without the tunnel curve.

As you can see, the project is coming along nicely! The UV problems I had earlier is fixed and everything works as is.
What is left to do, is create a finished level using this tool (adding props like trees, rocks etc.) while recording, which I will put out at a later date.

Please give feedback if you’ve got anything! If something looks aesthetically off I would be happy to be aware of it, and fix it ^^

Cheers!

UVs

uv.. unwrapping.. If you think it is difficult done by hand, try to do it procedurally!..

I’ve been trying lots of stuff regarding UVs now on this project, and I have managed to get the landscapes (Noisemaps) with the extrusion to unwrap (fairly) good. My problem further on is to make the tunnels and added geometry have procedurally good and merged (with the landscape) UVs…
I am starting to need luck

As you can see, even the flat sides (vertically) are unwrapped quite nice.

at very tight spots I get some problems, this is not just a problem with the UVs but also on the geometry in general..

This is my main problem.. Probably an easy solution, somewhere.

With some nicer textures nabbed off of google images.

Parameters

I have started actually designing the UI (User interface) of my tool, adding parameters and iterative previews. I am trying to have it as fast and easy as posible for a designer to work with.

While working on the usability, my girlfriend noticed several things that was missing from my design, which reminded me that I really should get some feedback on the actuall tool soon, as I have been working in the dark without input for quite some time…

For the tool itself I have now made parameters to alter the two starting grid, such as noise height/frequency, offset and so on. The interaction between the two have also got some parameters which makes the tool really easy to play with! (Unfortunately there are little to no fail-safe to prevent the computer from overworking and eventually shuting down.. Depends if I get the time to fix this.

Here I have the resolution set to very little, so that the system works fast enough for fast itterations.

A lot more resolution, more ideal for picturing the landscape, but a lot slower to work with

An example of tinkering with parameters to create a wholly different scene.

Playing around with the offset is the best and most effective way of quickly shake the landscape up to make a completely new scene.
The offset also works in a way that yo can “pan” just a bit if you liked a particular area.

As I was quite pleased with the previous scene, I now check to see how the converting to and from volume went. There is almost no error ever, so I am pleased so far.

This is after the retopologizing. If there was any error in the previous step, this is usually where those errors is fixed. As there dont seem to be any, we can proceed to the most satisfactory step…

… Here we can see how the colours and effects will be applied, still in low resolution, so it is fast to process.

This is the complete scene with cliffs and subdividers applied.

This is how the Tunnel tool will be used by users. It is only based on a simple curve, so it will be very easy for a designer to quickly plan out where the tunnel should go.

This is the different parameters available for the designer. There will be more later on, but it is still work in process.

Parameters altered a bit.

The new scene converted and retopoligized. So far so good.
Here you can see that the tunnel tool can be used to simply alter how the terrain should look.

And thus, the level is complete.

Some different angles..

And another one

Noisemaps and angles

I have lately been working a lot on how to make the landscape look more realistic and to push itself away from the usual “heightmap-look” you often see when procedurally generating landscapes.

One main technique that was used here was that I combined two different planes with their own noisemaps applied, and merged them. Since one noise was of a lower frequency and lower height, it made the landscape have flat areas aswell as bumpy ones. I also stored the information on what part of the landscape belonged to what (as this was used later in the process.)

As you can see, the yellow and purple planes where created from different noisemaps. The purple making the flatter ground.

After that I played around with what I could do with the information on what plane was what, so I created valleys by extruding the purple faces downwards, effectively creating a more valley like look. And as seen earlier in the project, I have added some geometry that will add/subtract from the landscape.

Here we can already clearly get an idea of how the landscape will look like, this still uses fairly little time to process, so you can still be very creative and alter a lot without to much waiting.

Next I convert everything to cloud volume, and mix them together (adding and subtracting geometry). Creating a rugged and harsh geometry that has combined all the different pieces.

After converting from volume to polygons, I also smoothed the geometry right after, leaving a fairly good look that resemples the initial geometry fairly well.

After the I use the points normals to recognise what og the landscape is cliff and what is flat vegetated area.

The last two pictures look fairly identical, but if you look closely you can see that one of them is a lot denser in detail, this is to show that I can subdivide into incredibly small details and use that for normalmaps later on.

Some examples of other maps made using the system, both the other maps were created in less than five minutes.

Procedural with control

Been forgetting this blog for a while, but I have done a lot of work since last time, albeit not necessary towards the final project, at least not directly.

SInce last time I have been tinkering with having more of the pipeline being procedural. This means that the landscape is no longer generated from a height map, but from a random generator which has several parameters the user can tinker with. In addition to that I have made som systems which adds: roads, Trees, and tools that will be used to place snow and different other textures.

As you can see on the photos, this is the same original plane, but the height of snow and trees, as well as the placement of the road has been moved slightly without destroying anything else. I will post more as soon as I make something a bit more visual.

Progress so far

Up until now I’ve only experimented with Houdini and tried to learn how to use it well. The software is able to do some seriously advanced stuff that I will be utilizing in my assignment.

Here are some images of what I have been able to do so far:
   

My Final Year Project

With this blog I will write about my progress in the FYP module at Teesside University.
The FYP (Final Year Project) is a project where one can do anything game related. My project is “Creating a toolset for designers/artists used to create game ready environments for the Unity game engine.”

To achieve this I’m going to use the Houdini Software, using its unique workflow to create a procedurally based level creator.

Here you can see how the tool created uses a heightmap and merges it with a torus.
This is done through converting back and forth from voxels and polygons.

It is also possible to carve the landscape with the exact same torus mesh.