74 replies to this topic

[jspirate]

So, I raised the roof and I am getting a weird shadow while building.  Its like I am a big UFO and when I am in just the right spot, there is a huge shadow covering my work area.  I didn't experience this on my other 3 courses.  I can fly around and work from a different angle, but that gets tiresome after awhile.

 

I am not sure its ShimonTools, but I didn't see it before raising the roof.

 

Any thoughts/ideas?  Thanks

[DPRoberts]

Check your shadow cascades. No idea why it would change but it's under Project-Quality settings, I believe.

Change from Four to Two.

[jspirate]

Check your shadow cascades. No idea why it would change but it's under Project-Quality settings, I believe.

Change from Four to Two.

.

Shadow cascades was set to 0, so I changed it to 2.  Unfortunately, that did not help.  See pic below.

 

EDIT!!!!

I think that was it, there are 2 places you can adjust that setting.  For now, I think it is working.

[DPRoberts]

Sounds good. For someone else that may travel through here, this is where you would change that...

[jspirate]

Yes, thanks for posting that DPR.  That is not where I was when I first took the screenshot.  Should have follow-up up with another.

[shimonko]

Likely just a coincidence, jspirate, as MoveTheRoof doesn't touch anything but the terrain height values.

[jspirate]

Raise the roof question... my lower and raise terrain tool is way too sensitive.  Even at 0.5 the incremental changes made are just too much.  Could this be due to raising the roof?  Maybe adjustments are a percentage of the total height of the map?

 

If not, does anyone know why it might be so touchy and how I might address it?  I can live with it if I have to, but its not ideal.

 

Thanks

[shimonko]

I wouldn't think so, but anything's possible - raising the roof should be just the same as if you started a new terrain with the modified value (ionly existing sculpting isn't lost). Nearly midnight here now but I'll have a look tomorrow.

[shimonko]

I can't seem to fault it. Here's a terrain with an initial height of 30 which I raised a hill with the terrain raise tool until it plateaued at 30.

 

Then I used the raise to roof tool to change it to 60, raised the initial hill until it clipped at 60, then did other hills at the preset heights of 45, 40 and 35. They smoothly raised up even when opacity was set to 100.

 

 

Worth reiterating that the height of the terrain is the 'elevation change' over the course - not the altitude of the course. If you had something like 2000m for the terrain height, you would see what you are describing - a very sensitive raise/lower tool. But even still, just lowering the opacity would cater for this.

I don't know you are referring to when you say "0.5" , as the Opacity value controls the  incremental change - how much a single click raises or lowers - and it only uses whole numbers, not decimals.



 

[shimonko]

A longshot - the other thing it could potentially be is if an 8 bit heightmap was used instead of 16 bit.

[jspirate]

Worth reiterating that the height of the terrain is the 'elevation change' over the course - not the altitude of the course. If you had something like 2000m for the terrain height, you would see what you are describing - a very sensitive raise/lower tool. But even still, just lowering the opacity would cater for this.

I don't know you are referring to when you say "0.5" , as the Opacity value controls the  incremental change - how much a single click raises or lowers - and it only uses whole numbers, not decimals.



 

 

I am confused.  If I set "new max terrain height possible" to 220, doesn't the terrain height then become 220?

That is what I have and the lowest opacity setting that I can select (0.5 by typing it in) moves at least 10X faster than it did for my previous 3 course builds. It makes it a fair bit trickier to sculpt and shape...

 

[shimonko]

Sure - I was just making sure you hadn't set the altitude of the course (e.g. 10000m above sea level) to be the terrain height as that would definitely make the raise tool very sensitive.

As yes - the amount raised each click is dependent on the terrain height set

 

per click raise = terrain height * opacity / 10000.  (approximately*)

 

For a terrain height of 220m and opacity = 100, each click = 220 x 100 / 10000 = 2.2m.

or if opacity = 0.5, then 1.1cm  

 

Now 220m between the lowest point on the terrain to the top point is large - I assume you have a large mountain on your terrain as even the rolling Augusta has only about 80m of elevation change.  But it will make your tool more sensitive than what you are used to if you're previously had the more common 30-50m type terrain heights.

 

I still think 1.1cm however is manageable. Can you post your raise tool settings as if I type in 0.5, it will be displayed as 0, however 0.5 will be used. But I can also type in 0.25 and it will be used too  (still displayed as zero) whereas you say 0.5 is the lowest you can do.

 

* These are approximate because our raw maps represent 16 bits of height = 65536 steps. So these clicks above will round to the nearest step =  220m/65536 = 3mm, and possibly some more because of rounding in the slider value.

[jspirate]

Thanks for the detailed explanation Shimonko.

 

I do have some high mountain ranges that I would like to paint.  I've used the fill in mountain/ranges before and I didn't want that look for this course.

 

I may reduce height by 50% to 100 or so, do the sculpting and smoothing and then raise the roof.  Not sure though as this isn't a natural build process flow for me. I like to plant as I go and what not...

[Stingreye]

Thanks for the detailed explanation Shimonko.

 

I do have some high mountain ranges that I would like to paint.  I've used the fill in mountain/ranges before and I didn't want that look for this course.

 

I may reduce height by 50% to 100 or so, do the sculpting and smoothing and then raise the roof.  Not sure though as this isn't a natural build process flow for me. I like to plant as I go and what not...

If its mountains, can you use a second terrain?

[jspirate]

If its mountains, can you use a second terrain?

Thats a good thought also.... I did that for Ironwood and it worked well.  My original plan was to have this course in a valley, but maybe I should rethink that...