Software

You need following software to complete this tutorial :

- 3DRad 6.41 or later (freeware from March 2010, donorware ($5) pre-March 2010)
- L3DT v2.8 standard or later (freeware)
- FragMotion v0.96 or later (shareware, but work with nags forever)
- Paint.NET - Very extensive paint software, comparable to Photoshop (freeware)
- RadImp - Very fast 3dRad importer (freeware)
- TerrainShaderEditor v0.5 (freeware)


STEP 1 Create Terrain

Designing a simple and drive/walk friendly terrain in L3DT Standard v2.8 (freeware)

Usually does L3DT default creates a very unfiendly terrains, not very suitable for walking/driving (too bumpy)
Here is a approach that takes 15 minutes to do.

1. Open L3DT
2. Click New Map
3. Choose Blank Designable Map
4. Heightfield => Choose Width=512, Height=512, Horizontal Scale=1
5. HF/DM ratio=64 (default)
6. It should now look like this :




7. Click the Edit Button (the one with a pencil on it)



Check Altitude=25
Check Terraces and set slider to the far right
Check Erosion and set slider to the middle

Draw around the outline, maybe add a few variations, also create some blocks in the middle.

It should look something like this :



8. Change edit settings

Check Altitude=50 and leave the rest as it is.

9. Draw a box in the middle over one of the previous like this :



10. Now clik the Calc button, and check only Heightmap

It should look something like this :




12. To be able to make roads, we need to calculate a lightmap so we can "draw" roads.

- Click the Calc button
- Check Attributes Map
- Check Normals Map
- Check Light Map
- Check TextureMap (we dont really need this except for exporting as obj later)

Click Next,Next, Uncheck Water Effects, Then Click OK

You should now have something like this in the Lightmap Tab



13. While in the Light Map, Click the Edit button (Pencil)

Set Radius = 10
Colour = : RED

Now draw yourself a nice red road, like this :



14. Click the Heightmap Tab
15, Click the Edit button (Pencil) - Sapphire will now start
16. In the menus goto Options->TErrain->Select Texture and Choose LM, click ok

It should now look like this :



17. Now click the Walk button, use WASD to walk and RightMouse+mouse to navigate.
18. Select the Smooth in the Heightfield Toolbar
19. Use middle mouse to adjust the size of the tool to the road size
20. Now smooth your road and make sure its not very bumpy, you can also use the bulldozer tool to remove ugly bumps.




When you're happy just close the Sapphire window.

21. Click the Light Map Tab, Ctrl+E save the image as a jpg (we'll use this later)

22. Export the Terrain as OBJ+mtl and convert to .x (described here in Step 11-18)   http://www.3drad.com/forum/index.php?topic=3076.msg23740#msg23740

Close L3DT

STEP 2 - Draw Roadmap for The TerrainShaderEditor

1. Start Paint.NET
2. Open the saved Light Map image you saved in previous section
3. Menu:Image->Resize   Set 1024x1024   (Because roadmap is UV wrapped, the bigger resoulution creates better results.
4. Menu:Layers->Add New Layer
5. Choose the Line/Curve Tool   ==> Set Brush Width to 30 (about the same size as the red road at 1024x1024)
6. set front color to white.
7. Carefully line/curve over the red road (make sure you are in Layer2)

Like this :

You can curve the line by dragging in the 4 points, press enter and add section around so it completes the road.



8. Now.. Delete Layer1, Click BackGround in the Layer window and click the red X

9. When you're done it should look like this :



10. Now we need to create white edges and a center line..

11. Resize image to 2048x2048

12. Select the PaintBcket Tool   Fill:Solid   Tolerance : 20%
13. Select a gray color (the one next to the black in the Color Panel.
14. Fill the road.
15. Draw center lines using the Line/Curve tool, color white, brush size 1
16. Many:Effects->Blurs->Gaussian Blur  (Radius 2)

It should look like this in the end :



17. Menu:Image->Flip Vertical

18. Save as .DDS (DirectDrawSurface)  Choose DXT5, click ok

19. Close Paint.NET

20. Now start the TerrainShaderEditor, load your mesh and road (Load T button next to Road UV).

It should be something like this using the default textures in the editor.



Voila.. (I think)